A Student Sent Me the Following Email

A student sent me the following email:

“I do not understand how to get peer review articles on the topics. I went to SE library online looked through the site and did a search. I went to all the links you had posted in they Syllabus and they wanted me to sign up for something, none of the articles were available for reading. I am not sure what I am suppose to do here. This is a ton of work I am not getting credit for. Please Help.”

Maybe this will help other students too. Ok, let’s try these steps to find references with references that can be posted in Discussion Boards and for students’ term papers. I realize some of you may use different steps but this is one that works.

1. Go to www.se.edu (this is the SE homepage)

2. Click on Current Students at top of page

3. A number of links appear and then click on Henry G. Bennett Library

4. On the left side click on Electronic Resources link

5. You will see an alphabetical listing of a number of databases. Two good ones for this course are ABI-INFORM and EBSCOHOST. You may find others that meet your needs. Click on one of these databases. Since I prefer EBSCOHOST I will use that electronic database in my example. So click on EBSCOHOST.

6. The following screen (see below) should come up and the student should simply enter their username and password. If you don’t know this information then follow the Instructions for Login below which I have copied and pasted for your convenience. Page 2 of 5

7. In EBSCOHOST you will see a number of databases (maybe it’s best to think of them as subdatabases). Since you may not know what all these are I suggest you check Select / deselect all (i.e., select them all) at the top of the page and then click on the Continue box at the top of the page.

8. The next page looks something like that below. I have checked Full Text, Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals, and References Available (see below). Because one of the threads on our DB this week involved appearance discrimination I entered appearance discrimination in the box at the top of the page and then clicked on the Search box. Entering good search term is a skill and sometimes this may require much thought and experimentation. I discuss this in greater detail in our course syllabus. Page 3 of 5

9. The following screen came up (see below). These are (generally) references with references; that is, many of these articles are journal articles that have references at the end of the article (maybe you call it a bibliography) or for many legal articles they have footnotes. They are both fine. As you can see, my search generated 201 articles, most of which (but maybe not all) are what I refer to in the syllabus as references with references. Now you can click on PDF Full Text and start reading articles that may have relevance to your topic of interest and will support what you say in a DB or a term paper. I don’t expect students to read all these articles but maybe there will be a title that interests you that and that you may want to look at in more detail. For example, maybe you might be interested in appearance discrimination as it applies to weight and then you would start looking for articles that might have weight in the title. I want the class to use journal articles in their postings and term paper because they are more apt to be correct and were reviewed by professional colleagues before the article was published. As you probably know, there is just a lot of junk on the Internet and I’m trying to cull out some of that garbage by asking students to post or attach only references with references, primarily journal articles that have 3+ references. There are exceptions. For example the Harvard Business Review has many quality articles but has no references at the back of the manuscript. I also think that the California Management Review does the same thing. These journals are generally directed toward to high level executives who don’t want to be bothered by looking at a listing of references. Page 4 of 5

10. Once you have found an article (reference with references) you like then left click on PDF Full Text (see above) and open the file. Once the file is open then save the file to your desktop and rename it so as better reflect the title of the article. There are some slight differences in using ABI-INFORM COMPLETE.

11. To post an article in a DB then go to the bottom of your DB screen and click on Browse My Computer. This is where you will go to your desktop and find the article you previously saved and attach it by double left clicking on the screen that appears. I want you to attach the article and do not just give me any links since many times the links do not work.

12. There is similar process you will use for uploading files for your term paper so that I can review them if I want so as to ensure the articles are references with references. What key management function am I exercising here?

13. I want the class to be looking for, sending me, and/or posting journal articles and not just something they found on Google (for example). Yes, I will often post links in my messages but I do not want students to do this since I feel I am in a better position (lots of Page 5 of 5

years in HRM and teaching) to evaluate the appropriateness of these links than many students.

14. I hope this helps. –Dr. Von