Monday found me working away on the research summaries for all of the articles that I had read up until that point. I have a meeting with my supervisor on Wednesday where we will review the summaries and decide on the next stages of the research process.
Wednesday began with an awesome meeting with my supervisor where we discussed what we had completed thus far and looked ahead to our next steps.
In my previous research sessions, I concentrated on the databases provided by H.W. Wilson and EBSCO. On Wednesday, I utilized ProQuest’s Library database for my latest search as I am very familiar with the advanced search options. As I am nearing the completion of my research, I wanted to set up a focused search to ensure that I retrieved all remaining items on the topic of distributed learning. I have included my search string below:
SUB(information literacy instruction)
AND (distance OR distributed OR off campus)
AND (education OR learning)
AND (utilizing the drop down menu for date, I choose the last 3 years)
While executing my search and linking to the individual articles through the SFX Link Resolver, I noted the suggested articles that are provided through the University of Saskatchewan’s catalogue (similar to a suggestion link in an online shopping site). I was able to find a couple of additional articles that way. Note to self: continue to pay attention to the suggestions!
Once the research component was finished, I decided to set up an alert for myself through ProQuest so that I would receive all new articles on this topic based on my search string above. I have it set to expire in 6 months.
From there, I created an EndNote Library of all of the articles that I have retrieved thus far. Yes, it makes more sense to create the citation library as you are conducting your research… but I tend to do it all at once as a final step. Normally, I probably would have manually recorded the citations into the paper for an ordinary research paper. One of the goals for this project is to publish our research, so creating a citation library will give us the ability to change from one citation style to another with relative ease. Note to self: create a citation library utilizing EndNote or RefWorks to manage citations while conducting your research.
Finally on Wednesday, I drafted an email that would be sent out to participants that we will request an interview with.
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