MathComputer Science Technical Writing Course

1
Math/Computer Science Technical Writing Course
2
The Students

• Junior and Senior Computer Science Majors
• Junior and Senior Math Majors, mainly Math
  Education Majors
• Large Number of International and ESL Students

3
The Assignment

• Students pretend to be consultants for a biotech
  corporation. They research a technology and tell
  the company what type of technology is best for
  their needs.
• This decision should be based on scholarly,
  scientific research and not on consumer
  information.
• They need to include 4 primary (original),
  peer-reviewed research articles.

4
The Room

• All sessions are taught in a live computer lab.

5
Fall 2002 Session Outline

• Introduction to librarian and library services.
  (10 minutes)
• Lecture on scholarly vs. popular research and how
  to tell the difference. (15 minutes)
• Lecture on the invisible web, explaining why
  internet search engines usually do not find the
  scholarly research they need for this assignment.
  (15 minutes)
• Lecture/Demonstration of library databases and
  the best ones for their assignment. (15 minutes)
• Hands-on time students begin searching databases
  for articles on their topic. (15 minutes)

6
Pluses and Minuses

• A lot of information competence points were
  transferred.
• - Not enough hands-on time.
• - Mostly lecture, favoring one learning style.
• - Not practical enough to help them get their
  assignment done. This led to reference questions
  that could have been handled in the session.

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Fall 2003 Sessions Outline

• Introduction to librarian and library services.
  (5 minutes)
• With their instructor, discuss the assignment and
  what type of research theyll need primary,
  peer-reviewed articles. (5 minutes)
• Hands-on primary article identification
  assignment. Students work individually or in
  small groups and learn to identify primary
  research articles by reading abstracts (when
  possible). (10 minutes)
• Class comes back together and discusses the
  assignment as a group. (3-5 minutes)

8
Fall 2003 Sessions Outline (Cont.)

• Hands-on finding the full-text exercise.
  Students are given three citations and must
  figure out how they would get the whole article.
  (10 minutes)
• Class comes back together and discusses the
  assignment as a group. (3-5 minutes)
• Hands-on research strategy development exercise.
  Students learn to choose and combine keywords
  with Boolean logic. (10-15 minutes)
• Hands-on searching. Students begin searching
  databases for articles on their topic. (20
  minutes)

9
Positive Outcomes

• Teaches to more learning styles.
• Practical, hands-on experience without losing
  important information competence points.
• Reference questions outside the session seem to
  be more research-oriented with less how do I get
  the full-text? type questions.