These lessons are designed to support the research you are asked to do in your various classes. Understanding the key concepts in these lessons will enhance your learning, as well as saving you time. Each one will take you about 20 minutes, perhaps a little longer if English is not your first language. Browser Note: Use Internet Explorer to view these tutorials. They may not function correctly with Mozilla Firefox.

Evidence

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Many of our opinions about things are based on very poor evidence. One of the goals of a college education is to learn how to form ideas based on solid evidence rather than rumors, hearsay, and isolated examples. Learn more about how to find good solid evidence to support your papers and projects.

Databases

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Searching databases is easy. But searching them well is a little harder than it looks. A good database search is both effective - it finds the kind of material you're looking for and efficient - it does so without wasting hours of your time looking through thousands of irrelevant items. See how it's done.

Citation

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You have your handbook and it's like staring at a brick wall - page after page of examples. What are you supposed to do with it! This lesson breaks the process down into three steps and helps you get to the right page of the handbook every time.

Deepening Your Research

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Tired of typing phrases into databases and looking through a mess of hits, hoping that some of them will be what the teacher's after? This lesson will teach you specific techniques that will make your research more interesting, both to you and your teacher. And it's not that hard!