1. 10 days of RefWorks
Clare McCluskey, York St John University, c.mccluskey@yorksj.ac.uk
This TeachMeet presentation will focus on a demonstration of the 10 Days of RefWorks tool,
developed in collaboration between the Academic Liaison Librarian and an academic in the
department of Children, Young People and Education at York St John University.
Both the librarian and academic had concerns that students on Foundation Degrees in this
department were worrying too much about the mechanics of referencing; where to put a full
stop or where a comma should go. It was preferred that the focus should be on locating a
good range of appropriate resources and giving due credit to those who had authored them.
A possible solution was developed after a discussion about whether promoting reference
management tools would help (RefWorks in this instance). The academic had recently taken
part in an online training package based on the 10 Days of Twitter initiative (Webster 2013)
and suggested that a similar approach could be used in helping students get to grips with
RefWorks at the beginning of their course, so that they were confident about the style of
references they were producing and could concentrate instead on what they were putting in to
the list.
The Academic Liaison Librarian therefore designed a blog-based package, covering the
essentials of RefWorks, but also linking to why referencing is important. The package can be
used in teaching, embedded in the module and linked to Supported Open Learning activities,
or as a stand-alone resource. The response was very favourable and not only is the package
now in use in the Foundation Degrees, it has also been introduced as a core resource in each
VLE module in every programme across the department, as well as in others in the
University, up to research degree level.
References:
Webster, H. (2013) #10DoT: Ten Days of Twitter [Online]. Available from:
http://10daysoftwitter.wordpress.com/ [Accessed 21 October 2014].
10 Days of RefWorks: http://blog.yorksj.ac.uk/10daysrefworks/
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