Questia research tutorials

The fall semester has barely begun and already you’re feeling the stress of research paper writing and completing homework assignments. How are you going to fit everything into your already jam-packed schedule? Lucky for you, now you can have access to a secret weapon for students. It’s called Questia, the premier online research and paper-writing tool for students. We’ve put together a full arsenal of tools, tips and videos in our Research tutorials section to help you tackle the toughest research assignment while keeping your cool.

Check out Questia

At Questia you’ll have access to over 6 million full-text books and articles. But all those juicy resources won’t do you any good if you can’t find them and use them for creating those “A” research papers. Questia also sports timesaving research tools such as highlights, notes and bookmarks. With these tools, you can return to Questia time after time and pick up right where you left off in gathering and organizing your materials. And the best part is that Questia includes a tool to help you create professor-approved citations and bibliographies (or works cited) for your papers.

Here’s the deal

If you’re not already a member of Questia, you can still test out some of the organizational tools like highlighting in multiple colors for your notes, however, research tutorials are an extra special treat only available to those with a Questia membership. Now, here’s the deal. If you’re not already convinced of the value of Questia, go to the site and sign up for the free Questia trial to test it out for yourself. When you’re all signed up for your free trial, you’ll be able to test out our research tutorial on evaluating sources to see for yourself!

Research tools

Once you’re logged in at the Questia site, be sure to click on the link for Research tutorials at the top of the home page. This link takes you to a growing collection of interactive tutorials that you can view, start and resume at any time. Coming this fall in time for mid-end of semester research papers will be a total of 10 Research tutorials including:

• Planning a paper
• Conducting research
• Using the library
• Evaluating resources
• Avoiding plagiarism
• Integrating sources
• Paraphrasing sources
• Summarizing sources
• Quoting sources
• Working with documentation styles

Let’s take “Evaluating resources,” for example. Have you ever had grief from an instructor because you didn’t find high quality resources for your research project or term paper? Well, suffer no more. After you look through this set of videos, examples and quizzes, you’ll be an expert on finding reliable sources.

And that’s just one of the research tutorials that awaits you at Questia. There’s so much more! Think of all the time and aggravation you can save this semester just by making Questia your resource for all things research. With Questia, you can kiss aimless Internet searching goodbye and say hello to higher grades and instructor praise. The sooner you sign up, the sooner you can take advantage of the many benefits and start earning those higher grades.

Librarian selected, professor approved

What makes Questia so great for students? First of all, the sources have all been approved by librarians and professors. No more worrying about having your sources questioned. Plus, thousands of the available books have been written by professors so you know that their content is based on years of experience and research — just the kind of sources that your instructors love to see on a term paper.

As for subjects, check out our research topics page to find books and articles on all kinds of topics including:

• History
• Economics
• Psychology
• Political science
• Anthropology
• English and literature

Need research tools? No problem. Questia tools help you to streamline your research process with tools such as:

• Highlights: use different colors to select and save text of interest.
• Notes: write notes to yourself directly to book pages or articles.
• Bookmarks: want to go back for that great quote? Find it fast with a bookmark.
• Bibliographies: no more sweating over proper format. Questia will automatically generate your bibliography in MLA, APA or Chicago format.
• Citations: you’ll be able to cite passages, pages or entire articles instantly.
• Project folders: if you’re working on several projects at once, you’ll love the ability to organize your notes, highlights, bookmarks, and reference information into custom project folders.

Become a research superstar

Many students find the research process to be tedious and time consuming. In other words — boring. It doesn’t have to be that way. Questia’s research tools will help you do accomplish more and enjoy the process, too.

When it comes to research, you need to have a plan. You’ll begin by finding your focus. What are you going to research and write about? Finding your research topic is a breeze with Questia because its library of topics will help you to flow from general subjects to specific topics. Then, all you have to do is to follow the many resource links to zero in on the exact books and articles that you’ll use for your project.

Help when using other sources

Even if you decide to use sources outside of Questia’s vast library, you’ll still benefit because Questia’s research tutorials teach you how to evaluate sources to make sure that they are the kind of credible sources that your instructor will accept. Not only does Questia help you to find and evaluate credible sources, it also gives you examples of how to distinguish between those sources that are popular and those that are scholarly (based on research). It also teaches you to identify when an author’s approach is opinion and whether it is too biased to be of use to you.

Do you like to use Wikipedia despite the fact that the very thought makes your instructors cringe? No problem. Questia will show you how and when to use Wikipedia and other encyclopedias in your research process.

Your secret weapon

The new Questia will quickly become your best friend, a valued tool and secret weapon in achieving your academic goals. You’ll amaze your instructors and yourself at the quality of your research projects and the ease with which you completed them. Get a head start on success and go check out Questia now!

Search for a topic

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary describes the humanities as the study of “branches of learning such as philosophy, arts or languages.” TheFreeDictionary.com adds that humanities include the study of branches of knowledge that are “concerned with human thought and culture” such as literature and liberal arts. That covers a lot of ground!

You could even bring history into the mix by exploring the arts or literature within a particular period of time such as the classical period, which occurred in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. Then again, your interests might take you to faraway lands where you delve into the study of Asian art or literature. The possibilities seem endless.

Where do you begin when faced with so many juicy topics? A great one-stop spot for checking out topics and the resources that can help you write your paper is Questia, the world’s largest online library. At Questia you’ll have access to thousands of full-text books and articles on hundreds of subjects.

What you can find

Here’s an example of the kind of gold you can find from the motherlode that is Questia. A search within the category of “women in the middle ages” will reward you with hundreds of books and articles on the subject. Among them is the book, Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature by Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff.

In the introduction to the text, Petroff said this regarding the study of women’s literature, “One answer is that we study writers for what they tell us of the human condition, for what they reveal of human creativity and the uses of language; and we study women writers for the same reasons.”

Digital humanities

You could easily accomplish all of your research on Questia but no doubt you’ll also want to do some Google searches to see what else you can find. Despite the fact that you’re practically attached to your laptop and cell phone, most college instructors are convinced that students don’t really understand how to use digital sources for research.

Steve Kolowich discussed these concerns in his January 27, 2012 post for InsideHigherEd.com titled, “Behind the Digital Curtain.” Because instructors worry that students may miss out on finding and then understanding the best resources for their term papers, the practice known as digital humanities is gaining traction at colleges and universities.

“Digital humanities projects often have to do with painstakingly translating primary documents into languages of computer programs, then teaching computer programs to read those documents (really, really fast) and flag certain words or patterns,” Kolowich said.

So, don’t be surprised if your instructors have you participate in a digital humanities project where you learn how to encode and transcribe documents into a machine-readable format and then write an essay about what you learned. If you do, then you might want to check out a wiki site titled The Dirt. The Dirt site has all sorts of tools and resources to help you do your research. A site called CodeAcademy will teach you how to do your coding.

Get visual

Reading about art and culture is one thing, but seeing it in images really brings the subject to life. At The Creator’s Project you’ll find articles and a gallery of images and videos on film, art, design, gaming, fashion and music.

One example is a blog post by Kevin Holmes on February 7, 2012 titled, “Exploring Chaos And Order: Q&A With Kinetic Sculptor Balint Bolygo.” Holmes takes you into the world of this contemporary artist and helps you to really understand his art.

Holmes explained, “He creates his work from a concept rather than having a complete blueprint and this sense of excitement, wonder, and discovery in the making process is passed on to the viewer. The artwork itself becomes a process, a journey unfolding over a period of time.”

Other humanities resources

Find a comfy chair and settle in because there’s a lot more to explore all across the web.

• The Illinois Humanities Council at prairie.org
• The EServer: a digital humanities venture with over 35,000 works.
• The Library of Congress Performing Arts Encyclopedia
• Voice of the Shuttle: over 70 pages of links to humanities resources
• American Association of Museums