Information Literacy Skills for students of Environmental Policy

I had asked a professor who teaches EPS 202, Science Technology and the Environment, to send me sample copies of papers that were submitted this past semester. The topics were:

• Wind Energy
• How to Reduce One's Environment Footprint

I did not want to evaluate the quality of the actual paper, but to observe how the students formatted the references. The papers were satisfactory for undergraduates. A few were a little too concise, but did answer the questions. The actual sources used were appropriate but were usually formatted incorrectly. Here are some of the problems that I observed:

• Students cited articles obtained from Science Direct and Scopus as web sites.
• A student cited chapters within a research level monograph as a complete book
• Three students neglected to state the articles he used were retrieved from a database

From examining papers submitted in two classes it appears that students in advanced courses forget what they have learned in the Research Roadmaps taught at the freshman level. I think we need to develop handouts to review the proper way to cite and types of reference used in a research paper.