Departments and programmes in higher education are required to participate in an increasing number of programme, course and student assessments. These assessment requirements are also opportunities to develop student skills related to scientific literacy and research, if students are included in the process of developing, administering and…

This report presents findings about the challenges today's college freshmen face, and the information-seeking strategies they develop, use, and adapt as they make the transition from high school to college and begin to complete college-level research assignments. Included are data from a comparative analysis of library resources in 30 US high…

This paper presents a project which was conducted in a capstone course in Information Security. The project focused on conducting research concerning the various aspects of phishing, such as why phishing works and who is more likely to be deceived by phishing. Students were guided through the process of conducting research: finding background and…

We surveyed departments nationally to better understand the extent of scientific opportunities and experiences for undergraduate psychology students. Results showed intradepartmental variability, but overall students can expect 7 courses that offer research experiences in the typical psychology curriculum. Nonetheless, research is often not the…

A successful undergraduate research experience depends on a good mentor/ teacher. Surveys, interviews, and focus group discussions reveal that students and their mentors agree that research learning is very different from classroom learning. They do however disagree about some of the dynamics and priorities of the mentoring relationship. (Contains…

East Carolina University, Greenville (North Carolina) uses a semester hour credit course as its method of teaching library-research skills to freshmen. The course is required of all new students and is designed to introduce them to the academic library. The usefulness of the course was studied through an exploration of attitude changes among 110…

Reports results of a 1995 survey of 56 doctoral programs in public administration and public affairs, finding that public administration is a fragmented, interdisciplinary field, but many doctoral programs are training students for research careers. A lingering concern is whether these innovations are making a difference in the quantity and…

A rationale and guidelines are presented for using social science research methodologies to teach elementary school social studies. The goal of using these methodologies is to help children develop independent and self-directed thinking and problem-solving skills. The authors describe four research approaches and give examples of how each…

A study, using a specific patient encounter as the focal point for each student's research, is described that documents the skills of entering freshmen medical students before and immediately after a short course emphasizing information retrieval and at follow-up one year later. (MLW)

Designed for middle school students, this award winning, six-day teaching unit helped students learn about the concepts of specialization, interdependence, efficiency, and profit. At the onset of the lesson the students were already familiar with the concepts of scarcity, goods, services, profits, supply, demand, and opportunity costs. The unit's…

To undertake rigorous research in biology and ecology, students must be able to pose testable hypotheses, design decisive studies, and analyse results using suitable statistics. Yet, few biology students excel in topics involving statistics and most attempt to evade optional courses in research methods. Over the last few years, we have developed…