This session is designed to support your Critical Reflection assignment (due on December 4, 2023).  Dr. Cullen will provide you with details and breakdown of the assignment, but to sum, you will have to 

• Apply a theoretical perspective to a current social issue relating to youth crime and youth justice
• Choose a criminological theory or perspective discussed in class
• Choose a contemporary social issue that relates to youth crime or youth justice
• Draw from a minimum of 5 academic sources and 1 non academic source
• 3 sources should focus on theory and two should focus on the social issue
• Use APA citation style 
• Length should be approx 5 pages not including bibliography and title page

Question for you: What does "academic" mean to you? 

Go to this jamboard and tell me what an academic source is

Click on the sticky note icon on the left hand panel.  Type in your ideas.

Question for you: Is there anything specific you would like me to cover in today's session" 

Why using good sources matter...

When you endeavor to find sources related to a topic of interest for your academic writing, you are demonstrating a number of skills

• You are able to synthesize a variety of information and integrate it into your own work
• You are able to investigate the dialogue that has occurred related to an area of interest and engage in that conversation through your academic writing
• Using good, credible reliable sources will elevate the accuracy and authority of your own work

Authority is Constructed and Contextual

Information, in any format, is produced to convey a message and is shared via a selected delivery method.  The iterative processes of researching, creating, revising, and disseminating information vary, and the resulting produce reflects these differences (ACRL par. 13).

• Information creations are valued differently depending on the context and purpose for which they are created
• Audience matters. Certain things are created for specific purposes and don't make one format of information better. It is up to us to discern what information process best fits our information needs.
• In your own creation process, understand that your choices in what type of information you use, impact the purpose for which the information product you create will be used and the message it conveys.

Encyclopedias
Strengths: short, contains background information on a topic, normally a great starting point when you are just learning about a topic
Weaknesses: too short, print encyclopedias are out of date quickly, Wikipedia has reliability issues

Books and Book Chapters
Strengths: Provides an in-depth investigation into a topic
Weaknesses: too long, sometimes hard to tell whether it is scholarly

Scholarly Journal Articles
Strengths: often based on research findings or extensive review, written by experts, reviewed by experts, provides evidence
Weaknesses: Sometimes written using discipline-specific language or terminology, hard to understand,

Media Sources (news, online magazine articles)
Strengths: Good for current information
Weaknesses: Sometimes biased, sometimes written to entertain, often not written by experts

Websites & Social Media
Strengths: Highly accessible, includes government info
Weaknesses: It is hard to assess credibility and reliability...anyone can post online or create a website

Primary Sources
Strengths: Original sources (include, but are not limited to recordings, diaries, autobiography, artifact, constitutions, acts, edicts, cases
Weaknesses: Hard to find, hard to cite, hard to remember if they fall within primary or secondary categories.

A scholarly publication contains articles written by experts in a particular field. The primary audience of these articles is other experts. ... Academics use a variety of terms and language to describe this: "peer-reviewed", vetted academic, or "refereed". They all mean essentially the same thing and refer to the editorial and publication process in which scholars in the same field review the research and findings before the article is published, checking for validity, originality, and quality. 

1. What are the author’s credentials? Is it written by an expert?
2. Published in a journal (is there a DOI?) If you are not sure if it is a journal article enter the title of the publication into Ulrichs Web
3. Academic language
4. Includes reference list
5. Length
6. A "Received" and "Accepted" date
7. Is it an actual article? Sometimes other types of content are included in scholarly publications, such as editorials/opinion pieces and book reviews.  Make sure you are looking at an article. 

Examples

Holmgren, J. A., & Fordham, J. (2011). The CSI effect and the Canadian and the Australian jury. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 56, S63-S71.

Yanushkevich, S. N., Sundberg, K. W., Twyman, N. W., Guest, R. M., & Shmerko, V. P. (2019). Cognitive checkpoint: Emerging technologies for biometric-enabled watchlist screening. Computers & Security, 85, 372-385.

Be aware of biases! Where do you normally get your news? 

Evaluating News Sources  

STOP: At the beginning and at all times during the process, take the time to STOP and ask questions. What is the reputation and claim of the website or source of the information? Are you familiar with the source? If you are unsure, continue to the other steps to get an understanding of what you are looking at.  Do not read or share it until you know what you are looking at.

INVESTIGATE THE SOURCE: Know what you are reading before you read it. Take the time to understand the expertise and agenda of the source you are looking at.  Is what you are looking at worth the time and effort? Is the source significant and trustworthy? 

FIND BETTER COVERAGE: While it is often easy to find any source on a topic, your goal is to find the BEST source you can, which requires looking at multiple sources to determine expert consensus. You want to find the more trusted and in-depth coverage. If you can not confirm this on your original source, seek other coverage. 

TRACE CLAIMS, QUOTES AND MEDIA TO THE ORIGINAL CONTEXT: In these cases we’ll have you trace the claim, quote, or media back to the source, so you can see it in it’s original context and get a sense if the version you saw was accurately presented.

Also, pay attention to timeliness and motivation/purpose.

SIFT was created by Mike Caulfield and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

For the following exercise, join the group that matches your birthday and complete the exercise.

Group 1 (your birthday is in January, February, March)

Scan the following resource (you don't need to read it in full)

Consider the following:

• What are the qualifications of the author(s)?
• What type of evidence do they use to support their argument? Data, other people's research, personal opinions, etc.?
• Who is the intended audience of this article? How does that impact how it is written?
• Does this source undergo any type of review or quality control?

Group 2 (your birthday is in April, May, June)

Scan the following resource (you don't need to read it in full)

Consider the following:

• What are the qualifications of the author(s)?
• What type of evidence do they use to support their argument? Data, other people's research, personal opinions, etc.?
• Who is the intended audience of this article? How does that impact how it is written?
• Does this source undergo any type of review or quality control?

Group 3 (your birthday is in July, August, September)

Scan the following resource (you don't need to read it in full)

Consider the following:

• What are the qualifications of the author(s)?
• What type of evidence do they use to support their argument? Data, personal opinions, etc.?
• Who is the intended audience of this article? How does that impact how it is written?
• Does this source undergo any type of review or quality control?

Group 4 (your birthday is October, November, or December)

Scan the following resource (you don't need to read it in full)

Consider the following:

• What are the qualifications of the author(s)?
• What type of evidence do they use to support their argument? Data, personal opinions, etc.?
• Who is the intended audience of this article? How does that impact how it is written?
• Does this source undergo any type of review or quality control?

But seriously...

Your scholarly sources will likely be one of the following:

• An peer-reviewed journal article
• An academic encyclopedia entry (that gives you some substantive information)
• An academic book (published by an academic press, written by a scholar)

Remember: 

Use your critical evaluation skills to determine whether your other sources are good enough to use in this assignment! Look for references to data, evidence, and links to other scholarship.  Make sure that the source you use comes from a reliable source.

Figure 2. Copely, R. Huge stand in the market with a large selection of fruits [Photograph]. Pixy.org. https://pixy.org/143529/

What words would you use to describe this image? 

Questions to consider

• Are you using the terminology that an expert in the field would use?
• Is there more than one way to spell the word?
• Are there any synonyms or other terms that could apply to your topic?
• Are there sub-topics that can help you specify or narrow down your topic? 
• Consider writing out your topic in a sentence and then highlighting the different concepts within. 

Things to remember when using Library Search:

1. Sign in to save searches, items, and to request materials.

2. Use the pin icon to save books and articles. 

3. Use the filters on the right. You will use Availability, Resource Type, and Date filters most often.

4. Some items won't be available. You can request unavailable items using interlibrary loan.

5. When viewing an item record, scroll down to the Get It or Full Text section to get the item.

Search Smarter!

You can search in a way to combine or omit different terms by telling the search engine exactly what you want…this can help you save some time (and frustration!)

• Use quotation marks to keep phrases together - "strain theory"

• Use  AND to combine search terms - "strain theory" AND "racial profiling"

• Use OR to connect two or more similar terms - "strain theories" OR "anomie theories"

• Use wild cards to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol - societ*  (society, societies, societal etc.)

Search Google Scholar

Google Scholar is another great way to find peer-reviewed/scholarly material. Google Scholar has a nifty citation chaining function.  The Cited by function will forward you to indexed scholarly material that has cited an article that you may be interested in.  The Related Articles link will direct you to similar articles that may have the same metadata or keywords. 

The Advanced Search is found by clicking the menu icon (top left).
Besides providing links to articles in MRU databases, Google Scholar links to online repositories that contain articles the author has been allowed to upload.  Academia.edu and ResearchGate are among the repositories searched by Google Scholar.

By clicking on the Settings icon, you can select library links to show library access for up to 5 libraries (type in Mount Royal and click on save).  If you are logged into the MRU library, links should automatically populate if you are running a Google search in another window. 

CanLII (The Canadian Legal Information Institute) is a freely available database powered and supported by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada.  Content focuses on Canadian primary law sources that include: 

• Jurisprudence (Federal and Provincial case law, tribunal decisions).
• Legislation (Federal and Provincial statutes and regulations)
• Commentary (both refereed and crowd-generated commentary).

Open the CRJS citation guide (attached below).  Choose a source according to the group that you were in for our previous class activity (organized by birth month).  You can work with others in the group or work at your stations.  Please fill in the requested field using the links provided in the CRJS Referencing Activity document.  You can edit this page directly.  I am asking you to form both bibliographical citations and in-text citations for different sources.  We will discuss and then this class is over!!!

• Cite Sources: Learn the correct way to cite sources by using these guides, tutorials, and videos.
• Referencing Webinars: APA & MLA. Referencing Webinars are 75 minutes long.  Registration is required.
• Online Appointments: Personalized online 30-minute appointments with a Learning Strategist.

New SLS APA Referencing Tutorial on D2L

This self-paced 90-minute tutorial covers the same content as our live workshop—why citation is important along with the basics of in-text citations and reference entries in APA Style. Students who complete the tutorial will gain access to a form they can fill out and submit as proof of completion.

Access the tutorial on D2L: Using Google Chrome as your web browser, log in to D2L (learn.mru.ca) with your @mtroyal.ca account. Click the “Discover” tab, then type “APA” in the search bar. Click on the “APA Referencing Tutorial” link and then the “Enroll in Course” button. If you have any questions about the tutorial, contact sls@mtroyal.ca.