Research helps us understand our role in the universe and make better decisions. We are inquisitive—it is what makes us human. To be able to conduct high-quality research is paramount to understanding our place in space.

Chances are, each of you already knows how to find some online information to fill a particular need. What you may not already know—or perhaps you do, and that's why you're here—is that the thousands of results you get from an Internet search may not represent the best information available on a topic, and may not encompass the broad, cross-disciplinary scope of research being done in a particular field. This course is designed to help students worldwide find, evaluate, and use information efficiently, effectively, and ethically for academic work—to go beyond the search engine.

If you are new to the course...

If you are a returning student, click the links below to jump to the weekly modules or click Modules on the left side of the page.

WEEK 1
Information

Introduce yourself
Identify types of information

WEEK 2
Evaluation

Explore peer-review
Evaluate authors and content

WEEK 3
Searching

Learn simple search strategies
Limit search results

WEEK 4
Ethics

Explore copyright and fair use
Review citations and plagiarism

WEEK 5
Resources

Explore the Internet
Find scholarly open-access resources

WEEK 6
Presenting

Quote, paraphrase, and summarize
Present research effectively

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License and can be attributed to Rose Petralia and Jared Campbell. Some material is based on Mastering Academic Research, originally developed at Florida Institute of Technology.