Academic Research – searching from your reference list

Posted on February 8, 2009 Written by

If you (like me) find chasing down references for academic assignments to be a challenge then you may be interested in this. My use-case is the exploring stage where you would like to save a reference then search Scholar for that author and/or search on the title of the article.

I have just enabled Refworks references to link back to Google Scholar search. Google Scholar (which links neatly to your university’s library) naturally pairs with Refworks (I am currently on a 30-day free trial of this magic service for accumulating references from Scholar) But vanilla Refworks is a deadend. But help is at hand — now you use a greasemonkey script (greasemonkey is a plug-in for Firefox browser) to link back to Scholar search!

The script is called œRefworks link to Google Scholar and it makes Refworks.com link back to Scholar! As shown here …
refworks with the script enabled

Without the script enabled, the Refworks view normally shows like this …
refworks without the script enabled

Enjoy!

This script just scratches the surface of what is possible!

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Academic Writing experiences with Google Scholar

Posted on February 6, 2009 Written by

I have been writing a paper on internal marketing and marketing orientation and hitting Google Scholar and a trial subscription to Refworks pretty hard.

I have a few of use-cases that I would like to see better support for.

1) Given a search term which are the foundational break-through papers that initially defined the concept and defined the “ground” of the concept.
2) For a search term, which are the key papers that stand within the tradition established by the foundational papers that have developed the ideas in the last 5 years. This could be translated into the query: “For a search term’s group of most cited N (therefore foundational) authors find all papers in the last Y years that cite M or more of them.”

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Improving engagement in Distance Education

Posted on August 8, 2008 Written by

I am studying at the moment and would like to see an increase in the consistent engagement level demanded of me during the 14 or so weeks of the semester. At the same time, I would like to see this done in a way that doesn’t impact on the instructor’s time. Here is a suggestion:

Student Sourcing Multiple Choice Questions Weekly Activity
This weekly activity could count for (say) 10% of the student’s total score.

Each week, students

  1. use a small web application to develop and enter a week-specific multiple choice question with four answers to a bank of student created questions for this subject and
  2. answer two questions that other students have entered.

When a student creates a question, they must give the text/ web reference that justifies their answer.

A student league table is maintained by the application showing a score calculated as:

  • +2 for each question authored and submitted before the end of the relevant week.
  • +1 for each question that the student answers correctly,

Quality is maintained through a challenge process. When answering questions entered by someone else, a student may believe that the question is off-topic or just wrong, if so, they may challenge the question. A challenge is resolved by the instructor. A successful challenger is given two points from the question’s author’s tally and the question is removed from the question bank. In order to discourage frivolous challenges, an unsuccessful challenger gives up three points to the author who was proved correct and the question is marked as “validated” to prevent further futile challenges.

If this, or something similar, had been in place for my current subject – I would be much better prepared for my exam today!

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