Does this sound familiar to some of you?
"Hi, guys, I have to do a research topic on something in sports physio and I
cannot think of any suitable topic. Can you help? I'm also looking for some
good books on that topic, so let me have your suggestions on that, as well.
Oh, can you do that as soon as possible, because the project is due next week.
Thanks". No name.
STUDENT ATTITUDES
There seems to be a very disquieting increase in the number of students
requesting help with preparing projects at undergraduate and postgraduate
level without displaying any evidence at all that they have first tried
sincerely to obtain information from libraries, supervisors, clinicians, books
and other standard sources of information. They just have to get a topic over
as soon as possible with the least amount of effort because some misguided
professor has set them the task.
In many cases it seems that some of them do not even conduct a basic web
search using some of the standard web search facilities, such as Yahoo or
Altavista.
HINTS TO ENCOURAGE RESPONSE
While it is a pleasure to assist any dedicated students and seekers after
knowledge, professionals on the web always tend to respond more rapidly and
helpfully if students:
1. Identify themselves and the Institutions where they are studying
2. State the research topic and the degree for which it is being submitted
3. Summarises sources of information already consulted and their value or
limitations regarding the research topic
4. Thanks anyone or the entire group for any help given
5. Posts a summary of information and/or a list of references obtained from
list
members
6. Writes in a professional and respectful tone
7. Submits letters subdivided into paragraphs, using sentences of limited
length,
using capitalised headings for subsections if the material is lengthy and
never
writing a whole letter in capitals.
There are many other aspects to the relatively new field of electronic
communication, which has led to the creation of the discipline of
'netiquette'. The following websites are very helpful in this regard:
http://www.albion.com/netiquette/index.html
http://redtail.unm.edu/cp/netiquette.html
http://jade.wabash.edu/wabnet/info/netiquet.htm
http://www.dtcc.edu/cs/rfc1855.html (Using electronic references)
SOME USEFUL WEBSITES FOR INFO SEARCHING
The following website is a web searching tutorial which should help those who
have had little experience in using the web:
http://www.askscott.com/tindex.html
For those who do not know the sites of some of the best known search engines,
here are some useful websites:
http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.metacrawler.com/ (Many search engines here)
http://www.albany.net/allinone/ (All-in-One search)
http://www.hotbot.com/
http://www.infoseek.com/
http://alabanza.com/kabacoff/Inter-Links/search/search.html
There are numerous physio and medically related topics, as well as links to
numerous related user groups on :
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1972/ChatEmail.htm
Here are some Medical Resources on the web :
http://planetree1.utmem.edu/NetResources/NetResources.html
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/index.html
http://www.gen.emory.edu/medweb/medweb.db.html
http://www.clark.net/pub/pribut/spmedlink.html
CONCLUSION
So, before any students dash reflexively to the user groups for help, may we
encourage them to use some of the above resources first, impress the rest of
us that you are not lazy to do some serious groundwork first and that you have
already put a lot of determined effort into undertaking a research project
which you want to do to the best of your ability. You will be pleasantly
surprised to see how much more help you obtain via this approach!
On the other hand, maybe we should encourage group members not to respond to
any requests for help unless they clearly reveal that the student has gone to
some trouble first before asking the group to do work that the student should
have done in the first place.
Dr Mel C Siff
Littleton, Colorado, USA
[log in to unmask]
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