Let's Get Started:
Source Analysis and Reflection
You've been given a list of topics related to university students to choose from. You must find 3 credible sources pertaining to your topic.
You must answer the questions provided on your source analysis page relating to each source
Today's class
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Weaknesses: too short, print encyclopedias are out of date quickly, Wikipedia has reliability issues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, often not reviewed 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
Lectures, Ted Talks, Interviews, Recordings, Testimony
Strengths: Primary, first-hand accounts
Weaknesses: It is hard to assess credibility and reliability...single perspective relying on the accuracy of memory.
Scholarly articles typically have a few characteristics
| Single studies | Review articles |
|---|---|
|
These will report on data gathered and analyzed as part of a single original experiment. They will be...
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A review article will take a number of empirical articles, and perform some analysis. These articles are peer-reviewed.
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Original Research Articles (Primary Research) vs. Review Articles
There are different types of scholarly/peer-reviewed articles. The two main categories in the scientific literature are original research articles (also known as primary research) and review articles.
1. Original Research Articles (aka Primary Research)
An original research article, or sometimes referred to as primary research in science, will report on data gathered and analyzed as part of an original experiment. There will be a methods section in which the researchers describe how they have collected and analyzed data. Example of an original research article.
2. Review Article
A review article takes a number of original research articles, and performs some analysis. They do not collect new data.
There are a few different types:
Literature Reviews give a broad overview of a given topic at a moment in time. Example of a literature review.
Systematic Reviews are a rigorous review of original research articles, with explicit inclusion criteria. They're often used in the Health Sciences to gauge the effectiveness of specific interventions. Systematic reviews will discuss their inclusion criteria, search methods, and occasionally their search statement in the article. Example of a systematic review. Example of a systematic review.
Additional Tips for Reading Scholarly Articles
Scholarly articles often have a distinct structure. While it may depend if you are looking at original research or a review article, you can read certain sections within a paper and it should tell you specific information.
This activity will focus on scholarly research and hopefully give you some practice in identifying the difference between original/primary research and review articles.
When reading any information source, consider the following:
Take a look at your assigned source and answer the following questions. You do not need to read the source in full.
1. What type of source is this (e.g. a website, a scholarly peer reviewed article, a book chapter, etc)?
2. Is this source trustworthy enough to use in an essay in this course? Why or why not?
Group 1
Scan the following resource
Consider the following:
Group 2
Scan the following resource
Consider the following:
Group 3
Scan the following resource
Consider the following:
Group 4
Scan the following resource
Consider the following:
Group 5
Scan the following resource
Consider the following:
Questions to consider
What are the benefits of foreign exchange programs to undergraduate students?
|
Topic |
Synonyms (terms you could use with OR) |
Additional Terms (terms you could use with AND) |
Narrowed Down Topic |
|
foreign exchange undergraduates benefits |
"field school" OR "learning abroad" OR "studying abroad OR travel OR "international education" OR "experiential learning" OR "community-based learning" university OR undergraduate OR college OR post-secondary OR "higher education"
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"academic success" culture travel learning language employment skills "personal development" disadvantages funding barriers
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("field school" OR "foreign exchange) AND (undergraduate OR college) AND students AND benefit ("learning abroad" OR international education) AND "personal development" AND ("post-secondary" OR university) university AND ("study abroad" OR exchange) AND barriers |
Things to remember when using Library Search:
Sign in to save searches, items, and to request materials.
Use the pin icon to save books and articles.
Use the filters on the right. You will use Availability, Resource Type, and Date filters most often.
Some items won't be available. You can request unavailable items using interlibrary loan.
When viewing an item record, scroll down to the Get It or Full Text section to get the item.
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 - "undergraduate research"
Use AND to combine search terms - "undergraduate research" AND benefits
Use OR to connect two or more similar terms - "student research" OR "undergraduate research"
Use wild cards to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol - educat* (education; educational; educate etc.)
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 MRU library, links should automatically populate if you are running a Google search in another window.
Note: Google uses different commands: ~; -; +; but AND/OR also works
If you are searching Google (not Google Scholar), you can also limit your search to show specific websites. Eg:
Citation Resources
