What research sources do you accept?

It probably would be hypocritical to ruminate on information overload using, as a vehicle, a blog. So let’s just stipulate that our students must weed through and evaluate much information in pursuit of valid facts. We assist that effort by teaching information literacy regarding our disciplines, setting standards for sources we will accept, and providing feedback on research through comments and rubrics.

For example, when I teach a law class, I will mention at the outset that Centenary students have free access to Lexis Nexis, which is the exact database major law firms pay great sums to use in battle. If I want students to rely on legal cases rather than Wikipedia, I have to help them find those cases.

In some of the standard syllabi, you will see that the assignment instructions require students to find and rely upon “peer reviewed journals.” This steers students to filter their searches in order to retrieve journal articles that were reviewed by a panel or a subject matter expert prior to publication. For integrity purposes, the peer review often is done without knowledge of who authored the paper.

The multi-purposed EBSCO database, for instance, makes it easy to decipher a peer reviewed paper. In addition to setting date and topic parameters, you can limit search results to "peer reviewed articles." The screen shot below shows this option. EBSCO also provides a definition of what they consider a peer reviewed article.

Did you know that Google, also, allows you to filter your searches for “scholarly materials”? The next time you are on the Google site, look at the top of the page, click the down arrow next to the word “more”, and select “Scholar” from the menu. It’s an interesting way to tidy up your search results.

The bottom line is that you know your disciplines and the type of information that practitioners rely upon in making decisions. Equipping students with information literacy for a specific field can become an important part of the learning in your class.

What type of sources do you allow and disallow? Post a comment to this entry and let us know your approach.

As a postscript, maybe I should take a quick step back here: In case you did not know, Centenary College instructors and students all have free access to a wide variety of online databases. To access them, log into Blackboard, find the link for Centenary College Library Website, and click “search databases.” If prompted, the password credentials are the same you use to log into Blackboard.

I hope you find this post to be a reliable source. I warn you though, it has not been peer reviewed.