Has your professor assigned an annotated bibliography? Do you need help keeping track of all the sources for your research? Learn from Writing Cener Tutor Maddy Lee how to organize your sources and write effective annotations.
Register for the workshop here: https://mcdaniel.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cMuTXorH8PAVvMx
Do you need to create an annotated bibliography for an essay or other assignment? Come to this workshop to learn more about creating annotated bibliographies as well as learn about a research organization tool, Zotero. Bring a current assignment to practice on!
Location: Hoover Library Board Room
PowerPoints are the bane of many a student’s existence. They’re irritating, difficult to work with, and easy to tweak into an unreadable mess. The following ten tips should help, however, when approaching these sticky assignments.
Don’t be this person. Use an appropriate font and images with transparent backgrounds—avoid the white box around images!
Never do…basically any of this. Don’t use ‘cute’ fonts, yellow text, or even more than one font in your PowerPoint. Use contrast: cool colors in the background, like blue or gradient gray, go better with a little bit of text in a warm color, like red or plum.
Holy walls of text, Batman!
This would be a bad image to use in a PowerPoint about non-Euclidean geometries, for example.
You almost certainly don’t ever need to see this. Too many slides!
Not a good life OR writing motto.
Imagine yourself as Wonder Woman. Do her stance before every slide if you need to.
A creative way to use a cheat sheet. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spicker_trinkflasche.jpg
Don’t be this adorable robot. Be better than this adorable robot. Crush its adorable robot dreams into dust.
Log on and make an appointment today!
from http://www.clker.com/
Last week, I paged through each syllabus for my classes, looking for the page count for all of my papers. Chances are you’ve done the same. There’s always that feeling of joy when a paper that makes up big chunk of your grade is only five or so pages long. A short paper is not so bad, right? Then, on the flip side, there’s that feeling of complete helplessness when the minimum page requirement for a paper is ten pages or more. As I saw that I would be faced with more than one of those this semester, I began to panic. Here’s a list of tips I came up with that I plan on using to conquer my bajillion page papers:
– Rebekah, peer tutor
From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1195646/A-N-WILSON-Stressed-Oh-stop-whingeing-Lifes-easier.html
Have you ever been overwhelmed when searching for sources for a paper? Do you wonder how to sort out which sources will be the most helpful? Are you worried that you won’t have enough time to take notes on everything?
Fear not, young writer! Your friends at the trusty Writing Center have some tips for you on how to do more efficient research and how to take better notes. This way, you can organize your information so it can be put into your research paper without much hassle and stress.
Research Tips
From http://organizations.bloomu.edu/nsslha/research%20committee%20page.html
Be specific!
You’d be surprised at how many items come up in a search of something that may seem simple. Be as specific as possible when you are doing research online.
Use quotation marks.
If you use quotation marks in an online search, the database will search for that phrase in particular. For example, if you simply searched friendships among co-workers without quotations, you may find sources that use one or two of those keywords. BUT, if you search “friendships among co-workers,” you will be more likely to find a source with that exact phrasing.
Evaluate the source.
Is the article a scholarly, peer-reviewed article, or is it from a newspaper or magazine? You can narrow down the type of source you want when you search online. Also, if you’re using Google Scholar, it will tell you how many times that source has been cited in other works.
Don’t forget about the library!
The library is always a wonderful source for research. There are specific research librarians who are more than willing to help you find the sources you need. You can also use the multiple databases the library has to find scholarly sources. There is also a brand new feature on the library’s website this semester. Students who need help with finding sources can now engage in a live chat with librarians. How cool is that?!
Note-Taking Tips
From http://techforeducatorsashley.wikispaces.com/Summarizing+and+Note+Taking
Determine what information you need before you start.
Read your paper prompt and jot down a few ideas of information you think would be important to mention in your paper. This way, you’ll know what to look for as you’re reading through your sources.
Make a system.
Create your own way to take notes that best helps you organize the information. You could use bullet points for major headings and take notes on that section under that bullet point. Also, WRITE DOWN THE PAGE NUMBER! Every type of citation (MLA, APA, Chicago) requires a page number at some point. Save yourself some time and write down the page where you found the information so you don’t have to go back and look through an entire source for a sentence or two. Trust me, I’ve been doing this for a while and it helps TREMENDOUSLY.
Paraphrase.
Don’t write everything down word-for-word; try to paraphrase things into your own words so you can write similar ideas in your paper. If you find a direct quote that you might want to use, go ahead and copy it down verbatim (but make sure to label it as a direct quote so you remember).
If you use these tips the next time you have to write a research paper, it will make the process much smoother and organized. Good luck!
From http://carolinanaturally.blogspot.com/2013_06_19_archive.html
Check out these sources for more tips on research and note taking:
-Kelsey, Peer Tutor
You know that feeling. The one where you have a paper due tomorrow, the Writing Center is closed, it is way too late to email your professor with any questions, and all you have is a thesis statement. You’re not even sure if your thesis argument is well written, but at this point you just have to accept it.
Let’s first pretend your thesis statement is as follows:
“Historians have always debated the true cause of the start of the Civil War.”
It isn’t the best thing you have ever written, but it is a start! And the best thing about thesis statements is you can tweak them constantly as you write your paper.
Soo…about writing this paper… Unfortunately you cannot just turn in your argument and pray that your teacher will agree with you. The first place you can start is the most obvious! The Hoover Library–but wait, it’s three in the morning it’s past midnight so they must be closed. Well lucky for you, the library has its own website with a great place to search for books and articles that McDaniel College owns, as well as those available from other locations.
If you just click here: www.hoover.mcdaniel.edu, you can do a bunch of this research at any point of the day, from anywhere!
Click here for a more narrowed search:
Once this site has loaded the easiest option for you to click on is “Academic Search Complete.” This option allows you to search multiple databases all at once, which will widen your search and get you the best articles and journals for your paper. Be sure to check off “Scholarly Journals” and “Full Texts” to find the best articles for your research.
After you have completed all of those steps, type “causes of the American Civil War” into your search bar. Make sure you are specific in what you type into the search bar so you can narrow down the search even more. From there, the Internet does all of the work for you by finding your articles. Unfortunately, it can’t read them for you.
If your search looks like this, celebrate! You did it right.
Not let’s imagine you read a lot of useful articles. You probably read so many articles that you are overloaded with a lot of research that may not even help you. Here is where you will have to go back to the original thesis you have already decided on. As said before, your thesis may have to be changed.
As you researched the start of the Civil War, you realized that your thesis statement isn’t exactly what you want to argue anymore. Now you have to make a tough decision: keeping your body paragraphs or rewriting your thesis. Let’s be honest, the body of your paper is awesome, for a first draft, and you know it. The only thing to do now is tweak your thesis and make it fit what you’ve already got written!
Here is your thesis revision:
“Although historians have always debated the cause, the American Civil War started because of the debate on slavery and states’ rights.”
Perfect. Now you realize that this is what you have been trying to say all along. You jump up and do a weird little dance, hoping that your roommate is still passed out and that she didn’t see. You decide that you’re going to go to sleep before the sun comes up and they start cutting the grass at 6 a.m. outside of your room, and then you can proofread before you hand it in.
You, my friend, have done it. Eight perfect pages in one evening. Hopefully, you’ll never procrastinate again…but if you do, we’re always here for you!
For even more advice on this topic, check out our helpful presentation about next steps.