15 Reading Journal Articles
Textbook Chapters (or similar texts)
Journal Articles
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Inquiry-based Activity: Research scavenger hunt
Introduction: While students are often asked to read, understand, and synthesize primary research articles, they are often not taught how to do so. The assumption that this type of reading is easy and/or comes naturally to students is predominantly false. In this activity, students will first hypothesize about what they should be able to learn from a research article. They will then put that information to the test with an actual research article. This activity should not only help students recognize that reading primary articles is a difficult task that requires practice, but also help them learn where to find important information within articles.
Question to pose to students: Do you know how to find the information you need when reading journal articles?
Students form a hypothesis: Answers will be a simple yes/no. Then, individually, students should brainstorm the kind of information they think they can find in a journal article (examples would be experimental groups, statistics, number of participants, etc.). Once they have a list of that information, they should decide what parts of a journal article they would be able to find that information. Depending on the academic level of your students, you can provide them with typical journal sections or let them recall those themselves. Once they have formed ideas independently, have them compare answers in small groups. Have each group then compile a master idea list.
Students test their hypotheses: The next section will differ depending on the size of your course and the amount of time you have to devote to the activity. In a small course, all groups may need to be assigned the same article. In larger courses, multiple articles can be used – the activity works best if there are at least 3-4 unique articles. Within each group, students should then attempt to find the information the identified in the previous step in the correct section. That is, if they stated that they should be able to find clearly-identified experimental groups in the methods section, can they do so with the article they have been given? Additionally, are there sections of the article that they realize should have been on their list, but was not identified a priori?
Do the students’ hypotheses hold up?: Are students able to find all of the information they thought they would be able to? If yes, huzzah! If no (likely), where there themes in the missing information? That is, was it all information that should have been in the methods/results/etc.? Or was it seemingly random? Have the small groups get together with the group closest to them that was assigned the same article. First, they should compare lists. Then, have them discuss what they were not able to find and look for commonalities. Can they help each other out? Was one group looking in the wrong section? Is there information that both groups can not seem to find? Finally, bring the class together and have them discuss the activity.
