Instructions

Skills Builder 6.1: Writing an Annotated Bibliography

1. Find the Resources on Annotated Bibliographies in the Northcentral Academic Success Center. The Northcentral Academic Success Center offers a wealth of resources for dealing with every academic writing need, from formulating a topic for a paper, to preparing an outline, developing an argument, and preparing a reference list.

   Visit the Writing Center and explore the links under the topic headings, “Conducting Research” and “Forms of Writing” that explain the annotated bibliography, which synthesizes and presents research in a concise manner. You will use this information to create an annotated bibliography for this activity.

2. Review these Instructions on How to Construct an Annotated Bibliography Entry. You will see that in addition to the publication information (author, title, etc.), there are four main sections in an annotated bibliography entry. Each section effectively summarizes a key section of a journal article and is essential to the overall format.

The resources listed above for this assignment give additional guidance on writing an annotated bibliography. You will write many annotated bibliography entries during your graduate studies. They are the building blocks of your papers and research. Preparing an annotated bibliography is an excellent way to take study notes as well as to keep a careful record of what you read for your own future writings and research.

Note: The material in your Annotated Bibliography must be written after a careful reading of the article itself, and not just the abstract. Furthermore, the Annotated Bibliography follows the same Academic Integrity regulations as other documents so ensure that you carefully paraphrase, or, if you need to, use quotes. The second most frequent Academic Integrity violations are given for poorly prepared annotated bibliographies.

Warm-Up Activity 6.1: How to Evaluate Research Materials

This week, you are learning how to read research articles. This activity takes you to another critical step as a researcher and academic scholar: how to evaluate the merits of research materials. This includes understanding the reasons behind an article, who the authors are and their expertise, and analyzing the organizational flow and content. For a great overview of evaluating research materials, visit the Colorado State University’s Evaluating Resources, located under your weekly resources.

Assignment

In this week’s reading materials, you were provided two articles, one by Burger (2009) and the other by Bandura et al. (1963). Using the guidelines and resources you have reviewed this week, create an Annotated Bibliography focused on those two sources.

Length: 2 entries, approximately 2 pages in length