How many of you get your news from online sources? How do you know if it is “real” or “fake?” One of the first things you must learn in doing college research is how to evaluate sources for authority or reliability. These same skills apply to ANYTHING you see online.
“Professors struggle to adapt as students forego books”
This brief article describes the shortsightedness of avoiding buying a textbook. The story claims as many as a third of students never acquire a required textbook while another third wait until after the semester starts before buying it. Why?
No textbooks!
A common assignment is for a student to do a general summary of particular aspect of a chosen country. For a Government class, it might be politics; for an English class, its culture or literature; for History, its history; its economics, etc. There is a one-stop source for this type of information—“Country Studies” by the US Library of Congress at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html
Simply choose a country from the drop box and see a very detailed index for that country. You can click to that “chapter” or do a keyword search within the entire document.
As a federal publication, you cannot get a more scholarly source.
Another good place to start, is the Encyclopedia Britannica in the ACC database or Wikipedia (for how to use Wikipedia, see my article “How to use Wikipedia” at http://wp.me/p36AFf-6W )
Everyone knows that you cannot use Wikipedia as a scholarly source, right? And you probably know why—there is no identifiable authority (you do not know who contributed the information.) Does this mean Wikipedia is useless? Certainly not! Learn how to use Wikipedia here . . .
Why do I have a research assignment that requires use of journal article databases? Check out this study of freshman students.
Sputnik scared America in many ways. Soviet missiles—something we did not have—meant we no longer possessed supremacy in the delivery of nuclear weapons. We had lost our feeling of security to Missile Gap. Since we, like the Soviets, were dependent upon Germans for missile development, the federal government looked for ways to spawn a new generation of domestic engineers and mathematicians capable of competing with the Soviets. In other words, new math was a method to cut corners in developing rocket scientists.
Economist Tyler Cowen believes that income inequality in America is only increasing. His new book is called Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation.
Can you identify some things in this interview that sounds/looks like what we learned about the Gilded Age? Is America returning to “survival of the fittest?” Answer in a reply.
A popular English class assignment is to take a theme from a book of literature and base your research on that book’s theme. Of course, the first thing to do is find a theme. I recommend two online sources—Wikipedia and SparkNotes.
Need to know what a critical analysis looks like?
Try these sites hosted by quality universities.
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/critical.html
http://depts.washington.edu/pswrite/Handouts/CriticalAnalysisPapers.pdf
Everyone is familiar with the spelling and grammar check feature, right? Did you know there is an option to elevate that check from the 6th grade level to the college level of scrutiny? See this video. Activating Grammar and Style Proofing in Word
For Word 2016, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h20EBvn1UCY
Don’t make me do this to your paper!
Dr. Robin, A Community College Librarian 