|
Help: A Guide for Instructors Research Navigator™ is a password- Access Codes for Research Navigator are located in a Research Navigator user's guide (available with the purchase of many new Pearson textbooks), printed on an access code card found in this user's guide or textbook, or on the inside cover of a textbook. To place a book order for a text value-packed with a Pearson Access Code, contact your local representative:
Note: Minimum browser requirements
What Is Research Navigator?Research Navigator provides a set of tools that allows students to conduct online research for course-related projects and papers. Students have access to four exclusive databases of credible and reliable source content to help focus their research efforts and get the research process started. Visit the online Tour or read on for more about this site and how to use it in class.
Research Navigator also offers extensive content on the research process itself, tips on how to navigate and maximize research time in the campus library, a step-by-step guide to writing a research paper, and instructions on how to finish an academic assignment with endnotes and bibliography. Using Research Navigator in the ClassroomAlthough Research Navigator is intended primarily as a tool for the research process, you might also consider using it as a teaching aid. This section outlines several suggestions for doing so. In each case it would be helpful to have access to a computer-equipped classroom, such as one with an overhead projection system or individual computers on students' desks. Depending on your circumstances, other accommodations might also be appropriate (e.g., using a computer lab during a small-group session, or turning these suggestions into assignments for completion on home computers). It's a matter of some debate.The New York Times Article Archive is a valuable resource for making students conversant in current events. You might use the articles to stimulate debate and discussion in class. For example, an instructor in psychology might want to address the current issue of whether clinical psychologists should be granted prescription privileges (i.e., whether psychologists, who do not receive formal medical training, should be able to perform a medical function currently reserved for psychiatrists). Searching for prescription privileges in the New York Times Archive keyword section yields a variety of articles on this topic, including reports on buying prescription drugs over the internet or descriptions of the dangers of shady doctors prescribing drugs without meeting patients. One article in particular presents a summary of a recent law allowing psychologists in New Mexico to prescribe drugs, and visits the key arguments in the debate regarding this topic. Consider 1) presenting this article in class, 2) asking students to read this article on their own time, or 3) using this article as the basis for a discussion topic in a breakout section, with the aim of stimulating debate and discussion on the matter. For example, you might use this article (or any other provocative article in your discipline) in class to start a discussion of this topic. More formally, you might ask students to use this type of article as a "starter," and then find more information about the issue. Alternatively, you might assign students to pro or con sides of the issue and then debate the matter in class. In short, there are many ways in which you can use the New York Times Article Archive as part of your classroom presentations, most of which involve students in active learning and class participation. Caught in the web.The Link Library provides access to numerous web sites that might be relevant to your classroom presentations; in a sense, much of the work of tracking down interesting sites on the World Wide Web has been done for you. Although the Link Library can be used by students when gathering information for an assignment, it also can be incorporated into your classroom presentations to illustrate certain points or demonstrate particular principles. For example, a visit to the History - U.S. History section of the Link Library provides access to a wealth of sites related to that broad topic area. Clicking on J produces links to a variety of topics, such as Jackson, Andrew; Japanese Internment; Jefferson, Thomas; or John Birch Society. Selecting John Birch Society leads to several web sites on that group, including the Official John Birch Society Web Site (www.jbs.org) as well as several overviews and articles about the organization. Clicking on www.jbs.org leads to a wealth of information about John Birch the person, John Birch the organization, and John Birch the concept, any or all of which might be relevant to your classroom presentations on Communist China, God and country, or political ideologies in the post World War II era. Compare and contrast.An interesting assignment for either in-class discussion or an out-of-class exercise capitalizes on the types of information provided by Research Navigator. Both EBSCO ContentSelect and the New York Times Article Archive contain references to scholarly findings. However, whereas ContentSelect provides access to original empirical journal articles, the New York Times database provides access to articles about empirical research, sort of "science once removed." You can use these different types of information to illustrate a number of points. For example, you might identify a New York Times article that cites and summarizes the work of a well-known researcher in your discipline. Searching the New York Times database for prospect theory (a theory of decision making and risk analysis developed by the late Amos Tversky and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman) yields an article titled "On profit, loss, and the mysteries of the mind." This article contains an interview with Kahneman and summarizes the thinking and research that led to the development of prospect theory. Performing the same search for Kahneman, Daniel, prospect theory, or risk aversion in the Finance and Economics and Psychology databases of ContentSelect yields several journal articles related to those topics. Ask your students to compare and contrast the kinds of information they find in these two sources. There may be cases in which the newspaper account really got things right, and did an excellent job of summarizing an otherwise arcane area of research...or instances in which the newspaper reporting missed the message entirely, and gave an incomplete or incorrect account of research findings. Which types of articles were more comprehensible? What was the nature of any misleading reporting? Does subject matter make a difference? How does the public's perception of scientific findings get shaped by the popular media's presentation of scientific findings? You can use this exercise to illustrate several ideas, such as the importance of multiple sources of information, the utility of using original sources, or the difference between popular (mainstream) and scientific reporting. A gracious host.EBSCO Host ContentSelect offers opportunities for classroom use that go beyond comparisons with the New York Times reporting. For example, one obvious use of the ContentSelect database would be to update your lectures. Because most of the articles included in the various databases were published within the last few years, and because many of the articles are available in full text form, it is quite easy to gain access to recent findings that illustrate a point you'll be making in class. For example, if you are lecturing on lie detection in your introductory Communications course, you might select the Communication database (and, most likely, the Psychology database as well) and search under the terms lie detection, deception, deception detection, or similar descriptors. Doing so would reveal several popular and scientific articles published within recent years, any or all of which might provide a quick anecdote or a brief finding to add to your lecture. Similarly, a presentation on impulse buying in a Business or Marketing course might benefit from a quick search of that term in the General Interest or Marketing and Management databases. One of the items revealed by that search just might contain the fact, statistic, or tidbit you were looking for to spice up your lecture. In short, you can use the resources of ContentSelect to your advantage to improve your delivery of information to your students. Another way to use ContentSelect in the classroom would be to illustrate technical aspects of a class assignment. For example, let's say you've assigned a paper to the students in your Principles of Nursing class to be written following a particular style and format. Although the Research Navigator web site has a separate section describing various documentation styles, nothing illustrates a point like an example. Although you could search for any article on any topic (e.g., one related to the assignment, or one from your area of expertise), searching for wound care in the Nursing, Health, & Medicine database returned several articles available in PDF full-text format. Select any one of these and display it on students' computer monitors or via an overhead projection system. You may now elaborate at length, using this sample article, on any topic you wish: the mechanical aspects of APA or MLA style, the length and content of the various subsections of the article, particularly good or bad writing, the correct use of citations in the body of the text, grammatical conventions (such as parallel construction or nonsexist language), and so on. You can assign students to read a few articles on their own to get a feel for the tone, style, and writing used, or you could take matters into your own hands and illustrate for them what you have in mind by using a professional, published, formatted example. How-to.If you plan on using Research Navigator in a variety of capacities throughout the semester, you might consider devoting some class time to showing students how to use the elements of the web site effectively. Although working through the web site is a fairly intuitive process, students would benefit from being exposed to these resources early in the semester and from seeing how to access the different elements of the site. Depending on your circumstances, this could be done during a class period, during a portion of a class period (i.e., when you're discussing research methods in your discipline), or during a breakout session (e.g., a small group section of a large lecture course or a TA-led discussion section). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
