Presents a casebook on the song "American Pie" that considers how to define the parameters of short narrative. Describes the creation of an end-of-term cumulative writing project that the authors have successfully employed for the last decade. Discusses how they put together a casebook that teaches the necessary research skills. (SG)

The skills that are called on for dissertation and dissertation work are somewhat different from those that are used for regular course requirements. Whereas academic courses have clear beginnings and endings, the dissertation project is a somewhat open-ended task and the dissertation process is relatively unstructured. Success in completing the…

Suggests how to reduce student passivity in large-enrollment college level classes by directing students to participate in a social survey which involves research replication. (Author/DB)

Calls for reform in university education have prompted a movement from teacher- to student-centered course design, and included developments such as peer-teaching, problem- and inquiry-based learning. In the sciences, inquiry-based learning has been widely promoted to increase literacy and skill development, but there has been little comparison to…

Describes a technique which involves asking students to first write an opinion paper and then to transform it into a research paper. (DD)

"Developing and Assessing an Online Research Writing Course" discusses how the Writing Program at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) created a hybrid, online research writing course, Writing 50, and assessed that course. The assessment, which is at the center of this piece, was dovetailed with assessment literature in…

A study was conducted to: depict the current types of research assistantships in universities; ascertain students' perceptions of their assistantship experiences; depict the specific activities of research assistants; determine whether today's assistantships provide a genuine research apprenticeship; and compare today's assistantships with those…

Each year that the author of this paper, an English instructor at Moorhead College (Minnesota), teaches the first-year "research paper," one instructor turns more and more to collaborative writing work. And she admits that some of her motives in reshaping the research paper in collaborative ways can seem to be based in assisting herself…

Efforts have been made by the Cornell University Libraries (New York) reference staff to assist students with their library research for a popular undergraduate course in human sexuality. Librarians have found the course to be a serious problem for both their reference and stack collections as most students do not understand research strategy,…

Describes a six-week Hero Inquiry project in detail so readers may implement similar units of study in their classrooms. Concludes that most of the students enjoyed the activities because they focused on strengthening skills for online research, and the hero theme was successful because students were allowed to research a self-selected topic of…

Presents several lessons about student research learned by a school librarian who returned to graduate school. Highlights include the importance of self-confidence, the overview stage of the research process, the diversity of approaches to research, writer's bloc, creative thinking, and the effects of personal events on schoolwork. (MES)

Literature and liberal arts college students' early research experience usually stresses methodology and is carefully structured and supervised. In advanced work, students must begin to develop habits of critical thinking, personal involvement with their material, and development of a metacritical attitude. (MSE)

This study examined evaluations of various aspects of research training held by directors of and graduate students in counseling psychology training programs, both APA approved programs and a sample of non-approved ones. While nearly all respondents felt it desirable to require full courses in both counseling research methodology and content, only…

Finds that undergraduate students in an introductory psychology class acquired more favorable attitudes toward research as a result of their active participation in the creation and presentation of a poster that illustrates their independent work. Appends poster session instructions. (RS)

Examines processes used when high school students were presented with documents about the Tonkin Gulf Incident. Finds that mental models created by students were more internally consistent after reading at least two documents, but did not become more consistent after that. Notes that students tended to ignore information in the texts when giving…