Assignment Details

Podcast and Script (Due Tuesday 28 March 2023)

• The deliverables for this assignment are: (1) your script, (2) your podcast, and (3) your own personal reflection.

• Students will work in groups of four (4) to create an explicit argument and distribute it through a podcast. As such, make sure you incorporate a claim, reasons for that claim, and evidence within the body of your podcast. Topics TBD.

• You will need to do research on your topic. In your script, you will cite your sources. In your podcast, you may mention where your information is coming from. For example, you might embed the author’s name or the name of the book/article you got the information from into your sentence. (For help with verbal citation in the podcast, consult the MRU Guide to Visual and Verbal Citation.)

  • You must cite at least five (5) sources, three (3) of which must be scholarly. Two (2) can be popular but they must be reputable. Your References list must be properly formatted, using any referencing style you prefer, as long as it is correct and consistent.

• The goal is to speak to your ideas freely and comfortably in the podcast and not read off the script, but of course, you should have your script for reference.

• The podcast is to be 10-12 minutes in length.

Conducting Academic Research With Google Scholar

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is another great way to find high quality resources.

Besides providing links to resources 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. 

Google Scholar has a nifty citation chaining function. The Cited by function will forward you to indexed scholarly material that has cited a resource that you may be interested in. The Related articles link will direct you to similar articles that may have the same metadata or keywords. 

Helpful Search Operators to Use in Google Scholar

Google Scholar's Advanced Search is found by clicking the menu icon in the top left.

You can also add search operators to Google Scholar searches to build your own custom advanced searches in similar ways to LibrarySearch:

• Use quotation marks to keep specific phrases together:

  • "climate change"

• Avoid using AND to combine search terms with Google Scholar, as the search engine automatically creates ANDs between concepts and sometimes adding an additional AND can confuse the search syntax.

• Use OR to connect two or more similar terms:

  • "climate change" OR "global warming"

• Use wild cards to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol:

  • ethic* (in this example, the search ethic* will search for records that contain strings such as ethics, ethical, and ethically)

• Use intitle: to limit your search to search terms only appearing in the title of a resource:

  •  intitle:"climate change"

• Use filetype: to specify the type of file you would like to retrieve in your results:

  • filetype:pdf

• Use site: to limit your search to specific web domains:

  • site:.edu

  • site:.gc.ca

• Use source: to limit your search to results from a specific publication:

  • source:global challenges

• Combine operators to power search!

  • intitle:"climate change" source:global environmental change

Figure 1

Peter Steiner's Famous 1993 New Yorker Cartoon Illustrating an Issue Central to Information Evaluation

Note. From "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" [Cartoon], by P. Steiner, 1993, Wikimedia (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Internet_dog.jpg).

Evaluating Information

It is good to find lots of search results, but, in order to use information skilfully, you need to know how to evaluate that information to determine whether a specific resource is appropriate to use in a specific use case (i.e. for a specific assignment).

The phrase "evaluating information" actually stands in for a wide range of judgments that we make about information in many different contexts, whether those judgments are about relevance, timeliness, quality, etc.

Librarians have developed several different acronyms to help people remember useful criteria to use in information evaluation. One of my personal favourites is RADAR!

RADAR stands for

Relevance

Authority

Date

Accuracy

Reason for Creation

We can ask the following questions to help us assess each criterion:

Relevance:

• Does this source fit my topic?

• What is this source's intended audience?

  • Is that intended audience appropriate for my use case in this assignment?

Authority:

• Is/are the creator(s) of this source clearly identified or known to us?

• How important is it in this use case to trust the source's creator(s)?

  • If it is important, why should we trust the source's creator(s)?

  • Is the source's creator credentialed or an expert in their field?

Date:

• Is the creation or publication date of this source identified or known to us?

• Is this source too old?

Accuracy:

• Do this source's facts "check out"?

• Does the source have references of its own?

Reason for Creation (take your best guess at this question using judgments from earlier criteria):

• Why was this source made?

• Was this source made to sell a product or service, to inform/educate, to entertain, etc?

Primary vs. Secondary Sources

Primary sources

• are the original materials or evidence to be analyzed, evaluated, contextualized, or synthesized in the research process.

• in the Social Sciences and Humanities: they are usually from the time period under study and offer first-hand accounts or direct evidence in response to the research question.

• in the Science & Engineering fields: they are the first articles published formally describing a research project or study.

Some examples of primary sources include:

Secondary sources

• analyze, evaluate, contextualize, or synthesize evidence. They often give second-hand accounts based on engagement with primary sources.

• in the Social Science and Humanities: they comment on or analyze texts, oral communications, artifacts, or archives of primary sources.

• in the Science & Engineering fields: because many primary sources are scholarly articles reporting first-hand on new studies or research, the secondaries often synthesize or analyze many such results.

Some examples of secondary sources include:

Adapted from "Primary or secondary sources" (https://www.uvic.ca/library/help/tips/primvsec/index.php) by UVic Libraries

Scholarly vs. Popular Sources

A scholarly publication contains articles written by experts in a particular field. The primary audience of these articles is other experts.

Many of these publications are also referred to as "peer-reviewed," 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.

Some Helpful Questions for Identifying a Scholarly/Academic Article

1. What are the author’s credentials? Was it written by an expert?

2. Was it published in a journal (is there a DOI?)? (If you are not sure if a source is a journal article, you can enter the title of the publication into Ulrichs Web to check.)

3. Does it use academic or more technical language?

4. Does it includes a reference list of sources that it is citing?

5. How long is it? (Scholarly articles are typically longer than popular or news articles.)

6. Does it have a "Received" and "Accepted" date on it?

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.)

Activity: Is It Scholarly?

To make sure we are all on the same page, let's put our knowledge to the test.

Skim the following resources available through the links keeping in mind the characteristics we have discussed in class (for example: what is this information and where did it come from? Was it written by an expert? Where is this source published?).

Vote whether you think this source is Scholarly or Not Scholarly.

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3

Source 4

Source 5

Source 6

Source 7

Source 8

Source 9

Source 10

Citation Help

• Use the "cite" feature in most search tools to get you started with most resources (you will need to review and correct the citation).

• Cite Sources: Learn the correct way to cite sources by using these guides, tutorials, and videos.

  • MRU Guide to APA Style for Referencing (2022-2023)
  • MRU Guide to APA Style for Formatting a Paper (2022-2023)
  • MRU Guide to Visual and Verbal Citation (2022)

• Academic Success Workshops: APA: An Introduction and APA 2: An Online Escape Room. Academic Success Workshops are 75 minutes long and are offered both in-person and online. Registration is required.

• Appointments: Personalized online or in-person 30-minute appointments with a Learning Strategist at Student Learning Services located on the 2nd floor of the Riddell Library & Learning Centre.

• Use the Service Desk on the 1st floor of the RLLC for assistance as well as the library chat feature on the library website for quick citation questions.

Here is a document to assist you with the completion of the podcast assignment.