Engaging New Researchers

Tips for Engaging New Researchers

1. Interview Your Researchers: 


To learn what interests your new researchers, start by asking questions that highlight specific research interests, personal experiences, and favorite hobbies. Learning about a researcher's goals, interests, and experiences will help cultivate curiosities that inspire great research questions.

2. Investigate Various Platforms for Resources:


Both new and seasoned researchers have strong opinions about how they prefer searching for information. While finding credible and reliable resources is always important for good research, it is important to keep an open mind about the best methods for finding resources. Videos have traditionally gotten a negative reputation from the academic community, but many people today gather information through videos, social media, and other digital platforms. Electronic resources and databases are also great resources for locating scholarly articles. A willingness to consider various types of sources (both print and digital) will help encourage good research practices, and help widen research potential.

3. Casual Friday:


Try using a less formal approach to get new researchers started on a project. Sample Prompt: Come up with a Blog topic you would like to pursue and find three sources that have supporting information for your topic.

4. Test New Technology:


The appearance of certain resources can look very different depending on the type of device you are using to view the content. The same way that apps. on smart phones will display websites differently from a desktop computer, electronic databases also may have different looks. In order to intrigue researchers who are interested in technology, try using various apps., devices, and electronic resources to catch their interest. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Historical Building Blocks

Image
If you google the phrase “Doing History” you will come across several blogs, websites, and articles d iscussing the importance of taking part in the historical process. The building blocks of the historical process include understanding what primary sources are, how to find and study them, as well as how to critically analyze and interpret a variety of historical records. Secondary sources also play a role in the historical process. Historians create secondary sources when they write history articles or books on a historical topic.  Understanding how to use both primary and secondary sources is important, however it is also essential that history students learn a variety of ways to approach thinking about history. Studying the objects and artifacts of past civilizations helps us place people and events in historical context. Determining chronological sequences also helps historians figure out what decisions may have led to later events. Another concept that is harder to grasp, but j
Read more

JSTOR Open Access Content

Image
JSTOR, one of the favorite electronic journals of historians for finding full-text articles, has open-access content that does not require a subscription. To search and view the open content visit https://about.jstor.org/whats-in-jstor/books/open-access-books-jstor/ for books and https://www.jstor.org/open/ for everything else. Educators will want to check the results first and decide what resources to share with their students. While the majority of the articles and books are college level, the sources consist of several peer reviewed articles and books with credible and factual information. The database itself, in addition to the open content, is a great discussion point for history educators. Acknowledging the information needs of history students and recognizing the desire for full-text articles helps students learn about one of the major resources used in graduate level research. While I have personally used this database quite often in my own research, I
Read more

Exploring History Resources Online

Image
 Chronicling America The Library of Congress has a popular digital collection of digitized newspapers between 1777 and 1963 available online at  https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ . Researchers can search and browse the newspapers online. The newspapers articles are also free to download or print. There is also a separate US Newspaper Directory, 1690-Present , that contains listings and library locations for over 100,000 newspaper titles. However, for viewing the newspapers online, the digitized newspaper collection is the place to start. After clicking on the tab for the digitized newspapers, researchers can then search by state, ethnicity, and/or language. For the most avid researchers, it is also possible to download the complete list of digitized newspapers. 
Read more