Research: Maximizing Hyperlink Capabilities to Demonstrate Standards Mastery

Teacher librarians, ever-adaptive and resourceful, have an opportunity to introduce a new breed of research product. It's no longer enough for our students to use OPACs and the Internet to find research, read and annotate sources, and write an essay or present; they need to do so while innovatively integrating technology. Many Common Core State Standards include this requirement. For example, California's standards say:

To be ready for college, workforce training, and life in a technological society, students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize, and summarize information and ideas, to conduct original research to answer questions or solve problems, and to analyze and create a high volume and extensive range of print and nonprint texts in media forms old and new. ("English Language Arts" 2013, p. iv).

To meet the challenge, school districts are investing in subscription databases and adopting collaborative products, like Google G Suite or Microsoft 365 for Education. Librarians have an opportunity to work with teachers and students in merging these resources to create a hybrid end product, a research paper or presentation that truly demonstrates mastery of the standards. This end product allows classroom teachers to see students' research and their annotations, regardless of citation style, without any additional paper shuffling through embeddable links. In this new, interactive research product an old constant gets an upgrade, without sacrificing essential standards.

Merging Resources

Academic databases, like those from Ebsco, Gale, and ProQuest, have revolutionized student research, especially at the secondary and post-secondary levels, by providing an abundance of relevant, current research from high quality sources. They also provide citations in common styles, such as MLA, APA, or Chicago, so students can almost effortlessly create bibliographic references. Colleges, universities, and many public and private schools, have access to subscription databases. Even in poorly funded districts, many students are able to access them remotely for free through local public libraries. These databases continually upgrade and add new features, like Translate, so students can read articles in their primary languages. Many have added a Listen feature that reads aloud html formatted articles to boost comprehension. The latest development allows syncing with Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive. Students merely click the desired tool menu icon to upload articles, and the first step of merging resources begins.

Google G Suite and Microsoft's equivalent provide cloud, sharing, and collaboration capabilities. Since droves of students are already using these tools and can upload their database research to them, we are better prepared than ever to boost information literacy and say goodbye to mindless cutting and pasting. Now, essays, reference pages, or slide presentations can all be interactive because the research collected in students' drives has shareable links. When those hyperlinks are embedded in a research paper (e.g., as a parenthetical citation) it enables teachers to click and see the actual sources from students' cloud drives. These hyperlinks enable teachers to see the research sources, how the students used them in context, how effectively they paraphrased or integrated direct quotes, and how well they avoided plagiarizing—without collecting any additional papers. Teachers can even verify that students read and annotated each research article.

The Interactive Research Product

I introduced composition students to this process by creating a simple interactive annotated bibliography for a position paper. The students were ninth and tenth graders and unfamiliar with academic databases, so I first taught them how to use Ebscohost Academic Search Complete and Gale Opposing Viewpoints, how to recognize html v. PDF formats, and how to upload research to Google Drive.

After some preliminary research, students formulated a working thesis on their topic. I encouraged students to highlight and annotate information: green for support, yellow for opposition, and red when unclear or confusing, so they could revisit those sections. Students used the Google Docs comment tool to take notes on their html articles. These notes had to reflect thorough reading, with the information paraphrased.

Next, students copied and pasted the MLA citation for each source in alphabetical order into a Google Doc and labeled it Annotated Bibliography. I explained to students that the citations still have to be checked for correct format. For example, occasionally a citation may have first and last name order reversed. Below each citation, students summarized the author's background or expertise and discussed that article's relationship to their thesis. Students quickly saw the interconnectedness of their research notes, bibliographic annotations, and thesis.

A couple extra steps were needed for PDFs. The "open with" option for an uploaded PDF article gave me a chance to teach students about browser add-ons and how to search for the Kami PDF Editor. To ensure students' annotations were retained, students used the "flatten" option to export their PDF research with notes. I also showed them Diigo, which allows students to bookmark, annotate, and link to or share Web sources

Last, students hyperlinked their research to the annotated bibliography. For each of the articles collected in Google Docs, students clicked the "share" button and set the item's status to "Anyone with the link can edit." Then they copied the link, highlighted that source on the Annotated Bibliography, clicked Insert Link, and repeated that process for all the sources.

Students ultimately only shared one Google document, but the sharing settings in the research items allowed me to click the hyperlinked citations, see the research, and provide feedback. It's important to note here that I wanted students to link research they had uploaded into their drives—not to the articles as they exist in the databases—because this reveals if students have effectively comprehended and processed their research, as evidenced by their annotations on it. This practice also supports students' collecting research on topics of personal interest that they may want to revisit and reuse, a trait seen among true life-long learners and academics.

I collaborated with our California and AP US history teacher, whose students were working on a research project to determine if immigrants from certain races or ethnicities had been able to achieve the American dream here in California. I took about ten minutes and showed students how to link the research they were uncovering and loading into their Google Drives to their annotated bibliographies; few students even needed individual assistance because they were already accustomed to sharing files with each other. The teacher described the usefulness of these annotated bibliographies: "I reviewed them to understand where students were in the research stage of the paper rather than waiting for the rough or final drafts. It allowed for course correction when necessary. I could verify they were finding the right research to support their fact-based thesis."

Unexpected gains happened when students clicked on their own annotated bibliography links and saw their research pop up too. For some, I think it validated all their research sources and the effort they had used in finding them. For others, they knew their teacher would see the actual sources, so they had no choice but to find, read, and annotate them.

Conclusion

Decades ago Internet, word processing, and slide presentation software misuse led to a generation of students cutting/pasting, prompting the need for information literacy guidelines to restore depth and processing to learning. Now, resources like subscription databases and advanced Internet search operators insure students can obtain the highest quality research sources for their projects. Students have cloud drives to store, read, annotate, share, and link that research, regardless of form, including articles, pictures, transcripts, videos, or websites. Embeddable links are so adaptive that they can be inserted into a slide presentation or shared in an essay within a parenthetical citation, footnote, works cited, or annotated bibliography entry.

An interactive research project has the potential to enhance student performance and increase rigor as many secondary schools are adding research and writing benchmarks in an effort to insure students are adequately prepared for the demands of post-secondary education. The process takes students from uncovering to effectively using research, while simultaneously integrating technology. It allows instructors to easily monitor and provide feedback for students throughout the research process, not only ensuring that students are finding quality sources and meeting deadlines, but also tracking how they are annotating and integrating sources into their final projects. Imagine if, along with using this interactive research product, high schools adopted an annotation strategy schoolwide so students learned and rehearsed taking notes on their reading throughout those four years. Schools would have evidence that their students were prepared for any post-secondary research challenges. And, equally as important, students would have a tremendous foundation for what can be achieved by blending resources and sharing and collaborating electronically, all essential skills for employees in our increasingly technological society.

Work Cited

"English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects," California Department of Education, last modified March 2013. https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/finalelaccssstandards.pdf.