Helping International Students Succeed Academically through Research Process and Plagiarism Workshops.

Workshops on the research process and plagiarism were designed to meet the needs of international students at the University at Albany. The research process workshop covered formulating research questions, as well as locating and evaluating sources. The plagiarism workshop focused on acknowledging sources, quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing materials, citation styles, and avoiding plagiarism. The effectiveness of the workshops was measured by administering pre-and post-tests and by interviewing students several months after the workshops. The results showed that students achieved significant improvement for both the research process and plagiarism by attending the training, and they continued to apply new skills several months late

Citation Help in Databases: Helpful or Harmful?

A review of the help files in several major databases revealed that database vendors have begun including information on citing sources, which has the potential to be very useful to students. Surprisingly, 94% of the citation examples in the databases reviewed had errors. The average number of errors per example was 4.3. The citation help appears to have been put together quickly, with little thought and no proofreading. Librarians must insist that vendors correct or remove this information