Research Strategy for Searching the Literature more Effectively

Confusion and frustration are two of the emotions often felt by undergraduates when they are expected to do library research. They do no know where to start, and are unable to select appropriate terms or sources to search. Furthermore, instructors overestimate the literature research skills of their students. In CHEM 23201, a required one semester course, we introduced a research strategy worksheet as a way to guide students on things to consider when searching the literature. We assumed that they would need more help in using the unique features of the discovery tools than in selecting search terms. Our assumptions were wrong. An examination of the tenets of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains and its explanation of higher-order thinking skills, which include asking questions, could have predicted the difficulty the students initially had with the worksheet. This document is the accepted manuscript version of a published work that appeared in final form in Integrating Information Literacy into the Chemistry Curriculum, copyright © ACS after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see http://pubs.acs.org/isbn/9780841231740.