The world is awash with scientific papers. Even if we restricted a survey to research within biological sciences, I guestimate that there are more papers published each month than your average academic could be expected to read in a lifetime. In these rich fields of information, how are students unfamiliar with the genre to develop [...]
But is it any good? An information literacy tutorial
At the Higher Education Academy STEM conference in April 2012, I presented a poster offering an outline into a blended-learning tutorial we have produced in order to help undergraduates develop their abilities to evaluate the academic merit of different resources they might find on the internet. The tutorial involves the students working individually to critique [...]
You know when you’ve been viper-ed
A tweet this morning from @jon_scott alerted me to the fact that sometime over the weekend, the University of Leicester has been visited by the PR machine for the Viper service. Paving slabs had been stencilled with the company’s logo and web address. Rather ingeniously, the marketeers have jet-washed the image rather than painting it [...]
Making the best of “Bad Science” (Review)
If you have not yet read Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science, then I thoroughly recommend that you do. As readers of his regular Guardian column or his website will already know, Goldacre has embarked on a campaign to root out example of pseudoscience and shoddy science whereever they may be found. All the usual villians [...]
Getting to grips with Information Literacy
From time to time I find myself ruminating on exactly how and where I acquired a variety of study skills. I have no recollection, for example, of any formalised training in finding and selecting source materials and yet even as an undergraduate I seemed to be reasonably adept at choosing relevant information. Back in those [...]
