RES 500 OL - Research Strategies

A ONE CREDIT GRADUATE LEVEL INTERACTIVE COURSE IN INFORMATION RESEARCH SKILLS

prepared by William Badke (REVISED December 2011)

Home         Syllabus         Assignments         Submissions

Instructions and Due Dates


  SYLLABUS

ASSOCIATED CANADIAN THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS
of TRINITY WESTERN UNIVERSITY

RES 500 OL                                   Research Strategies                            One Credit 
  Syllabus
William B. Badke
              

I. Course Description

A study of the basic strategies required for the effective researching of a wide variety of topics. Areas covered include topic viability, location of materials in several formats, computer database searching (including the Internet), information evaluation, reading strategies, note organization, and the outlining and writing processes.
 

 II. Course Objectives

The student will:

A. demonstrate the ability to formulate a strategy for research;

B. demonstrate the ability to make a topic viable and organize its sub points;

C. demonstrate an appreciation for planned research from topic to completed paper.

 

III. Textbook

The textbook for the course is:

Research Strategies: Finding Your Way through the Information Fog, 4th ed. (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse.com, 2011), ISBN: 9781462010172 ($20.95US). It has also been released in full version as an Adobe e-book, ISBN: 9781462010189 ($9.95 US).Other formats are linked at http://acts.twu.ca/library/textbook.htm.

Cover Image

 


IV. Assignments

NOTE: All assignments are in this website. No use will be made of the e-courses or MyCourses websites. Follow the links. All assignments must be completed in order for you to pass the course.

LINK TO THE ASSIGNMENTS FOR THIS COURSE

Grading Scale

V. Due Dates              

ASSIGNMENTS        RES 500 OL Due Dates          RES 500 K Due Dates       

Assignment #1          January 26, 2012                   February 2, 2012     
Assignment #2          February 16, 2012                 February 23, 2012          
Assignment #3          March 8, 2012                       March 15, 2012     
Assignment #4          March 29, 2012                     March 29, 2012  
Assignment #5         April 10, 2012                          April 12, 2012         

      

Supplement: Important Academic Notes from ACTS


Web Support – Student Portal https://students.twu.ca
All students at TWU have a TWUPass username and password. This is determined at the time of an online application or can be managed through the computing services help desk or the link on the student portal. Your student email account is also available through this student portal and is vital for communication about grades, account statements, lost passwords, sign-up instructions, etc. If you do not know your account or password, there is a link at the login area called “I forgot my password.” When you click on that link, you will be walked through the process of retrieving your account information.


Class Cancellation Policy
In the event of extreme weather conditions or other emergency situations, please consider the website the primary source of information, along with the TWU bulletin line 604.513.2147. The University will communicate information regarding the cancellation of classes to the following radio stations: CKNW (980 AM), CKWX (1130 AM), STAR FM (107.1 FM), PRAISE (106.5 FM) and KARI (550 AM). Should there be conflicting reports regarding class cancellations, the TWU website and bulletin line are to be considered correct.
An initial announcement regarding the status of the campus and cancellation of classes is made by 6:00 AM and covers all classes beginning before 1:00PM.
A second announcement is made by 11:00AM that covers all classes which begin between 1:00PM and 5:00PM.
A third announcement is made by 3:00PM and covers those classes which begin after 5:00PM.


These resources will provide you information about our local weather and road conditions:
• Talking Yellow Pages Weather for Vancouver 299-9000 3501
• Talking Yellow Pages Road Conditions for B.C. 299-9000
• The Weather Network's Langley forecast


Paper Formatting
Students need to adhere to Turabian format except in counselling courses, for which APA format is used.
Students are encouraged strongly to use RefWorks (available through the library home page www.twu.ca/library) as their bibliographical manager and as a tool for formatting bibliographies. They will need to be aware of the need to “clean up” most bibliographies generated by this program. Students are encouraged to view the documents on the following websites for format samples:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/turabian/turabian_citationguide.html  or www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/. Note that in RefWorks the available formatting styles are those of Turabian (Notes), 7th edition, and APA – American Psychological Association, 6th edition.
Please check with your professor to see which one he/she recommends you use!!


Research Ethics
Please note that all research projects involving human participants undertaken by members of the TWU university community (including projects done by ACTS students to satisfy course or degree requirements) MUST be approved by the Trinity Western University Research Ethics Board. Information and forms may be found at http://www.twu.ca/academics/research/ethics/ Those needing additional clarification may contact William Badke. Please allow at least three (3) weeks from the date of submission for a review of the application.


Academic Integrity and Avoiding Plagiarism at TWU
As Christian scholars pursuing higher education, academic integrity is a core value of the entire TWU community. Students are invited into this scholarly culture and required to abide by the principles of sound academic scholarship at TWU. This includes, but is not limited to, avoiding all forms of plagiarism and cheating in scholarly work. TWU has a strict policy on plagiarism (http://www.twu.ca/studenthandbook/university-policies/).
Learning what constitutes plagiarism and avoiding it is the student's responsibility. An excellent resource describing plagiarism and how to avoid it has been prepared by TWU Librarian William Badke and is freely available for download (PPT file) or used as flash (self running) tutorials of varying lengths from:
http://acts.twu.ca/library/plagiarism.ppt
http://acts.twu.ca/library/Plagiarism.swf (14 minute flash tutorial)
http://acts.twu.ca/library/Plagiarism_Short.swf (8 minute flash tutorial)


Equity of Access
It is the responsibility of a student with a learning disability to inform the ACTS Director of Student Life of that fact before the beginning of a course so that necessary arrangements may be made to facilitate the student’s learning experience. We are unable to accommodate any student who informs the Director of Student Life of a disability after the beginning of class.

Revised December 12, 2011