This seminar is intended to help students in the MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Joint Program develop a broader perspective on their thesis research by considering some aspects of science in the large. The first part of the course challenges students to develop a thoughtful view towards major questions in science that can be incorporated in their own research process, and that will help them articulate research findings. The second part of the course emphasizes science as a social process and the important roles of written and oral communication.

Social Problems: Continuity and Change by Steve Barkan is a realistic but motivating look at the many issues that are facing our society today. As this book’s subtitle, Continuity and Change, implies, social problems are persistent, but they have also improved in the past and can be improved in the present and future, provided that our nation has the wisdom and will to address them.

It is easy for students to read a social problems textbook and come away feeling frustrated by the enormity of the many social problems facing us today. Social Problems: Continuity and Change certainly does not minimize the persistence of social problems, but neither does it overlook the possibilities for change offered by social research and by the activities of everyday citizens working to make a difference. Readers of Steve Barkan’s book will find many examples of how social problems have been improved and of strategies that hold great potential for solving them today and in the future.

You will find several pedagogical features help to convey the “continuity and change” theme of this text and the service sociology vision in which it is grounded: Each chapter begins with a “Social Problems in the News” story related to the social problem discussed in that chapter. These stories provide an interesting starting point for the chapter’s discussion and show its relevance for real-life issues. Three types of boxes in each chapter provide examples of how social problems have been changed and can be changed.

At its most basic definition the practice of law comprises conducting research to find relevant rules of law and then applying those rules to the specific set of circumstances faced by a client. However, in American law, the legal rules to be applied derive from myriad sources, complicating the process and making legal research different from other sorts of research. This text introduces first-year law students to the new kind of research required to study and to practice law. It seeks to demystify the art of legal research by following a “Source and Process” approach. First, the text introduces students to the major sources of American law and describes the forms the various authorities traditionally took in print. After establishing this base, the text proceeds to instruct students on the methods they will most likely use in practice, namely electronic research techniques and the consultation of secondary sources. Sources of Law incorporates screencasts currently hosted on YouTube that actively demonstrate the processes described in the static text. Finally, the text illustrates how the different pieces come together in the legal research process.

Sources of Law focuses on realistic goals for 1Ls to learn in a relatively small amount of instruction time, and so focuses mainly on the basics. It does introduce some advanced material so that 1Ls can recognize pieces of information they may encounter in research, but it does not fully cover researching materials outside the scope of the traditional 1L course. As such, it is best-suited for introductory legal research courses for 1Ls.

According to Project Information Literacy, defining and narrowing a topic is the most difficult step for beginning undergraduate researchers. This concept mapping lesson is designed to reinforce the idea that when students are writing academic papers or creating class projects they are engaging in a scholarly conversation.

This activity shows students how to match their information needs and search strategies to appropriate search tools. In this case, students are learning how to find and use academic databases in order to locate resources that are relevant to their academic research assignment.

In this lesson, students will distinguish between experimental and literary research and sort sources to determine the relevance and validity of scientific information to a given problem.  They will also identify and explain the relevance of parts of an article to the given problem.

Why Writing Works: Disciplinary Approaches to Composing Texts is an open-access, online textbook resource for college writing. It is written for an audience of second-year college students with a focus on writing in the disciplines.

Third revision, August 2017.

Welcome to Writing Unleashed, designed for use as a textbook in first-year college composition programs, written as an extremely brief guide for students, jam-packed with teachers’ voices, students’ voices, and engineered for fun.

This textbook was created by Dana Anderson, Ronda Marman, and Sybil Priebe - all first-year college composition instructors at the North Dakota State College of Science in Wahpeton, ND.

Download here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JoX94RjwS-WoPnGCyIZ9ZTQeX74iG9hS

This course packet seeks to develop the upper level engineering student’s sense of audience and purpose in a research-based context with workplace constraints. It requires the student to choose a technical topic of interest and research it to solve for a specific problem or to meet a typical industry need by way of several assignments: Unsolicited Research Proposal, Progress Report, Visual Aids, and Oral Presentation, all of which lead to the Formal Report. This approach readies students to write informatively and persuasively in the engineering workplace, providing excellent examples of each assignment contributed by former students whose Formal Reports have won first place in the annual Technical Writing Competition. Because users can rely on demonstrably excellent student examples to understand the concepts behind assignments that build on one another rather than on disparate textbook examples, they tend to write better and to be more confident producing documents and giving presentations. In short, they recognize they are among their own in a class that challenges many engineering students. Moreover, since all the Formal Reports have won awards, convincing students they are using good models with which to create their own documents is relatively easy. Finally, mining excellent student documents makes certain skill-sets clearer, according to former students. For instance, students can follow along as the writer does the following: identifies and proves a problem or need exists; creates the research objectives that lead to the method with which they will address the issue; and develops persuasive strategies for convincing both executive and engineering readers. Similarly, these student papers demonstrate how to discern among results, conclusions, and recommendations and show correct use of sources and visuals.