Advanced Placement
AP Seminar Professional Resources Using the Learnics Tool
The following assignment examples will show how the Learnics tool can be used within the AP Seminar curriculum
Preliminary Source Assessment
This assignment will enable students to quickly evaluate the credibility of sources while doing research.
- Students will be asked to find five articles they deem credible on a topic chosen by the teacher.
- Students should be instructed to find sources that they would use in a school research assignment.
- Once students have found the five sources they would like to use for the assignment, they will exchange their Learnics data with one other student.
- Their partner will then examine their Learnics data and will determine if each of the sources is credible using the CRAAP test.
Students will use this instrument to help with this peer review.
Lens Introduction
This assignment will help introduce the idea of “lenses” to students before they are introduced to the “Individual Research Report.”
- Students will be given a broad subject to research. This could include any subject the students are interested in. My students in the past have written about autonomous vehicles, Galapagos tortoise populations, net neutrality, etc.
- Each student will then be assigned a lens with which they will examine the topic.
- As students research their assigned lens, they should reflect on their learnics data to ensure that they are researching using credible, academic sources from their assigned lens.
15 Source Assignment
This assignment will allow students to gather sources for either performance tasks 1 or 2. A Google Slides presentation is linked here that gives directions for the assignment. A document which students can use to list their sources can be found here.
- Students will be instructed to find 15 sources on the subject they have chosen for either their Performance Task 1 or 2 papers.
- Once students have gathered all of their sources, they should self reflect on their research and how they found the sources they chose to use.
- Students will be asked to reflect on their research, and to examine their Learnics data to ensure that they employed academic research strategies.
Multiple Perspectives on Colonizing Mars
This assignment builds on a lesson suggested by CollegeBoard. The link to the Collegeboard PowerPoint can be found here.
- Each student should find three academic sources which might be used to address the topic from their assigned perspective.
- Students will then share their Learnics data with their classmates and explain how they found the sources they chose, and how they ensured that they were choosing academic sources.