Interstellar Inspiration: A Collaborative Keyword Brainstorming Activity for Your Students

Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9604-8601

Document Type

Video

Publication Date

Spring 2025

Keywords

Keywords, Searching, Library Instruction, Information Literacy

Abstract

Teaching students to brainstorm keywords and helping them understand the precise language they will need to find research in library databases can be tricky. Help your students gather the rocket fuel they will need to blast off into the world of research by guiding them in a collaborative activity to generate keywords for database searching. In this activity students use padlet to anonymously enter information about a research question or topic and then spend time commenting on each other's topics with potential keywords. Students then can use their peers' ideas for keywords while searching in databases. Over time, I have discovered that creating good examples for students to follow and explaining this activity clearly can help them soar into using keywords in database searching. While I have used this lesson mostly in first year classes, it could be adapted to upper level information literacy sessions or used asynchronously. In this short video, participants will learn how to use or adapt this same lesson for their own teaching and how to effectively teach their students to help classmates develop a list of keywords for database searching.

Comments

This presentation was given at Spring Forward 2025: Launching Libraries Into New Frontiers.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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