LibGuides: Research, Study & Writing Skills: Research Online Home

Research Skills for Secondary Students - video series. State Library of Victoria

Research Essentials
In this series of video tutorials aimed at Years 7 to 10, we'll show secondary students how to:
- break down the research process into manageable chunks
- generate effective questions to guide their research
- evaluate online sources for reliability, authenticity and relevance
- access services and collections at State Library Victoria to aid their research.

The Research Process Steps
Find practical step by step guides on following a research process,
writing essays and studying for exams.
Also see the section on creating Bibliographies
within the essay-writing section.

Bluford Library. C.R.A.A.P test.
When researching your information, it is important to evaluate the sources you are using to decide which ones are best for your assignment. You can do this using the CRAAP test:
- Currency - When was the information published and updated?
- Relevance - Why is this information important to your topic?
- Authority - Who is the author/publisher of this information?
- Accuracy - Where does the information come from?
- Purpose - What is the purpose of the information?

Domain suffixes help you evaluate a website.

.edu - educational institution / Caution - Can be student originated material if it has tilda ~

.gov - government

.mil - military

.net - network, a variety of sites have this domain

.org - traditionally a non-profit organization

.com - commercial site, usually with the purpose to persuade or sell

.au - denotes geographic origin e.g. Australia

Advanced Research Skills
In this series of video tutorials we'll show you how to access our huge collection of online resources, including how to:
- navigate our catalogue
- use VCE research guides to find helpful resources for your studies
- access hundreds of databases.
Find the best resources for your area of study – quickly and efficiently.
This series is ideal for VCE, IB and VCAL students.

The S.H.I.F.T.Strategy is a technique for assessing genuine and fake information in the news and social media posts.

"Misinformation is worse than an epidemic," Marcia McNutt, president of the US National Academy of Sciences, put it in 2021, implicitly referring to the Covid-19 pandemic. "It spreads at the speed of light throughout the globe and can prove deadly when it reinforces misplaced personal bias against all trustworthy evidence." (BBC 2024)

S: STOP & THINK! Do not give in to the urgency and make an instant assessment of the information. Do not share unitl you have followed the next step.

H: Hallucination: Does this look or feel like it has been generated by Artificial Intelligence A.I. ? You can reverse check the image. This is getting harder to spot as A.I. becomes better.

I: INVESTIGATE: Where did the information come from? Who is the creator or the author? Has this information or image been edited or 'doctored'?

If the information comes from Artificial Intelligence (AI) sources (including LLM or Large Language Models), then check what sources have been considered in in the information that has been provided to you. (IBM 2024). Would you TRUST the. sources of your information?

Investigate the source of the information. THis is the perfect time to apply the C.R.A.A.P test!

F: FIND BETTER COVERAGE - dig deeper! Verify your sources with other credible sources - how do they compare? Are there discrepancies between sources of information.

T: TRACE the claim to its original context. Has the information been changed (think 'Chineses whispers') and edited and completely changed the meaning or intent of the original this is particularly common on social media posts.

Free sites for finding academic papers on all subjects

These sites will give you access to University level academic articles. Do NOT use these for finding basic information on the Pyramids!

Google Scholar
Senior & professional level resources published on the web. Useful for all subject areas but the articles can be very specialised or 'narrow' in focus. Suggest you use a word like 'overview' or 'summary' as part of your search when you are looking at this database.
CORE
CORE (COnnecting REpositories) provides a comprehensive bibliographic database of the world’s scholarly literature, collecting and indexing research from repositories and journals. It is, to our knowledge, also the world’s largest collection of full text open access research papers.
Studyvibe
StudyVibe is a repository of educational resources. It is designed to support students to develop as effective learners and provide carefully curated resources to support teachers' curriculum development and improve learning outcomes for students in middle and senior schools

Evaluating Websites

Try the Craap test on these

1. Kidsweb
You have an assignment about places to visit in Japan. Would this website pass the CRAAP test?
2. Kangaroos
You are doing an assignment on kangaroos and found this interesting story. Is it credible?
3. Health and nutrition
There is a lot of debate about whether we should eat meat and how much. Would this website be useful in your research?
4. Floods
You are learning about the impact of floods. Would this website be useful?

The Age Digital Edition Newspaper

The Age Digital Edition
Provides searchable access to exact replicas of The Age newspapers from 2006 up to this morning's edition. You will need to use the Kilbreda library's username and password. These are posted up on the walls in the library or you can ask a friendly library staff member or teacher.