Library Research Orientation

One point the librarian made that bears repeating - research takes time. I'm not talking about the reading of articles (that takes even more time) but finding good research is work. Students who got "A's" and "B's" last semester said they spent over 30 hours on research alone. That doesn't include the writing of the paper at all. This was easy for them because they picked topics they felt passionate about.

An idiom allegedly from Chinese goes, "if you give someone a fish, they eat for a day. If you teach them to fish they eat for a lifetime." Our goal in our class is teaching - and skills that transfer to a lifetime of use.

You have to hunt for research (hence the word "search" embedded in the term). CQ Researcher is like a barrel of fish for you to shoot at - I hope most of you don't need it - it doesn't impress me. It is not a database but an encyclopedia published in a journal format. Its primary virtue is ease of use. Sure, we may get more calories in you if we spoon-feed pre-digested information, but it isn't the calories that are important, but the ability to provide for ourselves. And CQ Research is processed. Sure a McDonald's Filet-o-fish will provide more fat and calories (not to mention salt) than a fish you catch and prepare for yourself - but is is far less healthy, and ultimately less satisfying. We only prefer the taste if we've been raised on a diet of deep-fried and slathered in fat.

To teach this subject better, in the future I should create a handout with links - that students can follow. I also need to clarify that students NEED time to work on their own research.
Databases I recommend:

• Academic OneFile link
• JStor
  
• ERIC
• Gale (3 different databases - I'm thinking Gale Virtual is the way to go first).
  
• PsycArticles
  

Resources I would use sparingly - no more than one source per paper.

• Wikipedia - not a bad place to start to learn language and to poach resources, but it's a lot like peeing in the shower: not something you need to brag about.
  
• CQ Researcher. It's research lite. It may be credible, but it doesn't impress anyone. In some ways it's inferior to wikipedia. The same scatological analogy applies.
  

Another thought on comments made regarding procrastination: computers changed the process and meaning of "writing a paper." 30 or 40 years ago research was done with bound indexes, card catalogs that took up enormous space, and rows and rows of physical books. Writers would copy from books by hand into notecards (or notebooks) then rearrange notes and recopy by hand into their notebook rough drafts - and repeat until the last minute and TYPING often happend the night before the paper was due.

Research today all happens at a computer/ word processor - so "writing" isn't divorced from research - but the two are connected throughout the process. Also, the myth of writing a paper the night before it's due in college and still getting an "A" is an college urban myth that ranks right up there with the one about people who only show up for tests and Ace classes - or that drinking bong water is an awesome psychedelic experience.

Why might fools or sociopaths repeat these college myths?

advice to myself - what I'll do differently next semester

We will

1. establish the role of wikipedia (ie. anything there should be considered common knowledge, so it doesn't make an effective quote in a real research paper - but can make useful footnotes for electronic discussions).
   
2. likewise: queries to ask.com or about.com can be a useful place to start a personal journey of discovery - but are ineffective citations in a respectable essay. These sources function more as an appeal to an authority than legitimate research - and the authority is a search engine.
   
3. dedicate more class time earlier to the iSearch, and discuss cognitive biases and credibility earlier - making ourselves accountable. We still see too much cherry picking and insubstantial research.
4. restrict ourselves to documents and data available through the Billington Library or through the internet without fee or registration - so anyone can track down other people's data.
5. increase the penalty for papers that fall short of minimum length requirements.
6. consider increasing the amount of points given/ received by peers. Classmates are amazingly accurate in peer assessments.
   

I also need to share more learning styles/ life skills content early on. NEED TO COVER IN CLASS "How college is different from High School."

Also, here's an interesting and counter-intuitive video from Stephen Fry on "what I wish I'd known when I was 18." Not sure I agree with all of it - but he makes some good points.

Research resources.

I now share research with students via JCCC library's electronic course reserve. Just go to the Billington Library homepage, then click the "course reserve search" link indicated by the red arrow in the top image to the right (click either image to enlarge).

It will open up a new page. Find the Instructor scroll down menu (indicated in figure 2 by the yellow arrow) and find my name.

When citing research refer to the 2009 MLA documentation (available free online in pdf if you don't have the handbook with you. See also our social bookmarking page on MLA, and previous posts). I find the sample paper particularly useful. Scroll

Native American day? metaphor and political correctness

Today is "columbus day" and I encourage you to go to the Edutopia poll and vote whether it should be renamed Native American day - whether that is excessive political correctness - or how we should regard iI. The whole political correct question relates to comp 122 and language teaching in general because it regards the interplay between language, thinking and behavior.

That is a goal of the metaphor paper currently assigned. Examine how language reveals thought and how communication shapes the thinking of others. Sometimes it is intentional and even cheeky, sometimes it's subconscious and sometimes it exists only in the mind of the reader - at least until they share their interpretation and then affects others, like in grad school when someone used the metaphor, "beating around the bush." I assumed to be a hunting reference, but was surprised to hear a feminist assert a very different meaning and assumed that meaning was commonly understood. While not a popular understanding of the term, by checking the urban dictionary I see she had a point.