All the sources in the world won’t do you any good, if you don’t know what to do with them.
Type of Presentation
Individual paper/presentation (20 minute presentation)
Target Audience
Higher Education
Location
Room 210
Proposal
In an age of information abundance, students have fewer problems finding sources, even the peer-reviewed, scholarly ones that their professors prefer. What they struggle with is using those sources appropriately in their research assignments. Drawing from a pool of student papers which represent four years of undergraduate work, a team of librarians at the University of Richmond analyzed how students integrated sources into academic work. We examined the types of sources used, how those sources were being used, and the common problems with source use and citation, to help us understand how we could modify and restructure our teaching to help students use sources more appropriately.
Presentation Description
In this presentation, we’ll provide a high-level overview of the process required to implement a project like this. Our findings will be presented, and the audience will be asked to help brainstorm instruction methods for addressing the concerns uncovered in the findings.
Session Goals
Demonstrate how students use sources in their academic work at a particular institution.
Help librarians at other institutions assess the feasibility of conducting a similar study.
Develop a pool of ideas to inform future instruction.
Keywords
Student research, source use, information literacy, citation study
Publication Type and Release Option
Presentation (Open Access)
Recommended Citation
Ludovico, Carrie and Wittig, Carol B., "All the sources in the world won’t do you any good, if you don’t know what to do with them." (2018). Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy. 55.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gaintlit/2018/2018/55
All the sources in the world won’t do you any good, if you don’t know what to do with them.
Room 210
In an age of information abundance, students have fewer problems finding sources, even the peer-reviewed, scholarly ones that their professors prefer. What they struggle with is using those sources appropriately in their research assignments. Drawing from a pool of student papers which represent four years of undergraduate work, a team of librarians at the University of Richmond analyzed how students integrated sources into academic work. We examined the types of sources used, how those sources were being used, and the common problems with source use and citation, to help us understand how we could modify and restructure our teaching to help students use sources more appropriately.
