LEADING DISCUSSION

After reading chapter 14, “Finding and Managing Print and Online Sources”, I learned the difference between popular and scholarly sources and how they can help me research my topic, which is on the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test). These “popular sources” are informal works that are relatively short and not peer-reviewed. Therefore, when I first started my research on the MCAT I used popular sources to get a general view of all the important information that I wanted to focus on. Then, when I figured out the main points I began to use scholarly sources because they are peer-reviewed and written by experts, therefore, being making my research more accurate.

Jayne Morel – Well first off I thought the whole fly-in-community was a really cool idea because I have never heard of anything like it. And I thought it was interesting how she is going to use more of a popular resource than a scholarly. I also didn’t know you could use a video recording, picture, or artwork as sources which is something that I might be able to use in my paper as well.

Renee Wyatt – I agree that the keywords are very important in conducting research. And using these filter engines is very important because it will narrow down the searches to make things a lot easier to find. Especially if you have a really broad topic you need to be using the “OR’s” and “AND’s” in the search engines

Amanda Neppl – I agree to the statement “the lengthiest sources can misinform a reader” because many times I would get lost or confused. And the same can be true with sources that are too short because they can contain more general information than specifics.