A report of preliminary findings and analysis from student discussion groups held on 7 U.S. campuses in Fall 2008, as part of Project Information Literacy. Qualitative data from discussions with higher education students across the country suggest that conducting research is particularly challenging. Students' greatest challenges are related to…

Books and courses on research methods, statistics, or both, often necessarily focus on one topic at a time. This compartmentalized approach prevents students from seeing the big picture. To address this shortcoming, I developed an exercise through which students experience the whole research process in a single class period. From posing a…