[nabs-l] Final projects, papers, research hints

Tue Apr 9 18:27:47 UTC 2013

Hi,

Plos1 is a good database for those who may need to do psych research,
or who may benefit from citing a study in another paper as a research
source.

If your university has a writing center, use it.  I didn't until my
religion professor gave my class the deal that if we went to the
writing center we could have an extra day to work on our papers,
(which is really valuable because he only gives us 3 or 4 days to do
them).  He told us up front that the papers that are worked on with a
Write Place tutor usually do better, and this is true; I usually get
B's on my papers without writing help, and all mine this semester have
been at least A minuses.  I have a tutor there who I can consistently
see, which is nice because he's a senior English major, knows his
stuff, and can also give me feedback on how I'm improving from paper
to paper and give me suggestions to use on my own.

Third, don't forget about other sources you can use to get
information.  Quite a few times I've just gone onto google, typed in
my search terms, and found books on the topic.  Then once I have the
file I can either read it all and take notes of quotes and page
numbers for my citations as I go, or use the find command to search
for specific topics.  For example, I did a report on braille literacy
a few years ago, so I downloaded a book from Bookshare whith a bunch
of statistics about braille literacy and used it in my paper.
Sometimes these resources specifically available to us aren't
available in the college libraries, which are mainly intended for
sighted students who may not have a need to research braille or other
blindness related topics.  I mention this specifically, because I
noticed a few of the projects mentioned on this list were about
blindness topics or the topic of people with physical disabilities in
general.

Thanks,

On 4/9/13, Mary Fernandez <trillian551 at gmail.com> wrote:
> scholar.google.com
> Or, just type google scholar on google and it comes right up. Scholar
> also has different ways of filtering results. So you can choose
> whether the search results include books, or just articles, and so on.
> Thanks.
> Mary
>
> On 4/9/13, Hope Paulos <hope.paulos at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi there! Does Google scholar have its own website, or do we just put the
>> eword Google scholar before our search terms?
>> Thanks!
>> Hope
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On Apr 9, 2013, at 9:57 AM, Mary Fernandez <trillian551 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>> In the last two days, it has become obvious that college final
>>> projects and exams are approaching! I am starting this thread as a way
>>> for college students, grad students and graduates share some hints on
>>> how to manage finals and everything they entail. Below are some ways I
>>> learned to survive this challenging time.
>>> 1. Everyone has a research paper due soon. There has been a lot of
>>> chatter regarding best ways to do  research. First, your university
>>> has a library with extremely knowledgeable librarians! In many
>>> colleges there are librarians that specialize in particular areas,
>>> e.g. science, literature etc. So, when you are stuck, this should be
>>> one of the first places you explore. They will tell you about
>>> resources that you might not even be aware of. Along with that, get
>>> very familiar with your school libraries website. There should be
>>> links to the databases your school subscribes to.
>>> When starting a research paper, professors will often have different
>>> views on how they let students choose topics. While some want sources
>>> and thesis statements well ahead of times, others simply say turn in a
>>> paper about something we talked in class. Regardless of the professor,
>>> one should always start with the broader idea. For instance, if I want
>>> to write a comp lit paper on nineteenth century British literature,
>>> I'd probably start with doing a Google scholar search. Google Scholar
>>> is better than just running a Google search, because the summaries
>>> that come up are from "academic" peer reviewed sources. So you never
>>> have to worry about whether a source will be credible or not.
>>> Then, as you get a better idea of the options available, you start
>>> narrowing down until you come up with a specific topic. While this is
>>> not by far, the only method of doing this type of research, it has
>>> always served me well, because the worst thing to find out the week
>>> before your paper is due is that there isn't enough literature out
>>> there.
>>>
>>> Finally, some databases that I like for social science research are:
>>> JSTOR (which has older studies), and PsychInfo, (which is a sub
>>> database of EBSCO).
>>> Remember to talk to your librarian and get familiar with the library
>>> website, since sometimes they are nice enough to allow you to search
>>> database by subject. So, if you need articles on history, it will show
>>> you the databases which are history specific.
>>> 2. Tutoring and study help. There have been some questions about
>>> searching for guidance and direction with specific papers and with
>>> specific books.
>>> All colleges have some sort of tutoring program. Many have a
>>> writing/composition specific department. You get paired with a student
>>> who has taken the class, and who can help you understand the material.
>>> For big papers I always took it to the writing center at my college,
>>> since when you live with a paper for so long, there are little
>>> mistakes that you don't catch. If you need help understanding a
>>> specific book, and getting ideas as to how to read more effectively,
>>> go to your tutor!
>>> 3. Presentations.
>>> Ok, so my favorite Microsoft program has made an appearance,
>>> PowerPoint. I will confess, all I know how to do in PowerPoint is read
>>> slide shows. Seriously, that's it. But I am a college graduate, and
>>> even made research posters which are based on PowerPoint before you
>>> can print them. Here is the way I did it.
>>> First, you do your research. Once you have the basis of your
>>> presentation, you start making your presentation. Remember that
>>> Powerpoints are visual aids, they are not supposed to be your full
>>> presentation. They aren't supposed to have long texts on everything
>>> you want to say. They simply underline what you think is important,
>>> and if you have time you can even make them pretty.
>>> For my presentations, I would do a Word documents, in which I'd do a
>>> list, with the slide number and the content I wanted in that slide.
>>> For instance,
>>> Slide 1
>>> Mary Fernandez
>>> The Life of T.S. Elliott.
>>> Slide 2
>>> Picture of Elliott as a young man
>>> Slide 3.
>>> Thomas Sterns Elliott was born in such and such date.
>>> You get the idea. Once I had my slide content perfected I'd do one of
>>> two    \ things. I'd either go to my Library's IT center, whose sole
>>> purpose was to aid students with any technological presentations, and
>>> digital learning. And I'd show them my slides, and would tell them
>>> exactly how I wanted the powerpoint to look. All they did was point
>>> and click, and copy and paste. For pictures, we'd go on Google images,
>>> and I'd tell them, the exact idea of what I wanted. They'd tell me the
>>> options and then I'd choose which one I wanted.
>>> The second method was to buy one of my roommates lunch in exchange for
>>> their powerpoint skills. You can also do this with readers. However,
>>> if you are choosing to do this, please be considerate of your friends'
>>> time, and be aware they are incredibly loaded with work too.
>>> Finally, on presentation day, I'd have my personal notes, as well as
>>> my original outline of what was on each slide, so I always knew what
>>> my peers were looking at.
>>> I encourage everyone to learn to use Powerpoint, I will soon! But this
>>> is a work around until this summer when you will all be Powerpoint
>>> experts.
>>> Sorry this went on for so long. Hope it helps!
>>> Sincerely,
>>>
>>> --
>>> Mary Fernandez
>>> "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will
>>> forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them
>>> feel."
>>> —
>>> Maya Angelou
>>>
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>>
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>
>
> --
> Mary Fernandez
> "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will
> forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them
> feel."
> —
> Maya Angelou
>
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-- 
Kaiti