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Dig Deep But Don't Go Under
- 1. DIG DEEP BUT DON’T GO UNDER
- 2. LESS THAN HALF (49%) OF STUDENTS REGULARLY PERFORM BACKGROUND RESEARCH.Credo Reference 2016 Survey Results
- 3. 19% OF FRESHMAN DON’T USE ANY LIBRARY DATABASES. Credo Reference 2016 Survey Results
- 4. BACKGROUND RESEARCH: FACULTY ENCOURAGE SCHOLARLY AUTHORSHIP. STUDENTS CHOOSE BY KEYWORD RELEVANCE. Credo Reference 2016 Survey Results
- 5. LEARNING OUTCOMES • Be able to map assignment requirements to research process phases. • Develop supporting assignment “checkpoints” to guide students. • Be familiar with Credo Reference navigation, function, and content.
- 6. FIRST THINGS FIRST What does the research process look like?
- 7. SECOND THINGS SECOND What process do your students follow?
- 8. PRE-RESEARCH the lay of the land, the big picture
- 9. Sounds like: • Summarize • Describe • Mind map Source types: • Encyclopedias • Newspapers • Google searches • Books
- 10. Credo Time Topic Pages | Encyclopedia/Dictionary Articles | Topic Maps Cross-References Other Databases
- 11. NARROW develop the focus Photo CC BY bixentro (Flickr)
- 12. Sounds like: • Identify/write your thesis statement • What’s your research question? Bypass by: • Providing specific thesis statements
- 13. START DIGGING explore the focus
- 14. Sounds like: • Create an outline with citations • Submit an annotated bibliography • Using the library databases, find scholarly articles… Source types: • Scholarly articles • Statistics, data sets
- 15. ASSEMBLE + REFINE putting everything together
- 16. Sounds like: • Submit your first draft • Write the paper • Create a presentation Bypass by: • End product is annotated bibliography or other semi-final stage
- 18. Considerations Make no assumptions that students have done this* before, regardless of class level. * “This” being writing a paper; conducting a research project; reading a scholarly article; been taught to use a database…
- 19. Parameters • Know the boundaries • Currency • Specificity • Not all “databases” or “library resources” are created equal
- 20. Be Specific • What do you expect by “scholarly” sources • Name specific databases as suggestions* • Which websites to avoid besides Wikipedia, if applicable • Name the specific citation style and don’t deviate * “EBSCO” is not a database
- 21. Variety Scholarly sources are not lifelong sources.
- 22. Group Time
- 23. Final Thoughts.
- 24. Elaine M. Patton, MLS Digital Resource Professional Library | Student Learning Resource Center LSC-University Park Elaine.M.Patton@LoneStar.edu | @SLRC_Elaine Aug. 19, 2017
Editor's Notes
- Presenter: Elaine M. Patton, MLS Elaine.M.Patton@LoneStar.edu Digital Resource Professional @ LSC-University Park Student Learning Resource Center – Library Supplemental material: http://upresearch.lonestar.edu/dig August 2017 Created for Faculty Development Day, Aug. 19, 2017 Art images via Canva except where otherwise noted.
- http://mktg.credoreference.com/hubfs/Collateral/Reference/2016%20SurveyFaculty%20Survey%20IG.pdf Credo Reference 2016 Survey Results
- Summarize the general area of your topic. What’s the big idea? Describe what idea you started with and how you narrowed it down. Create a mindmap for your topic.
- Credo URL: http://lscsproxy.lonestar.edu/login?url=http://search.credoreference.com
- The thesis, which answers a specific research question, should be narrow, specific, contestable. Providing specific theses for students to argue gives them a specific goal to find evidence for.
- This is the point where students start connecting their ideas and have enough factual energy to adequately explore the more specific information contained in scholarly articles (or, if searching the web, can more effectively weed out the unnecessary sites).
- At this stage, everything should be coming together. Gaps in information should be pretty obvious, and relatively straight forward to fill in, due to the specificity of information.
- What with one thing and another, you can’t assume that students have done anything like college-level writing and research before, even when it’s not their first semester. Maybe they’ve circled the idea, or done parts without going all the way… maybe they only had to create a presentation but not a paper. This makes it crucial to provide written instructions for your assignments, packed full of detail about what you’re looking for.
- Scholarly content is not bleeding edge – very current issues are not and cannot be covered to that extent (and go through the publishing process) in a short amount of time. Asking for scholarly articles exclusively when you’re students are working on something with current, timely, topical aspects is counterproductive. Keep in mind the depth of information you’re looking for in an assignment: if a shallow, encyclopedic introduction covers what they need, a)it’s not a very challenging research assignment, and b)again, scholarly source requirements will be counterproductive. Maybe the topic they’re looking at is too specific, or at least too small, to be supported by scholarly resources. Single poems or short stories or paintings often don’t have a lot analysis poured into them, even the very famous ones. There’s only so much you can say about source material that is shorter than any analysis you could get published! (Or maybe content exists, but we don’t have it because we’re a community college and not a Tier 1 research institution.) Keep in mind that the library does provide content that is more shallow, like Credo Reference. If you simply tell your students to use the “library resources,” be prepared for them to (correctly, or at least, not wrongly) use everything from encyclopedia entries to news stories that are only a couple paragraphs long to magazine articles to maybe even scholarly articles.
- Define scholarly. While there is a pretty solid definition, many people conflate “scholarly” with other types of credible sources, and this can vary from faculty to faculty. Some might exclusively associate it with “peer-reviewed” sources; others might allow more broadly credible sources like reputable newspapers and government sites under that umbrella. If you don’t lay it out in your assignment, your students won’t know what you expect, if it differs from any previous experiences they may have had. If say “use the databases,” suggest some specific titles that you know contain the information you’re looking for and/or that students have been successful with in the past. If you forbid websites, name alternatives. E.g. Don’t go to Wikipedia, try using Credo Reference instead. Don’t just tell your students to cite their work– tell them, format and cite according to MLA style. Don’t mix it up, either, i.e. “use MLA style but with footnotes…” This defeats the purpose of using an established, well-understood citation style. Hopefully it goes without saying that you shouldn’t simply fabricate your own style, either.
- Scholarly sources are not common sources. It’s wonderful to make students aware of this higher caliber of research and knowledge-creation, but these aren’t the be-all, end-all of information. Our students will graduate, and chances are a lot of them are not going to be working in higher ed with access to these databases in the future. They will, however, still need to find and evaluate information, which is all the more crucial when turning to less strictly regulated sources of information. Requiring students to use solely scholarly sources forces them to learn (hopefully) how to do that kind of research, but it isn’t preparing them for the kind of research they’ll need to do in “real life.” Allowing – or even requiring – a variety of sources should make them think a little harder about what information they’re finding, whether it’s credible or current, whether it’s current, and so on.