Monday 7 November 2011

Would you like to brush up on your Internet research skills?

Of course you would! There is a wealth of good academic resources available online, but finding it amongst the mass of unreliable, biased and / or irrelevant information can be tricky. Your SMU librarian will be happy to help you identify the best online resources for your subject area, but if you'd like to hone your skills further, you could try the Internet Detective. It's part of the Intute Virtual Training Suite and was created as part of the Learn Higher project.

Internet Detective is a freely available, online tutorial designed to help you evaluate the quality of websites and point you in the right direction when it comes to selecting academically sound sources of information for your assignments. (Your library website is a good place to start!) Most of us think we're on the ball when it comes to Internet searching, but you might be surprised at what you learn. Were you aware that search engines don't search the whole Internet? For instance, there's lots of information in library databases that doesn't show up in a Google search. Internet Detective will help you find good information online, offer tips on evaluating that information and give advice on referencing and avoiding plagiarism. You can access the tutorial here: http://www.vtstutorials.ac.uk/detective/. Definitely worth a look!

No comments:

Post a Comment