Course Syllabus

Instructor note

Welcome to Intro to Research Strategies! My name is Gabe and I will be your instructor this quarter. You can always contact me through this Canvas site, but if you prefer you are welcome to call or email me directly.

Phone (text message enabled): 360-441-4741

Email: gabe.gossett@wwu.edu

Office hours: by appointment (online, phone, or face-to-face are all options, depending on what works for you)

Our class is organized around modules for each week, which you will find immediately listed the course homepage. In each module you will find a content page for the week, including learning objectives, readings, assignments for the week. Each module will include discussion post links, assignment links, and links to quizzes. It is best to use the modules to navigate through the course and its content since they are organized in chronological order. All activities for the course are required in order to pass.

I hope to make this a really interesting and useful class that will help you do better research at school, work and in your everyday life. We will talk a lot about scholarly research and academic information environments, but also a lot about information technologies (like Google, mobile technology, social media, etc.) that affect all aspects of our lives, even academic pursuits.

Accommodation and Disability

If you have special circumstances where a disability may impact your performance in the class please advise me or contact the Office of Student Life at 360-650-3844 so reasonable accommodations can be provided. Support can also be found at disAbility Resources for Students and Students for Disability Awareness.

Course mission

For students to learn skills relevant to finding, evaluating, and using information resources as part of a planned research process.

Course description

This course introduces students to the nature of research with emphasis on strategies for inquiry, locating research resources (especially electronic sources because it is an online course), assessing sources for authority, and selecting and incorporating material from sources into writing. 

As an online course many interactions and instruction will take place on Canvas. You will be able to access this class through your MyWestern login. The class Canvas site will have all of the course documents and links to resources and readings. There is no textbook for the class. Readings, podcasts, and viewing resources have been or will be selected that are appropriate to the topic of the class for each week. Otherwise, you should be doing readings related to your research bibliography assignment.

If there is interest, we can schedule a weekly online discussion time as well. If that is of interest to you, let me know and include some times that would work best for you. 

Course tools

This class will require that you become familiar with the following online collaborative research and writing tools. If you have technical questions or issues using either of these please contact me ASAP.

• Microsoft Word online.This will be used for your research bibliography major assignment.
• Zotero. This research management and citation exportation tool will be useful for your research bibliography assignment. You are not required to use Zotero for the entire course, but you should be experimenting with it and will likely find it very helpful.
  

Participation 

It is your responsibility to do the readings, assignments, and be engaged with course content.
 
Completion of all assignments, discussions, and quizzes are required to pass the course.

You should be regularly engaged in the online threaded discussions with classmates. You will notice that participation is 30% of your grade.  You will need to visit the course site and make discussion contributions at least twice a week. For the course discussions you will need to make an initial post each week by Thursday and respond to classmates by Sunday. Within the discussion forum each week you should have posting(s) that might include some of the following points:

• Your reaction to the discussion questions.
• Your reaction to the reading/listening/viewing materials assigned for the week. 
• Reactions to the posts of your peers. This means that you will need to make more than one posting per week. Saying "I agree," or the equivalent, is not a sufficient reaction. If you agree or disagree with a statement explain your point of view. Please avoid the type of statement that does not add to the content of the discussion.
• Ideas should be clearly communicated. You will not be graded on your grammar in the forums, but you do need to be able to convey your ideas clearly.
• All posts should be civil and refrain from being abusive. Likewise, you should not immediately assume postings are intended to be abusive. If you take offense to a statement, explain why you find it offensive and invite a civil dialog on the topic.
• I very much encourage you to consider doing video posts as an option. If you use Youtube, simply post a link to a Youtube post that includes your reaction.  

Grades and assignment values

• Research bibliography = 60% of total grade
• Participation  = 30% of total grade
• Library Information Tutorial (LIT) quizzes = 10% of total grade

Note on assignments

Many of the assignments for this class will be building the pieces that make up your major research bibliography assignment.

And finally . . .

Thanks for reading the syllabus! I'll let you know which of my two truths and a lie from the introductions is a lie. This is not the first time I am teaching this class online. I've done so many times. Each time the course has evolved and changed a bit, so be sure to let me know if there seems to be something that is not working for you, whether it is technical or with the design of assignment. I'm most interested in supporting you in your learning on research strategies, not making you struggle with technical issues or assignments that might be confusing.