I believe that it is extremely important for our students to be given several opportunities to dive into the primary literature and attempt to analyze and synthesize its findings. However, such a task can be extremely challenging even for some of the advanced students because, in many cases, students lack the necessary reading and writing skills to tackle primary the literature or have never had the opportunity to carry out such assignments. In either case, the result is often either a poorly written paper or a plagiarized paper.
I think one of the biggest challenges for undergraduate psychology programs is to design a curriculum where thoughtful immersion into the primary literature is one of its main goals. One of my complaints about undergraduate instruction is that it is often not uniform, even within a single academic major, Thus, some students will go through a program reaching their senior year without having had certain key educational experiences, such as writing a paper by synthesizing the primary literature. There are many reasons for this type of problem. Nevertheless, it would be wonderful if all students within a program had similar types of reading/writing experiences. For example, in 100-level classes, one can start by giving students previously selected 'easy' empirical studies (say, one that uses percentages or simple statistical analyses like Pearson or Chi Square) where the student compares, contrasts, etc. as a writing assignment. One can then go on from there and use more complex studies in more advanced classes. I realize, however, that such curricular uniformity would be nearly impossible to implement.
At any rate, these are my requirements for most paper assignments:
FOR TERM PAPERS AND LAB PAPERS: Submit the final lab paper in a manila envelope and include the following:
a. All copies of journal articles cited in the paper. You need not submit copies of those articles that were on reserve.
b. All articles must have markings (e.g., underlining) indicating those sections that were used to write your paper.
c. At least one TYPED early draft of the paper with evidence of substantial revisions and corrections penciled-in on the draft. Handwritten drafts or those with only corrected spelling errors are not acceptable.
d. All of the handwritten raw data, and data analyses (not typed).
e. A computer diskette containing two files of your paper. One file must correspond to the paper as it appears in the final typed version. Another file must consist of a single-spaced version excluding the title page, abstract, references, and tables of data.
Miguel
At 08:02 AM 11/27/2002 -0600, you wrote:
Hi everyone:
I have a difficult time helping my students understand that book
chapters and websites are generally inappropriate references for
literature reviews or research papers. I don't mind students who obtain
online copies of scholarly psychology articles, but I have a lot of
students who will just want to do a Google search to find potential
references for papers. I have adopted a policy of allowing students to
only use websites that contain online copies of scholarly articles and
this has been met with resistance even after explanations have been
offered (procrastination is a major factor as a lot of students wait
until too late in the semester to obtain articles through ILL and thus
rely on websites). What are your policies for the types of references
that students can use in literature reviews? Do you allow websites or
other online references?
Rod
______________________________________________
Roderick D. Hetzel, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
LeTourneau University
Post Office Box 7001
2100 South Mobberly Avenue
Longview, Texas 75607-7001
Office: Education Center 218
Phone: 903-233-3893
Fax: 903-233-3851
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Homepage: http://www.letu.edu/people/rodhetzel
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Miguel Roig, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychology
Notre Dame Division of St. John's College
St. John's University
300 Howard Avenue
Staten Island, New York 10301
Voice: (718) 390-4513
Fax: (718) 390-4347
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Http://facpub.stjohns.edu/~roigm
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