Increasing Effective Student Use of the Scientific Journal Literature

University Of Tennessee Knoxville, Knoxville TN

Investigators

Abstract

The University of Tennessee, School of Information Sciences and Center for Information Studies, is partnering with the Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) in this project to help undergraduate users recognize, access, and evaluate high quality scientific and technical information. The project's intent is to ameliorate the fact that college students, in particular lower division undergraduates, often do not recognize the importance of high quality scientific journal literature. Faced with many choices, they may opt for accessing information that is most convenient, rather than carefully evaluating the content and quality of the many digital resources available to them. The work builds on OSTI's efforts to enable access to scientific and technical report literature, through web-based services such as DOE Information Bridge and the PrePRINT Network. These resources are available to undergraduate users, yet they do not have components that will bring undergraduate science students to them. Such collections have great potential for undergraduate use via collaborative learning environments and provide testbeds for enhancing educational access to all parts of a national digital network of learning environments for SMET education. Focus groups are identifying useful search and retrieval features for undergraduates, graduate students, and science faculty; and selected features are being implemented and tested.