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How American Students Conduct their Academic Research and Writing
Hongjie Wang, MA, MLS, AHIP
[email protected] UCONN
Hongjie Wang, MA, MLS, AHIP
[email protected] UCONN
SELF INTRODUCTION: COUNTRY, STATE, CITY, UNIVERSITY, WORK, LIFE, FAMILY
Hongjie [email protected] UCONN
Hongjie [email protected] UCONN
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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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What is Academic Research Writing?
Academic=research done at college and university levelResearch=information research in general and library research in particularWriting=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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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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Educational Research and Info. Behavior
What is “information behavior?”
Wilson (1999) defined information behavior as “Thoseactivities a person may engage in when identifying their own need for information, searching for informationand 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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Student Academic Research Steps
Ten Steps1. 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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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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Which of the 10 steps are closely related to library services?
6. Plan a first draft7. Draft your report8. Present evidence
in figure9. Revise your draft10. Write your
report
1. Find a topic2. Move from a topic
to a question3. Find useful
sources4. Evaluate sources5. Use sources
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Source: http://libguides.library.curtin.edu.au/new-to-research
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?
Help with Background Reading
Background reading will enable students to:Identify gaps in the literatureDiscover what research exists on the topicFind areas not adequately coveredDiscover areas to investigate furtherStudents Focus their Research to:Determine significance of your research topicExplain how it will contribute to existing body of knowledge
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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
Question
Question Type
Information Type
Answers
What is a RU486(contraceptive)?
Self Evident?•General Knowledge•Factual: data•Structures, •Definitions•Characteristics
Background Information
Text and referencebooks; Web sites
•Library Catalog•MDConsult•Stat!Ref
How does polyestradiolphosphate compare withorchidectomy in relationto cardiovascular diseaserisk in advanced prostatecancer?
Not Self Evident?•In-depth, focused•case specific•Specific patient or population•PICO: Patient, Intervention, •Comparison, Outcomes
Foreground Information
Journals articlesSystematic reviews
•Medline•UpToDate•WebOfScience
Lib R
es our ces
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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 4Polyestradiol
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/
Why Librarians can & Should Do More?
What really happens with students’ ARW?
What professional librarians are doing to help?
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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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Students’ Search Skills…
Lack of advanced search strategiesPerrett (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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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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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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Survey 3: Florida Undergrad. Study
The Information Seeking Behavior of Undergraduate Education Majors: Does LibraryInstruction Play a Role?
Jason Martin, Assistant Librarian, University of Central Florida LibrariesEvidence 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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Survey 5: Compare Chinese Students survey
The Daily Image Information Needs and Seeking Behavior of ChineseUndergraduate Students
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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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How to research?
Patterns of information behaviorInitial 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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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 ina particular area of interest within their topic (Barrett, 2005)
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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 frequentlydescribed method of finding materials”.
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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 thestrategy of following reference lists (also known as citation chaining or chasing) whichhas been designated as a way to cope with information overload that can develop fromthe 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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More Challenges
Students will generally accept materials of lowerquality or reliability if it will save them time.
Familiarity with sources was also a contributingfactor 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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Challenges…
some studies note that students are not willing to pay for convenience, such as document delivery (Maughan, 1999).
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Conclusion
Librarians have important roles to play in helpingstudents with their academic research process
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Thank You..
Hongjie Wang, MA, MLS, AHIP
[email protected] UCONN
Hongjie Wang, MA, MLS, AHIP
[email protected] UCONN