Starting Your Research Task

Your research needs will most often be determined by your assignment.  How many sources will you need?  Do they need to be scholarly, primary, or secondary?  Should you use a newspaper or government source? A research task may or may not come with stipulations about...

A Usable Source Rubric with Caveats

  A skilled writer may defy any of these ethical considerations without his audience being able to spot it.  Below are listed additional caveats that may not necessarily mean that a source is inaccurate, irrelevant, or otherwise unusable, but which should definitely...

Online News and Facebook Feeds

A Facebook newsfeed can be a dangerous place to get your information. Note for instance the coverage of the FBI probe regarding  Hillary Clinton’s email use as Secretary of State.  In a single newsfeed I captured three articles, two of which say she will be indicted...

Framing an Argument

Dr Biljana Scott’s article on framing an argument introduces the linguistic and rhetoric aspects of persuasion. The way in which we frame an issue largely determines how that issue will be understood and acted upon. By dissecting Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech...

Avoiding Information Malpractice

  Malpractice is defined as improper, illegal, or negligent activity. In the realm of research, here are some examples of information malpractice: Plagiarism It should go without saying that copying work that is not your own and/or using sources without...

Writing a Summary in Three Steps

This example of an article summary, as one might find in a literature review of annotated bibliography,  enumerates the steps to ethically and accurately complete a typical research task. For our purposes, we will use the article Scientists Set to Prepare Strongest...

Research Skills and Exercises

Objectives and Outcomes Objectives and Outcomes This section contains all of the readings, walk-throughs, and tutorials you will need to complete a research paper or related project. After completing the steps in this tutorial, you will be able to: recognize when you...

Module 5: Information Online

Module 5: Information Online Introduction Since the dawn of the information age, people have been concerned about information overload, which is the stress people feel when they are exposed to so much information that it becomes impossible to think about it clearly....