Maths 3rd year Oct 2016Session 2

Developing critical searching skills

In this workshop we will :

• Consider what critical searching means?

• Start to develop critical searching skills

• Learn how to evaluate information

• Use these skills to find quality information

• Plus - Referencing

What does ‘critical’ mean?Finding fault: negative comment e.g. ‘Not good enough’.

Key, decisive, crucial: ‘a critical moment’, ‘critically ill’, ‘a critical decision’.

In your University work being ‘critical’ means: being thoughtful, asking questions, not taking things you read and hear at face value.

When searching for information ‘critical’ means: thinking carefully about the information you find, evaluating it, asking questions, considering its authority, reflecting on it etc.

Williams, K. 2014 Getting critical. 2 edn. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

“We can describe a book or a journal article as an artefact, a published and describable entity: you look for it, you find it, you’re done. Or we can describe information in terms of its contribution to knowledge…….you find it, you read it, you start answering back to it.”

Emma Coonan, 2014

Trustworthy and reliable sources

Blog Professor

Conference proceeding

An unpublished researcher

WikipediaPublished academic

Critical searcher: questions to ask

• Who • What • Where • When • Why

Try it out

• Who • What • Where • When • Why

Broaden: USA OR America or comput*

Exclude: Apple NOT fruit or -Amazon

Narrow: network AND security

Phrase/exact match: “human computer interaction” or +Ideo or “IDEO”

Academic sources: “project management” +ac or +edu

Get answers: Define: “paper prototyping” or Alan Turing developed*

Streamlining your search

http://libguides.mdx.ac.uk/Computing/SearchTips

A critical look at URLs

https://www.lms.ac.uk/

http://www.mathsdoctor.co.uk/

In the URL What it means

.com (US or anywhere)

.co.uk (UK)Commercial organisation or company big or small

.fr .au .uk .sa The country where the organisation/company is located

.org A non profit organisation

.edu (US)

.ac.uk (UK)Academic institutions

.gov A government agency

Williams, K. 2014 Getting critical. 2 edn. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

MyUniHub > MyStudy > MyLibrary > Databases > C

http://libguides.mdx.ac.uk/CSRef 

Give it a go

Avoiding Plagiarism: find out moreMy Library > MySubject > Science & Technology > Maths & Stats > Skills

http://libguides.mdx.ac.uk/MathsStats/Skills

Need further help?

Your Librarian is:Vanessa Hill v.hill@mdx.ac.uk

http://libguides.mdx.ac.uk/MathsStats/Help