Why do professors make students complete an annotated bibliography? To give students a hard time and task-master them to death?

Why do professors make students complete an annotated bibliography? To give students a hard time and task-master them to death? No, of course not. It’s not just an assignment in and of itself; it is an important step in the research process. Your first stage was choosing a topic and doing some tentative research. Now you are going to find several relevant sources and provided a summary and evaluation of them. This is the topic you chose in Module 3, and this work will culminate in your final research project in Module 7.
An annotated bibliography is a listing of sources compiled from research that you will use in your completed essay. However, the “annotated” part shows that it is not only a list, but an elaboration and evaluation of your sources – that is, you express, in a paragraph, two things: that you understand and can encapsulate the source and that your source is relevant to your topic and approach. Your reading for this module includes a guide to annotated bibliographies. Be sure that you have read the information at that link before you proceed.