Students will Sign Up For Scifinder Accounts Only If an Assignment is Given which Requires Its Use

Over the last two weeks, I gave my standard lecture to two undergraduate chemical engineering classes that consider the organization of the literature, journals in the field, and the databases that we provide including Scifinder and Scopus.  The professor didn’t want me to give an assignment since she felt that the workload for the course is heavy enough.  I gave the students some sample search problems to try in the two databases.

Every month I get a statement from Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) which tells how many people signed up for new Scifinder accounts  Out of 60 students in the two classes, only 2 signed up for Scifinder classes.  I think this shows that an assignment must be given for information literacy classes to be effective.  Again, I observed one student sleeping and other playing with their smart phones.

I had better luck in an undergraduate chemistry class titled “Applied Computational Chemistry and Molecular Modelling”.    3 of the 8 students in the class stated they already had experience with Scifinder.  When I looked at the report from CAS, I saw that the other 5 people in the class signed up that day for accounts.  The professor gave an assignment that required them to search the literature.