Atkins Library offers three instructional videos to support the teaching of inquiry in first-year seminar courses. These video lessons support students as they conduct inquiry inspired by The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice. Each video is brief and can easily be incorporated into your Canvas course.
Each video focuses on an integral part of the inquiry process to support students as they explore, connect, and arrive at new understandings about topics raised by the Scott Ellsworth's book.
Assigning a video to your students is as simple as clicking on one of the video links below and pasting the URL to your Canvas course. Detailed instructions can be found below.
The library has also created a number of class discussion questions and complementary assignments that can be paired with each inquiry video to further engage students as they work through the inquiry process.
Posting inquiry videos to your Canvas course is easy! Follow the steps below to incorporate a video into your course.
1. Click on the video link on this page. This will take you to a YouTube video.
2. On the YouTube page, click the Share icon under the video.
3. Copy the link that appears in the Share window.
4. On your Canvas course, decide the module on which you'd like to include the video.
5. Click the + sign at the top of the module.
6. Select Add External URL in the Add Item window.
7. Paste the YouTube video URL into the URL field and name the link (i.e. - Inquiry Video 1).
These assignments and activities can be used in conjunction with the library inquiry videos to help students practice their inquiry skills.
Topic Inspiration
Using an article from the Starting Conversations tab on the resources guide, read with your group, answer the following questions and complete the activity:
1. What is the most interesting or attention-grabbing sentence in the article? 2. Does the article make you think of other related topics or current events? 3. What is one topic in the article that you want to find out more about?
4. If you were searching for more articles or sources like this one, what keywords would you use in your search? Make a list of at least 6 keywords – you can use 6 distinct words/phrases, or synonyms and related terms for fewer keywords.
5. As a group, draw an illustration or representation of the information presented in the article. Next, draw a second illustration/representation for another version of the topic you’d like to explore.
Present your answers and illustrations to the class to share the ways that this article inspires you to further inquiry.
Inquiry Proposal
Write a proposal for an inquiry project on a topic raised by The Ground Breaking.
The proposal will present (in 1-2 pages) what you already know about the topic, why you find it significant and interesting, and what strategies you will use to find and incorporate information sources into your discussion of the topic.
The proposal should answer the following questions:
1. What do you know about your topic already?
2. Why did you choose this topic over others? Why does it interest you and why is it significant?
3. What information sources gave you the idea for your chosen topic? (include specific quotes or citations here)
4. What aspects of your topic will you need to explore to get a full picture of this issue? How and where will you search?
5. If your initial research yields too much information, how will you narrow your topic?
6. If your preliminary research turns up very little information, how will you broaden your topic to open up more possibilities?
Writing from Sources (Responding & Synthesizing)
Use an article that you’ve found on a topic related to The Ground Breaking to complete the following writing activities:
1. Write a few sentences responding to the author of the article. What do you think of his/her arguments? What do you find most convincing or compelling? What questions do you have about the article or the author’s main ideas?
2. Locate a sentence or passage in the article that you think expresses the author’s main idea or argument. Next, rewrite the author’s main idea in your own words, but without including the initial/personal reaction you had to the article in the first step.
3. Locate one of the sources referenced in this article (either mentioned in the text or listed in the Bibliography/Works Cited/Notes). Read the new source, looking for specific ideas or text that the author of your article referred to. Take an excerpt from each source (direct quote or paraphrase) and incorporate both into a paragraph that also includes your own writing to connect the two sources.
Making Connections
Using the Starting Conversations lists on the guide for The Ground Breaking, find an article that interests you.
Write a two page paper to respond to some or all of these questions:
1. How does this story relate to any of the themes or issues you have encountered in The Ground Breaking?
2. What do you find interesting or important about this source? Was it easy or difficult to choose something, and how did you decide on this one? In other words, what was your process of exploring the choices on the guide page?
3. What kind of source is this, and what is its purpose?
4. Does the author mention any other sources, authors, studies, etc. that might give you even more information? How do those connections contribute to the significance of this story?
5. Where in the source do you find the main idea or most important point? Can you incorporate a quote here and then discuss it in your own words?
6. If you wanted to find more information about this topic, where would you look and what keywords would you use?
7. How does this piece contribute to your own ideas and beliefs about the topic?
The following discussion questions can be used to generate conversation around themes in The Ground Breaking.
