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ENG 104 Composition II
College-Level Research:
The Instructor's Thoughts
For a college student, effective research skills are as fundamental to success as the ability to read, to write, and to think critically. While this has always been true of college study, recent years have witnessed a tidal wave of information available through electronic media and the Internet, challenging students' abilities to access relevant and authoritative information.
The Internet, while holding great promise as a rich source of useful research information, imposes two crucial handicaps on the researcher:
2. Authoritative and non-authoritative information co-exist on the Internet, and it is just as easy to access one as it is the other. In fact, it is the very ease with which the researcher can access far-flung information that poses the greatest challenge. Careless or casual Internet research which fails to subject all information and all claims to rigorous standards of evaluation is certain to produce poor results.
F.G.
1. The Internet is not a library (a word which implies organization). It is vast and unorganized. As yet, there exist no master indexes or catalogs of its resources (comparable to the traditional card catalog of a library). While improving steadily, today's Internet search engines (such as Altavista, Infoseek, Lycos, and others) still provide only a relatively crude means of locating relevant information. The college researcher must develop patient, careful, and thorough methods when searching the Internet.
This means that it is vital that students cultivate good research and information skills, whether in libraries, the Internet, or other venues. Here is how Louise Bucco, Kirtland's director of learning resources, puts it: There has been unprecedented growth in the volume of information. Students need effective information skills to be able to sort through the wealth of information available and to determine the best sources for each purpose. Moreover, information skills are essential to democratic citizenship: we must have access to information in all formats, and be able to use information effectively in making decisions about complex issues.
As Kirtland's course in research methods, Composition II asks students to practice sound college-level research skills. This means that the course requires students to practice good library methods in a college or university library. It also means that students are expected to employ rigorous methods when using the Internet to conduct their research.
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