Curriculum Development Grant Proposal
Mellon Project for Information Literacy

Course: Labor and Global Development
Faculty: Stephen Crowley, Department of Politics
Librarian: Jessica Grim, Reference Librarian/Instruction Coordinator

The following is a request for a curriculum development grant for the development of a new course. The course is a new upper-level seminar tentatively entitled "Labor and Global Development." The course would focus on labor issues in postcommunist and developing countries, including such issues as core labor standards, the impact of foreign investment, sweatshops and child labor, and obstacles to labor organizing in a global economy.

As in all Politics seminars, a major component of the seminar (and a requirement for the major) will be a substantial research paper. In fact, the specific subject matter of the seminars I teach may change over the years; however, given the required research component of the seminars, the information literacy component will remain regardless of the change in substantive content over time. In other words, through the grant I will be developing an information literacy template that I will use in all my seminars. (As the Politics department's library liaison, I would explicitly seek to share the model I develop with my colleagues for use in other Politics seminars.)

With the help of the curriculum development grant, and in collaboration with Jessica Grim I intend to design the course to be self-conscious about issues of sources, information and research strategies, and by extension to make students more self-conscious about these issues as well. The course will do so primarily through assignments geared toward focusing students on various IL competencies.

The grant will help me overcome two problems. The first involves the course material itself. There is much student interest at present on the topic of labor and globalization, such as the issue of sweatshops, and there is a tremendous amount of recent material on this issue, much of it on the internet, much of it polemical, and much of it generated by student-led movements and their opponents. The challenge will be in helping students see the benefit of moving from contentious statements to empirical questions, and in learning how to critically evaluate the various materials and sides of the debates.

A second problem is one that has arisen in past seminars. There I have focused too much on the s ubstance of student research questions, and not enough on the research strategies and materials themselves. I have also sunk an obligatory library session somewhere into the seminar, but have failed to do so in a way that gives students an appreciation for developing the necessary skills. (Often students claim "I don't need it" when the library session is given, then in a panic say "help, what do I do!" when the deadline draws near.)

I will attempt to overcome this problem in part by breaking down the research project into its component parts, so that students will complete their projects piece by piece through a series of assignments (which will have the added benefit of making the research less daunting). The various assignments will build progressively, with each due in roughly two-week increments. The exact nature of the assignments will be developed in collaboration with Jessica Grim during the course of the rant, but as a preliminary sketch they might follow a path roughly as follows:

1. defining a topic, in individual meetings with the professor;
2. a 1-2 topic proposal, including research question and justification of the topic. Here students will be challenged to focus their broad topic into a researchable question. They will begin to ask themselves what materials would be needed and whether they are available;
3. a bibliographic essay, which identifies a variety of research materials (this would include making distinctions between scholarly and popular sources, primary and secondary materials, etc., and becoming familiar with the research tools specific to politics and related social sciences). This would be preceded by a session with Jessica or another reference librarian; however, unlike such sessions in my courses in the past, the session would be tied directly to an assignment due the following week, and the assignment will provide an essential building block for the students' research paper;
4. a literature review, including a discussion of where the proposed research fits into this literature. Students will have acquainted themselves with different kinds of available material in the previous week. In this week they will be challenged to assess critically the usefulness and quality of those various sources. (For instance, how reliable is a source from the internet? what are the shortcomings of overly relying on periodical literature?)
5. a short introduction to the paper, including a thesis statement and a critical reflection of t heir research strategy to date. What gaps remain in the research needed to answer the original question? How might that question need to be reformulated to accommodate gaps in available material?
6. a detailed outline of the paper;
7. a draft of the paper;
8. a presentation of "works in progress" to the class;
9. and only then the final paper;

While students will require library assistance most explicitly in steps c through e, they will a lso need help in defining their topic and foreseeing potential problems researching it (steps a and b), and in learning appropriate means for citing materials (step g). Rather than focusing on a single library session, this staggered approach of progressive assignments will lead students to questions about sources, research strategies and bibliographic materials throughout the semester, and not simply in a mad rush towards the semester's end. This should also help students better appreciate the various resources at their disposal, including the help that the library staff can give.

In addition, students would be helped in doing their research (and find it somewhat less dauntiang) through the use of web page designed for the course. The web page would serve as a resource guide for the topics covered by the course, and ideally would be integrated with the assignments the students would be completing or might complement those assignments. For example, the web page might gather a number of sources on the rather contentious issue of "sweatshops," and students could be asked, either in class or outside of it, to assess those various materials as sources of information.

I intend to devote 2-3 months of this coming summer to developing the substance and research components of the course. During this time I will work regularly with Jessica Grim to further specify the exact needs of students and the best way to structure research assignments to meet these goals. I am requesting a stipend to enable me to do so. I also request student assistance to research and develop the web page.

Return to top

Return to list of proposals