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Articles Conference Reviews |
F.12 Research Paper RemixF.12 Research Paper Remix: Understanding Research Writing in the Digital Age Randall McClure opened this session by noting that today’s students must manage multiple streams of simultaneous information. He referenced The Edge Foundation’s question: “How has the internet changed the way you think? “ and the NCTE 21st Century Curriculum and Assessment Framework, concluding that, “We will need more time for education, not less.” While students are writing more than ever and using the Internet on a daily basis, much of this writing centers around personal purposes and not necessarily academic purposes. Since research shows that students primarily depend on Wikipedia for their sources, McClure asked what this might mean in terms of information behavior, and he offered examples from the Pew Internet Forum and recent University College of London research that indicates students might easily cut and paste information into an essay without providing correct citation while still holding a “solid grasp of intellectual property basics.” McClure’s assessment of the environment in which students find themselves led right into Rebecca Moore Howard’s discussion about student research practices. Howard opened by noting that her thinking on this topic has changed over the years. In the past, she used the term “patchwriting” to describe incomplete paraphrasing, and her research over 15 years was based on that definition of patchwriting. Howard stated that she used to believe that students fell to patchwriting because they didn’t understand what they were reading – now she believes that is a “woefully incomplete” definition. Howard looks at patchwriting differently now. She described a new project, Citationproject.net, dedicated to preventing plagiarism and teaching writing. Howard’s research shows that 52.8% of student citations come from the first page of a cited article, with another 25% coming from the second page. Asking “how much time are our students putting into the research papers they are writing?” Howard says her earlier research did not address the issues of today: how much time and what kind of relationship do students have with the texts they read? James Purdy suggested that we should direct our attention to students’ research practices – despite the best intentions, some of the most widely used approaches to plagiarism detection services are not working. According to Purdy, we should ask students themselves to look at plagiarism detection technology, that is, we should start with students. In order to address our own anxieties about students as researchers, Purdy argued that we need to represent and explain what they are doing. Purdy believes that students value “scholarly” sources but don’t necessarily understand what scholarly sources are. As a result, students do not necessarily retrieve scholarly sources even when they are looking for them. Janice Walker proposed that whatever we’re doing to teach information literacy--direct instruction, tutorials, onsite library help--it isn’t working. According to Walker, an information literate person is one who can find, use and cite information as needed. Walker gave an update on the LILAC project – Learning Information Literacy Across the Curriculum: examining what/when/how we teach and what students learn. Walker announced that the LILAC Project is looking for researchers to participate and explained how to become involved. In all, this session provided an excellent overview of several important projects and approaches to teaching research practices with consideration for the impact of digital environments. |