Ideas for Incorporating the Research Tool Zotero into Your Course: CTLT’s How I did it series

Lorena O’EnglishWSU Libraries

oenglish@wsu.edu509.335.2695

Yahoo/AIM/MSN IM: wsulorena

Table of Contents…

Information literacy, critical thinking and life long learning

Content and process…

Kulthau’s Information Search Process (ISP)

How you can use Zotero in your classes to help cultivate IL, CT, and LLL skillz.

Information literacy, critical thinking and life long learning Information literacy is a set of abilities requiring

individuals to “recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.”

The complexity of the contemporary information environment makes teaching students to become critical consumers (and producers) of information one of the most important and one of the most challenging roles for librarians and faculty. Analyzing and evaluating information and sources can be a primary tool for developing habits of critical inquiry that translate into both scholarly discourse and life long learning.

Content and Process The importance of both content and process Information literacy process models look at the process a

student uses to identify an information need, evaluate the best means of meeting that need, select the best resources to meet that need, analyze the information found in those resources, synthesize, and present the content in an appropriate fashion.

Encompass both basic skills and higher order thinking. Process models focus on information problem solving

(either for academic work or in one’s everyday life as an iterative process).

http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~kuhlthau/information_search_process.htm

A Model of Kuhlthau’s Information Search Process (ISP)

“Zotero??”

“Zotero is an easy-to-use yet powerful research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources (citations, full texts, web pages, images, and other objects), and lets you share the results of your research in a variety of ways. “

Free, open source, integrates with Microsoft Word (2003)

Browser-based (Firefox); can be used offline

Zotero in the Classroom Research Process Organization:

Bibliographic management annotation/highlighting/notes Classification Sorting Searching Timelines media clip creation and annotation (audio & visual) Sharing (kinda; it will get better…)

Helps develop and/or train IL and CT process skills that can be used in LLL (personal, professional or academic)

Bibliographic Management

Captures relevant bibliographic data (or provides fields for typing/cut’n’paste)

Formats references into many citation styles automatically (in-text and reference list)

Integrated into Microsoft Word 2003 (and OpenOffice) word processing tools

Can easily create bibliographies and annotated bibliographies

Annotation, Highlighting, and Notes Can see how student distills the essence of the

article down (and compare with actual abstract to see if they are just copying…)

Note-taking skills, including analysis and context Can use notes to type in quotation or paraphrase,

add correct page number, and easily cut and paste into your work and cite via Word or OpenOffice reference citation integration

Can highlight and annotate (via sticky notes) web page screenshots

Classification

Categorize items for later retrieval Organization skills Can “tag” articles, stand-alone notes, and

created items (including webpage screenshots)

Cross-referencing

Sorting

Organization and findability Can sort by all fields

Searching

Zotero is a personal database Implications for permanent access and LLL

Can search all data, including text of PDFs (must install plug-in for that)

Timelines

Organize and visualize articles by date of publication – find chronological trends

Can filter by terms to isolate particular items or themes

Default searches by publication date; can also arrange by dates added or modified

Media Incorporation

Can incorporate media into papers Create and annotate clips Audio and video in multiple file formats

Clips can be tagged, given notes, etc.

Sharing

Save as HTML – create item that can be downloaded by anyone else with Zotero (& a library link resolver such as WSU’s Find it @WSU)

http://www.wsu.edu/~oenglish/smartbib.html

Zotero Meets Kuhlthau

Initiation Selection Exploration Formulation Collection Presentation

Zotero Logistics Zotero files can be copied and exported and opened in another

user’s Zotero library (also in other bibliographic management software applications via the RIS file format)

Zotero Reports – include all info except actual saved documents and screenshots

Students can create web pages that include Zotero links and their descriptive info about each article (they must code the descriptive info themselves or use an HTML editor – Zotero’s Save as HTML just gives code for someone to add the base bibliographic info and Find it@WSU link to their Zotero library.

Note: faculty members may want to incorporate Zotero Save as HTML links into the list of publications on their vitas so that interested researchers can easily snag them for their own Zotero libraries…

Zotero in the Future

Synching Sharing Collaboration Recommendation systems A roadmap for future development

Supplements and Alternatives

These functionalities/processes are not just available in Zotero – other tools offer similar and/or additional tools EndNote, RefWorks, ProCite, Reference Manager

($) Connotea, CiteULike Others in the future…Zotero files can be imported

and exported into any other reference manager via RIS file format

The Lawsuit…

Alleges reverse engineering of EndNote Alleges use of proprietary EndNote citation

styles (.ens style files) via the ability to convert them to Zotero .csl style files