Tutorials

Struggling to select a topic for your research assignment? Here are practical strategies to brainstorm a topic and begin to develop a research question.

Instructors often ask students to engage more deeply with sources when doing research and writing. But what does that mean, exactly? This video draws on educational psychology and instructional design theory to give students concrete strategies for engaging deeply and meaningfully with sources by asking “Essential questions” about the readings.

NOTE: This tutorial needs updating. It currently only works on the Firefox browser. We apologize for the inconvenience. You may also consult a similar tutorial authored by our colleagues at the Hannon Library, Loyola Marymount University: https://whhlreference.lmu.build/tutorials/EvaluatingInfo/story.html

Not all sources are created equal! This tutorial covers the basics of how to tell if a source is appropriate for your assignment and research need.

Learn to locate reliable and validated research instruments in instrument databases, such as Mental Measurements Yearbook, PsycTESTS, and Health and Psychosocial Instruments.

Learn to locate reliable and validated research instruments in literature databases, such as CINAHL, PsycINFO, and PubMed.

How to find research guides by USC Libraries.

Students often say that getting started is the hardest part of the research process. This may be, in part, because whereas most of our education teaches convergent thinking strategies (developing answers to linear questions with fixed answers and solutions), the research process requires a kind of creative, or “divergent” kind of thinking, where we consider multiple potential solutions for an open-ended problem. This video explains how students can use divergent thinking to interpret an assignment creatively and select a meaningful, authentic topic of interest.

Learn how to locate a source for your assignment, select the permanent link to a source, and generate a citation using library databases.

Use this document to organize your research process, from brainstorming a topic and keywords, to documenting the sources you locate.

Welcome to Part 4 of the STEMM Research Workshop Series. Citations and Citation Management will provide you with strategies for avoiding plagiarism and introduce you to USC Libraries' citation and citation management resources.

Welcome to Part 2 of the STEMM Research Workshop Series. Planning Your Search will provide an overview of effective strategies to plan your research project, in addition to keyword development and maximizing your keyword search with Boolean operators.

Welcome to Part 3 of the STEMM Research Workshop Series. The Critical Research Process will introduce strategies for evaluating sources based on specific criteria and teach you how to critically appraising research articles.