Research Advice for Study-Group Work

(attachment to Instructions page)

Biology 121, Section 123

Ecology, Genetics, & Evolution

September 2006

Here are several suggested things to try as you carry out your study-group research. They are not in numbered order, since they are not sequential step-by-step instructions. You may prefer to answer your questions without this advice, or you may already be aware of some of the points.

Using the Library (www.library.ubc.ca)

Searching for reference sources can be a very tedious business, but available databases make it easier than you think. Depending on the terms you provide, you can find either general or highly specific information, and access much of it quickly and easily. All access rules are spelled out on the Library’s website, and the library staff are very helpful if you are unsure of how to proceed.

General Searching of the Library catalogue is straightforward, accessed on the main page. You can search for particular media, by author or title name, by subject, and in some cases these searches will even find chapters within larger works. Play around with these functions to get a sense of their power and flexibility.

A method with which you may be less familiar is the Indexes and Databases option, well-suited to locating articles in academic journals. [The main link to this option is on the Library homepage at the top, in one of the dark-blue bands below the page title.] If you click on the Most Popular link, you are directed (among others) to JSTOR and to the Web of Science, both potentially useful places to search. Some questions may favour the use of government research reports, like environmental-impact statements or wildlife surveys, and if you have selected a medically-based question, you may want to search in PubMed – but be warned, whatever search-method you use, much of the material you’ll find is highly technical! This is the real, primary literature, a totally different world from textbooks.

Nearly every question in the study-group set will be answered better with, than without, serious academic support in the form of journal-article reference material.

Being sure you understand the question

Just as with questions set on exams, the most important thing to do at the start is determine why the question is there; what is the questions’ purpose? Obviously all the questions have the aim of making you think, but about what? It’s better to avoid overemphasizing small details in a question, like a particular organism or locale or theory, and taking time to ensure that you are seeing the full scope of the question. What large scientific/social issues are at stake? What interactions can you see between the question and the rest of Biology 121? Do all members of your group see the question in the same way, and is this a problem?

Working together

This advice is in two parts: you the students working together within your group, and all of us collaborating to ensure that the assignment’s educational goals are met.

You are likely to be working with an unfamiliar set of people, and all of you probably feel equally uncomfortable about that. On the one hand you’re thrown together without ceremony, irrespective of whether you like the people or not, and on the other hand you all need each other to get a reasonable grade on your study-group work. No wonder you may find it stressful. I have found with third and fourth year students, however, that some of the students most disillusioned about group-work are those who were given the freedom to select their friends as group colleagues! It’s hard to criticize friends, and to hold them to schedules, and all too easy to get distracted and talk about non-work issues when you should be focussing on this assignment. It’s also likely that you and they will concur in too many opinions. Effective study-group collaboration occurs only when everyone is held to account, and competing ideas are considered in a constructive debate.

If you individually, or your group as a whole, encounter problems with the direction you’ve taken, or are not sure you are taking a suitable approach to your topic, it is essential that you visit me for a chat. My role in this work is not to stand as an “expert evaluator” at the end, and to tell you that you should have done this, or that – rather, I want to remain engaged and advise whenever the need arises, with the hope that by the end you will find things and draw conclusions which I will find fresh and interesting. I tend to provide the best group-grades when I am pleasantly surprised by the quality of your results, rather than buried by the quantity of them.