2013年11月11日傅爾布萊特學者王宏杰先生前往淡江大學資訊與圖書館學系演講

1. How American Students Conduct their
Academic Research and Writing
Hongjie Wang, MA, MLS, AHIP
wang @ nso . uchc. e du UCONN
Hongjie Wang, MA, MLS, AHIP
wang @ nso . uchc. e du UCONN

2. SELF INTRODUCTION: COUNTRY,
STATE, CITY, UNIVERSITY, WORK,
LIFE, FAMILY
Hongjie Wang
wang @ nso . uchc. e du UCONN
Hongjie Wang
wang @ nso . uchc. e du UCONN
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3. Self Introduction
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5. 康州二 , 三事 ?
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9. Neighborhood
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19. What is Academic Research
Writing?
• Define by excluding
• It is not scientific writing, a form of writing
that aims at not duplicating prior research, but
builds on or enriches that prior research with
new insights
• It is not Business research writing which
concentrates on marketing, company
performance and financial forecasting
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20. What is Academic Research
Writing?
Academic=research done at college and university level
Research=information research in general and library
research in particular
Writing=examines, compares and contrasts older
documentation and situations with present day
documents and situations, as a way to open discussions
on social, educational, health, historical, political and
other issues.
What is Academic Research Writing Composed of
It has 3 components: academic, research, writing
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21. What is Academic Research W.
Focus?
Focus is on Library Research in 3 major areas
Understand how information is organized and learn how
to effectively search information in various formats
Learn how to select and use online databases and
other discovery tools to conduct research
Learn how to evaluate search results and use
appropriate information for intended audiences
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22. Educational Research and Info.
Behavior
What is “information behavior?”
Wilson (1999) defined information behavior as “Those
activities a person may engage in when identifying their
own need for information, searching for information
and using or transferring that information.”
Ed. Research also refers to information behavior
Difference between undergraduate & graduate students?
Cope with information (under)
Seek information (graduate)
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23. Student Academic Research
Steps
Ten Steps
1. Find a topic
2. Move from a topic to a question
3. Find useful sources
4. Evaluate sources
5. Use sources
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24. Student Academic Research
Steps:
6. Plan a first draft
7. Draft your report
8. Present evidence in figure
9. Revise your draft
10. Write your report
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25. Which of the 10 steps are
closely related to library
services?
6. Plan a first draft
7. Draft your report
8. Present evidence
in figure
9. Revise your draft
10. Write your
report
1. Find a topic
2. Move from a topic
to a question
3. Find useful
sources
4. Evaluate sources
5. Use sources
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Source: http://libguides.library.curtin.edu.au/new-to-research

27. What is the First Challenge for
ARW?
 Which topic below has potentials as ARW?
1. I am a cat person. I just love cats.
2. I am passionate about travel. I want to see the
whole world to broaden my horizon.
3. I am concerned about students being asked to
publish when still in college or graduate
school.
4. I am interested in knowing more about how to
make money from the web.
5. I want to know how to do a good job interview
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How to Address the Initial
Challenge?
What Services, Resources are
Available to American Students
During their Research Cycle?

29. Help with Background Reading
Background reading will enable students to:
Identify gaps in the literature
Discover what research exists on the topic
Find areas not adequately covered
Discover areas to investigate further
Students Focus theirResearch to:
Determine significance of your research topic
Explain how it will contribute to existing body of
knowledge
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31. HOW TO START A
SEARCH?
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Begin a Search
1. Ask a clearly-defined question
2. Classify the question
3. Frame the question

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What’s the Question
 What’s the effect of oral hormone replacement
on a patient with heart disease?
 Is this really what you want to know?

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What’s the Question
 What’s the effect of oral hormone replacement on
a patient with heart disease
 What does “effect” mean?
 Epidemiological data?
 Adverse reaction?
 contraindication?
 Overdose?
 Allergic reaction?
 Religious or psychosocial considerations?
 Efficacy?

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What’s the Question
 What is the effect of oral hormone replacement
on a patient with heart disease?
 What does “hormone replacement” mean?
 Must it be oral?
 Can it be transdermal?
 Estradiol?
 Natural hormone?
 Other compounds?

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What’s the Question
 What is the effect of oral hormone replacement on
a patient with heart disease
 What about the “patient with heart disease”?
 Younger?
 Older?
 Post-menopausal?
 Premature menopausal?
 A whole population?
 A woman with a family history of uterine cancer?
 A man with advanced prostate cancer?

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Now, What’s the Question
 The final question may look like this:
 How does polyestradiol phosphate compare with
orchidectomy in relation to cardiovascular disease
risk in advanced prostate cancer?
 This exercise must be repeated for every question
you develop until you have distilled a question
that frames the information need to your
satisfaction.

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Classify the Question
What is the question type?
What is the information type?

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Classify the Question
Question
Question Type
Information Type
Answers
What is a RU486
(contraceptive)?
Self Evident?
•General Knowledge
•Factual: data
•Structures,
•Definitions
•Characteristics
Background
Information
Text and reference
books; Web sites
•Library Catalog
•MDConsult
•Stat!Ref
How does polyestradiol
phosphate compare with
orchidectomy in relation
to cardiovascular disease
risk in advanced prostate
cancer?
Not Self Evident?
•In-depth, focused
•case specific
•Specific patient or population
•PICO: Patient, Intervention,
•Comparison, Outcomes
Foreground
Information
Journals articles
Systematic reviews
•Medline
•UpToDate
•WebOfScience
LibResources

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Foreground Question

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Frame the Question
What major concepts does the
question include ?
What search terms can be used
to cover those concepts?
How to search these terms?

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Major Concepts
Continuing our example:
How does polyestradiol phosphate compare with
orchidectomy in relation to cardiovascular disease
risk in advanced prostate cancer?
Becomes…
How does polyestradiol phosphate compare with
orchidectomy in relation to cardiovascular disease risk
in advanced prostate cancer?

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Search Terms
Concepts 1 2 3 4
Polyestradiol
phosphate
orchidectomy Cardiovascular
disease
Advanced
prostate
cancer
Synonyms orchiectomy
This matrix is the result of the initial question:
What’s the effect of oral hormone replacement on a patient with heart disease?

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Example: Public Smoking
Should public smoking be banned in bars,
cafes, casinos and other public areas on the
basis of chronic health risk for non-
smokers?
Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3 Concept (if any)
Major Concepts

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Example: Concepts and Terms
Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3 Concept (if any)
Major Concept
Terms for Concept 1 Terms for Concept 2 Terms for Concept 3 Terms for Concept …
Search Terms

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Concepts and Terms
Major
Concepts
Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept … (if
any)
Secondhand smoking Heart diseases Lung cancer
Search Terms For Concept 1 For Concept 2 For Concept…
Term 1 Secondhand smoking Heart disease Lung cancer
Term 2 Second-hand smoking Heart diseases/ Lung neoplasms/
Term 3 Involuntary smoking Cardiovascular
disease
Term 4 Passive smoking Cardiovascular
diseases/
Term 5 Tobacco smoke
pollution/

47. Why Librarians can & Should Do
More?
 What really happens with students’ ARW?
 What professional librarians are doing to help?
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48. Students’ Search Skills
What types of search strategies to graduate students
employ? Several studies have noted that many
Graduate students do not employ or have knowledge
About advanced search strategies.
Catalano (2010) reports that up to 80%
of graduate students had never heard of many of the
search strategies listed on a survey administered to
them(e.g. Boolean operators, proximity indicators, SH).
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49. Students’ Search Skills…
Lack of advanced search strategies
Perrett (2004) reported that less than half of the survey
participants were able to use Boolean operators,
although 66% used truncation. Some of the more
Common search strategies include: using more than
One Keyword and time limiters. Complex keyword
searches, proved the most ineffective. Students rarely
Use strategies such as truncation or Boolean operators
(Korobili et al., 2011) or proximity searches
(Mehrad and Rahimi, 2009).
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50. Survey 1: ERIAL
According to the famous Ethnographic Research in
Illinois Academic Libraries (ERIAL) Project that studied
the student research process,
88% of college students start research with Google (3
times more than
anything else),
85% of students show over-reliance on simple keyword
search/single box experience, and almost all of the
students don’t know conceptually how to search.
(Asher, 2011)
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51. Survey 2: Project Information
Literacy
Similar study findings also reinforce the fact that
students are not as competent with information
utilization as they think they do. A large-scale study
conducted by Project Information Literacy found that:
•80% of students report overwhelming difficulty in
framing topic/question
•90% use Google/Wikipedia for everyday life research
(Head, 2010)
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52. Survey 3: Florida Undergrad.
Study
The Information Seeking Behavior of Undergraduate Education Majors: Does Library
Instruction Play a Role?
Jason Martin, Assistant Librarian, University of Central Florida Libraries
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:4
A sample of 200 students currently enrolled as undergraduates at the University of
Central Florida’s College of Education.
This study investigated the information seeking behavior of undergraduate majors
to gain a better understanding of where they find their research information
(academic vs. non-academic sources) and to determine if library instruction had any
impact on the types of sources used.
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53. Survey 4: UCONN Survey
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54. Survey 5: Compare Chinese
Students survey
The Daily Image Information Needs and Seeking Behavior of Chinese
Undergraduate Students
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55. Survey 6: Tufts Experience
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56. Tufts Experience
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57. Tufts’ Experience: Example
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58. Students’ Problems Are…
•Lack of awareness of difference kinds of information
•Not knowing which type of databases to search for
relevant results on a given toipc
•Lack of good understanding of Thesaurus/SH
•Lack of Boolean logic for searching
•Lack of u/s of how ILL works
•Refworks.
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59. What Help Do Students Need?
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60. How to research?
Patterns of information behavior
Initial starting point for research
1.Where is the first place that graduate students go for
information when embarking on a research project?
Why do they make that choice and what might be
the next steps?
2. Closely following consultation with faculty, the
internet is cited starting point for an information
search for most graduate students
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61. How to research…?
3. Doctoral students are often exposed
a series of educational experiences
(conferences, courses, workshops,
recommended readings) in which
they discovered a gap in research in
a particular area of interest within their
topic (Barrett, 2005)
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62. Information retrieval: time, information
overload, convenience, other barriers and
coping
Barrett (2005, p. 327) describes the information-
seeking behaviors of his study participants as an
“idiosyncratic process of constant reading,
“digging” searching, and following leads . . .
Citation chasing . . . was by far the most frequently
described method of finding materials”.
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63. Information retrieval: time, information
overload, convenience, other barriers and
coping
Earp (2008) reports that 72 percent of the
doctoral students in her study engage in the
strategy of following reference lists (also known
as citation chaining or chasing) which
has been designated as a way to cope with
information overload that can develop from
the seemingly endless lists of articles that can
be retrieved from databases on a topic
(Barrett, 2005; George et al., 2006; Vezzossi,
2009).
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64. More Challenges
Students will generally accept materials of lower
quality or reliability if it will save them time.
Familiarity with sources was also a contributing
factor to source preference (Brown, 1999a).
Time constraints can hasten the termination of the
research process. The overload of information
combined with deadlines can cause students to
abandon the collection of resources. It is generally
the“. . .principle of least effort [that] prevails . . . ”
(Liu and Ye Yang, 2004, p. 30).
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65. Challenges…
some studies note that students are not willing
to pay for convenience, such as document
delivery (Maughan, 1999).
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66. Info. Barrier and Coping
Mechanism66

67. Conclusion
Librarians have important roles to play in helping
students with their academic research process
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68. Thank You..
Hongjie Wang, MA, MLS, AHIP
wang @ nso . uchc. e du UCONN
Hongjie Wang, MA, MLS, AHIP
wang @ nso . uchc. e du UCONN