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What is RefWorks?
| Using RefWorks |
Bullitzer Winners |
Environmental
Project | Mentor Initiative
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| SmartThinking
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What Does RefWorks Do?
- cited from USF Library website   Drew
Smith, Nancy Cunningham, and Quentin Vieregge
discuss Public Writing (10/01/07). |
Using RefWorks by Drew
Smith Many USF students and faculty struggle with managing the vast amount of information they come across as they do research. Undergraduate students often lack experience in recording the specific data items needed to produce accurate citations for their research papers. Researchers may be dealing with keeping track of hundred  s or eventhousands of relevant academic books and research articles. Fortunately, USF students and faculty have free access to an online citation-management service, RefWorks, that can automatically capture bibliographic citation information from the USF Libraries Catalog and from numerous Libraries-provided that article databases, organize those citations into folders, and then produce Word-ready "Works Cited" pages in numerous standard citation styles for research papers. RefWorks is available from the USF Libraries website (www.lib.usf.edu) under the Research Help tab. After clicking on the RefWorks link, users can learn more about RefWorks or login to their RefWorks account. The login screen also provides an opportunity for the USF user to create his/her RefWorks account, if one has not already been created. Once logged into RefWorks, the user can then navigate the Libraries Catalog and other databases to search for relevant resources, and then export chosen items to their RefWorks account. The RefWorks user can create any number of folders to organize their work, such as a folder for each student assignment. The items in these folders will remain for as long as the user is affiliated with USF, so a student will be able to access the same items for later assignments in the same or future courses. Finally, the student user may choose a citation style, such as MLA or APA, and have RefWorks prepare a bibliography in that style using items chosen from a folder. The resulting bibliography can then be copied and pasted into a research paper. If you're an instructor who assigns research papers to your students, why not encourage your students to try RefWorks? And if you're a student or faculty researcher, why not try RefWorks for yourself? |
The FYC Committee and the Bullitzer Award Committee would like to congratulate all the students who submitted their papers to this year's First Year Writing contest. From this abundance of submissions came this year's winners who include 1101 students - Katherine Boswell and Jenna Dionisio - and 1102 winners, Michael Curry and Vanessa Dornisch. Sulynn Hago' and Boris Gershwin also received recognition for their exemplary blogs. These students produced excellent work
partially because of their teachers'
efforts, and these educators should be recognized, too: Kate
Zephyrhawke, Angel Jimenez, Marian Conklin, Kim Murray, and Vivian
Taylor. Members of the Bullitzer Committee and the FYC Policy
Committee read through each of these essays and compared them
carefully to pick the top four essays. After these essays were
picked, Mike Shuman's Advanced Technical Writing class formatted
them into this year's Bullitzer booklet. The winners will
receive recognition at the English Awards Ceremony in April.
In the last edition
of this newsletter, our FYC Director, Dr. Joe Moxley, wrote, "We
invite you to review our program curriculum and offer contributions
to it."
We would like to thank Dr. Maya Trotz, Assistant Professor for the
Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, for her contribution
to our program's environmentalism project in 1102. We would also
like to encourage professors across the campus to continue to
contribute their ideas to our program. Below is brief summary of
what students are doing as a result:
This spring, some
1102 classes are adding a community-service dimension to their third
major project by teaming up with the Sustain-A-Bul campaign. This
series of programs, planned by an interdisciplinary group of faculty
and staff, is designed to raise awareness and encourage action on
issues promoting sustainable healthy communities on the USF campus
and beyond. The campaign is a part of a larger Tampa Bay project
called “goinggreentampabay.com” which involves USF, the Hillsborough
County City-County Planning Commission, and Tampa’s Urban Charrette.
Participating 1102 students will write a formal report on a
sustainability issue, write a letter to a representative or
newspaper, and create a media project to be shared with community
members. Many of these media projects will be displayed at the Green
Expo, a major event held in the USF Sundome on April 12. Other
students will use their research to develop online resources for the
community at the official
Going Green Tampa Bay Wiki(http://goinggreentampabay
This project will push students in a number of unique, exciting
ways. To encourage inter-class collaboration, they will use a
planning wiki to describe their research plans and share resources.
Instead of writing simply for a teacher, students will constantly
work with the understanding that their work needs to meet the needs
and interests of a diverse community. Also, the face-to-face
interaction many will have with others at the Expo will push students to
be familiar enough with their topic to answer questions about their
research in real time.
Keep a look out for various Sustain-A-Bull programs from April 7-22,
and be especially sure to visit the Expo on April 12. For a wealth
of information, visit
goinggreentampabay.com.
Mentor and Program Collaborator Initiative
The English Department will begin its second consecutive year of using collaborators and mentors to help unify the curriculum and create a sense of professional collaboration. Our program has over two dozen new instructors each year and a total of 9500 students who enroll in our classes each Fall and Spring; consequently the depth and fluidity of our program challenge us to find new and creative ways to provide professional development for teachers and consistent instruction for undergraduate students. Our mentors provide that professional development to incoming instructors by guiding them through their first semester of teaching; meanwhile, our collaborators synthesize the ideas and teaching methods of all our instructors so that they can rely on each other's expertise in such a large program. This past year collaborators have redesigned FYC webspace, filmed exemplary teachers, led workshops, coordinated with faculty members in other parts of the University, and conducted comprehensive surveys of students and instructors in our department. We would also like to thank the General Education Council for generously supporting our mentoring program with funding. We invite you to review our program curriculum and offer contributions to it. If you have ideas for new projects, please e-mail Joe Moxley at moxley@cas.usf.edu.
On the 28th of February, Cindy Hewett visited the English Department to explain how instructors can utilize her company, SmartThinking, in their classroom. SmartThinking, an online tutoring company, provides detailed feedback to writers across the country, including not only undergraduate but graduate students, as well. The company employs tutors with advanced degrees in writing, such as graduate students, and these tutors invest no less than a half hour of their time commenting on each paper. Their commentary focuses on global concerns rather than simple grammatical mistakes when reading papers, and, more importantly, students may set the agenda for their session by explaining their most pressing questions or concerns. This user-directed educational tutoring would usually cost clients about $30 per hour, but our USF students enjoy several free hours of service because our 1102 books are affiliated with SmartThinking.
| SmartThinking |