Ideas for teaching…
Posted by anya on May 20th, 2007 filed in UncategorizedI neeeeed your help. One of my teaching duties in Beijing will be to lead a class entitled “How To Use Library & Do Online Research.” Basically, I will have to show students who will be completing their bachelor’s degrees in English-speaking countries how to do online and physical research for term papers, etc. When I spoke to my supervisor, he said that there are no textbooks to use and no particular curriculum to follow. Basically, I am designing the course, and I think I can be quite flexible with it. The thing is, I’m having a hard time visualizing how I’m going to teach this in a county which doesn’t even allow access to wikipedia (although there are ways to get around this, quite easily). If anybody has ideas as to how I can improve the quality of the course, and which internet resources I can use to explain various “theories of academic research” (their term, not mine!), I am definitely open to suggestions.
May 20th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
If you’re not already aware of it, check out Google Scholar. It’s all academic papers, many of which are not free, but it’s probably the best place to look for reliable information on higher education-type topics. I’m sure none of it’s an easy, or even doable, read for someone new to English though.
Other than that, I don’t know. You’ve got a tough task; good research skills (especially on the internet) are more about experience and common sense in filtering out the cruft than anything else. That’s hard to teach.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:16 am
Keenan :) how are things?
I actually hadn’t thought of Google Scholar, but it’s a great idea. I never really use it myself, since I have access to such a variety of sources through the UBC library. Google Scholar will be really useful!
You’re right about research being something that somes with experience. I actually really don’t like research, but I guess it’s a good course for those who will be going abroad to complete their degrees. There’s no way of getting an arts degree without doing research :/
May 22nd, 2007 at 12:47 am
Hi!!!
Ok, I am not sure whether it was what you were looking for:
similar to wikipedia but more reliable: Encyclopedia Britannica , but I think you have to pay for it, but it is very-very big.
Google Book Search: it has books and papers downloaded to it and you can download them or view them in pdf. But they have some issues with copyright, so not all books are available.
JSTOR- Academic Journal Archive: if your students go to a university or college to study, then they will have free access to it. It has a lot of articles from journals that are very specialized in certain subjects. It’s very good and a lot of good, academic information.
Diigo Beta: it’s a bookmark tool, but good for highlighting words or sentences that you need on the web-page.
I hope it helps:-)
Jenia.