Your lecturer will give you an assignment topic, possibly after covering the basics of the topic. The lecturer may provide a reading list with the expectation that you can start with this list and, if possible/necessary, add more readings when preparing for the assignment. The items on your reading list are reliable sources of information, which are relevant to your topic.

In an alternate scenario, the lecturer may present a research topic without a reading list and expect you to find the relevant resources to answer the assignment.

Let’s start with the first scenario where a reading list is provided and then follow that with the second scenario where you have to determine or identify your keywords and use these keywords to find the relevant resources.