Prof. Casey Miller, University of South Florida
"Development and insights from a literature searching method for undergraduates"
A surprising number of undergraduates have never been introduced to scientifically reputable literature. Consequently, physics term papers at the sophomore level often include citations to random and/or Wikipedia-like web sites rather than peer-reviewed journals. We will describe a method we recently developed to train undergraduate students to efficiently search the scientifically reputable literature [Miller et al., Am. J. Phys. 77, 1112 (2009)]. The method was tested on undergraduate and graduate students with varying backgrounds in scientific literature searching. Students involved in this study showed marked improvement in their awareness of how and where to find reputable scientific information. Additionally, there is some evidence that this may be a cost-effective method to introduce undergraduate students to modern physics research, locally and globally, which may enable a relatively early entry into active research labs.
