One Stop Shop for Research Papers Proposal
Have you ever struggled with doing a research paper? Would these words describe your feelings in finding and using information for your research papers? Overwhelming, scary and stressful. Well young brilliant minds from The New York City College of Technology have developed a multi-faceted digital research paper tool based on existing survey information and articles that investigated the challenges college students face in doing research papers. According to a Huffington Post (2010) article, “College Students Don’t Know To Research, Study Shows”, we learn through 8353 surveyed students from 25 colleges that, “84 percent of respondents found “getting started” to be the hardest part of research projects. Additional problem areas include defining a topic, narrowing it, and sorting through results — 66 percent, 62 percent and 61 percent of students found these steps to be the most difficult, respectively”(“College Students,”2010). In that same study we find out that, “only 30 percent asked a librarian for research help”(“College Students, 2010). Another journal report by James Purdy (2012), “Why first-year college students select online resources as their favorite?” which was based on a survey of 500 U.S. college students in first-year writing classes offers answers to the question of why first-year college students select online resources as their favorite. “Students reported most frequently that they favored resources for reasons of ease, quality, and connectivity.”(Purdy, 2012, Abstract).
Based on the different findings, the development team set out to create a research paper tool kit that would better educate students on the entire research paper process. Our own experience in writing research papers allowed us to quickly recognize what features need to be in place in order to make the research paper process less intimidating. We understood that students are faced with a daunting task when conducting online searches for academic literature. A study by Head (2013), “Learning the Ropes: How Freshman Conduct Course Research Once They Enter College” tells us that, “nearly three-fourths of the sample (74%) said they struggled with selecting keywords and formulating efficient search queries. Over half (57%) felt stymied by the thicket of irrelevant results their online searches usually returned”(p.3). We identified that many students do not know how to correctly use popular search engines such as Google when doing research. In addition, many students are not well versed in the fields of in text citations, annotated bibliographies, bolean searches and different types of research sources (primary,books, blogs, secondary, scholarly,popular, news and internet). We also realized that many students were unaware of the availability of online resources available through subscription-based online library databases such as InfoTrac, JSTOR, Google Scholar, EBSCO and ProQuest just.
In order to help with the different challenges faced by college students, our research paper site will provide a research learning tool section that will provide students with youtube tutorials and links to pages that will teach students how to use different digital research tools for different purposes. Our site will teach you new information strategies for College-Level Research such as, “discovering peer-reviewed article abstracts and their usefulness, using Google for finding keywords and checking authors’ credibility, replacing Google searches with Google Scholar searches, and following the “citation trail’ to find related sources”(Head, 2013, p.22). We will also show you that Google is not the only answer when doing searches for your research paper needs. The “citation trail” will automatically allow students to link to the appropriate in text pages for additional sources. Our site will show you how to narrow down search queries on library databases. We will look to provide answers for some of the most difficult research tasks such as, “filtering and sorting through irrelevant results from online searches, identifying/selecting potential sources, evaluating sources for credibility and bias while reconciling different view points and citing sources and using citation formats, based on faculty preferences”(Head, 2013, p.15).
College students get ready to meet the one stop for research papers digital tool kit. Please allow me to demonstrate how to navigate through our site. Our site will be accessed by registering and creating a free member account using a login id and password. Members will also be able to sync into our website through our one stop mobile app. The site is organized according to different sections with each section serving a different purpose of the research process. For example, we have a research process section where you could learn more about the entire research process. There is another section that is our designated learning section which will allow students to gain knowledge via youtube tutorials and links to pages that teach students how to use different search engines and different research tools. Some of the stand-out features of our site include: 1.) Our 24 hour online librarian that is ready to help guide you through the informational maze 2.) Our interactive chat room which allows students and teachers alike to socialize and make connections 3.) Our one stop blog will allow members to share new ideas, articles, interlink with other relevant blogs, access news stories and mark favorite blogs. 4.) Our research curator search engine will filter out free scholarly papers through subscription-based online library databases such as JSTOR, Google Scholar, EBSCO and ERIC Education Resources Information Center. The search engine will make sure to identify free research papers through either subjects, topics or research question. In addition, the curator will look to filter out according to dates; Research papers that are new (less than 2 years) and papers that are older than 2 years. Another great feature of our site is the time saving and efficient Google Chrome Extension Quick Scroll which provides students an efficient way to scroll to the pertinent parts in that website that are relevant to your research question. We are confident that members will have an enjoyable experience navigating through our website.
It is our belief that the One Stop Shop for Research Papers website and mobile app will help make researching and writing papers easier. The research paper tool will allow students to share their research paper problems openly and without embarrassment and fear. It is our hope that this site will evolve into a well known social networking research site where students, teachers and librarians throughout the world can connect and share with one another. We stress to our fellow college students that they remember to use one of their most valuable resources in this entire research paper process and that is the often times forgotten librarian. A wise librarian once said, “I do not know everything, but I certainly can find anything”. What can be more valuable than having a resource that could lead you to all the right places when doing your research paper! Our team thanks you for your time and we would love to hear back from you with any feedback, questions or comments.
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