Peer Review

The Research Process: Seven Steps to Enlightened Research

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Reviewed:: Jun 26, 2011 by Information Technology

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: This tutorial was developed by Ferris State university Library. It's a very good overview of the 7 step research process. In the game, the detective is looking for a scroll. The detective (the user), spins the snake wheel to learn about the 7 processes of research. It's an interactive and amusing introduction to writing research papers or doing research in general.
Type of Material:: It's an animation and a tutorial. The material is designed for high school students or first year college students.
Recommended Uses:: The tutorial is an overview of the basic methods to search for relevant and useful information on any topic. The search can be linear or non linear (the wheel). The user clicks on the icons inside the snake or the topics on the descriptions on the snake to learn about each process.
Technical Requirements:: Firefox, Interent Explorer, Google Chrome, Flash plug in required. Go to http://adobe.com to install the free plug in.
Identify Major Learning Goals:: The players learn about brainstorming the topic, choosing the best keywords, searching the websites, searching the books (keeping an open mind that not all resources are digital), searching articles, and evaluating results.
Target Student Population:: Great introduction for a high school senior or a first year college student. This game could be used in conjunction with the Information Literacy game (http://library.uncg.edu/game/) to expand on the concepts and get more practical examples of information literacy.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: Writing skills, basic introduction to using the library, internet use

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:: It's a very engaging and humorous tutorial! It's highly enjoyable and relevant. The storyline is great and will appeal to a lot of users. The material is introduced in an interactive manner and is concise so that the user is not overwhelmed.
Concerns:: It would help if there were actually examples for each steps of the research. The current information is helpful but it's very basic. It would also help if each text window had links to examples (good use vs. inappropriate use of a resource).

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:: Engaging, easily remembered material, well presented, and very clear. Its other strength is the emphasis on applying these steps to any topic. The interactive "click on the snake" and "click on the icons" set up of the tutorial is user friendly.
Concerns:: This is a very encouraging quote to novice users: "The path to enlightened searching runs through parts of the Internet that you must access through the library. Do not be put off by these databases’ interfaces; the newspaper, magazine, and journal articles they contain will reward you amply for your trouble. Greatest success comes to those who search both general and subject-specific databases." In addition to this excellent point, it would be very helpful if the author included examples and links to databases, journals, and magazines as well as examples for each of the 7 steps.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:: Intuitive and clear interactive navigation. The whole theme is very engaging and condusive to learning about the research process. All that's really needed is a flash plug in.
Concerns:: Each window with the text (window pop ups), could be labeled with the title. Each window could also have a link to the other research steps and a "click here" option to learn more about the process. Launching of a pop up window should only take place when the item appears in the oval shape at the top of the snake.

Other Issues and Comments:: There is an assumption that users have a basic understanding of using the library, the encyclopedias, and dictionaries. Although it is a reasonable assumption, especially for college students, that's not always the case. In the introduction to the game, the authors could include a short presentation on the basics of using various resources for the 7 steps of research.
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