Math/Computer Science Technical Writing Course

The Students

Junior and Senior Computer Science Majors

Junior and Senior Math Majors, mainly Math Education Majors

Large Number of International and ESL Students

The Assignment

Students pretend to be consultants for a biotech corporation. They research a technology and tell the company what type of technology is best for their needs.

This decision should be based on scholarly, scientific research and not on consumer information.

They need to include 4 primary (original), peer-reviewed research articles.

The Room

All sessions are taught in a live computer lab.

Fall 2002 Session Outline

Introduction to librarian and library services. (10 minutes)Lecture on scholarly vs. popular research and how to tell the difference. (15 minutes)Lecture on the invisible web, explaining why internet search engines usually do not find the scholarly research they need for this assignment. (15 minutes)Lecture/Demonstration of library databases and the best ones for their assignment. (15 minutes) Hands-on time: students begin searching databases for articles on their topic. (15 minutes)

Pluses and Minuses

+ A lot of information competence points were transferred.

- Not enough hands-on time.

- Mostly lecture, favoring one learning style.

- Not practical enough to help them get their assignment done. This led to reference questions that could have been handled in the session.

Fall 2003 Sessions Outline

Introduction to librarian and library services. (5 minutes)With their instructor, discuss the assignment and what type of research they’ll need: primary, peer-reviewed articles. (5 minutes)Hands-on primary article identification assignment. Students work individually or in small groups and learn to identify primary research articles by reading abstracts (when possible). (10 minutes)Class comes back together and discusses the assignment as a group. (3-5 minutes)

Fall 2003 Sessions Outline (Cont.)

Hands-on finding the full-text exercise. Students are given three citations and must figure out how they would get the whole article. (10 minutes)

Class comes back together and discusses the assignment as a group. (3-5 minutes)

Hands-on research strategy development exercise. Students learn to choose and combine keywords with Boolean logic. (10-15 minutes)

Hands-on searching. Students begin searching databases for articles on their topic. (20 minutes)

Positive Outcomes

Teaches to more learning styles.Practical, hands-on experience without losing important information competence points.Reference questions outside the session seem to be more research-oriented with less “how do I get the full-text?” type questions.