The student stared at me in horror.
“You do what when you grade research papers?” Skyler asked.
“After looking at the title,” I repeated, “I flip to the bibliography.”
I have had this conversation dozens of times, and I must admit that I love it when a bright student figures it out. I held their paper upside down on my knee as we sat in the well-worn chairs that had migrated into the sessional faculty office. Skyler was completely unaware of the bare walls and motley collection of spare computer parts. A sociology adjunct was working quietly in the corner, studying conspiracy theorists.
“But why?” Their look of shock had turned to disbelief.
“For me, the title and the first line are about whether you have taken time to invite me into your piece–a sense of your creativity and awareness that there is a reader (me). It’s true that your paper formatting on the first page reveals your commitment to professionalism, but first-years make the same mistakes–and almost always about spacing.”
They glanced briefly down at their paper with a worried look.
“In a Works Cited page, though, I can see a number of things at a glance. Do you have a sense of proportion? Have you partnered with a citation engine or merely allowed it to do the work? Have you gone deep or wide in your research? Is each of your sources someone who has gone deep enough into their study to tell you something?”
“You can see all of that?” they asked. Their expression was turning from disbelief and anxiety to something like curiosity.
“I can see all of that in just a few seconds,” I answered. I don’t know if I had a twinkle in my eye, but I was trying to project one.
“Especially, though, my real question is this: Have you chosen the best sources for your particular argument?”
“How do you know if they are the best sources?”
“Excellent question. That’s when I have to turn back to the first page and read. There are two kinds of ‘best’ that I’m looking for in a References list. First, are your research conversation partners credible?”
“You keep saying ‘conversation partners,” they interrupted with a quizzical smile. “What do you mean by that?”
“Skyler, remember what I said in my lecture about cherry-picking research?”
“Yeah, I play soccer, so it made me laugh. You don’t want our research to look like we came up with an idea and then went and found the sources needed to prove it.” As they seemed much more comfortable now in something they know well, I decided to press in a bit on it.
“Good. I’m curious, Skyler. In soccer, are the best scorers the forwards or midfielders who sacrifice their team so they can be in the right place for a pass?”
“No. Soccer has too much space on the field. On the wings, it doesn’t have to be man-to-man like football, basketball, or hockey.”
“Oh, I get it,” I answered. I was on thin ice here, using a soccer metaphor, but I skated toward the net. “Defensively, you can triangulate them with your own goal.”
“Yep, our coach just said that, actually. Well, sort of. He drew a triangle on the strat board. The further out of play a player is, the longer we have to create a defence.”
“Well, that’s a neat analogy. You would understand better than me: Who are the best scorers in soccer at your level?”
Skyler thought for a moment.
“Honestly, I don’t know. It’s about footwork and speed, I guess, but also the ability to see the play. Most goals come from a melee in front of the net after a race from the wings. But it isn’t a straight-on thing. When it’s me in the mob, I almost never get the goal when I see the opening and take it. Goaltenders are too smart. It only works when I can make a good close pass.”
“So you get the assist, not the goal?”
“Sure, but I will often get the pass and have a chance to score. The best scorers are the best playmakers too.”
“I think that’s how it works with scholarship, Skyler. You know how we keep talking about Collaboration?”
“You never stop talking about it!” they joked.
“Right, well, I like how, in the sciences, papers are published in partnerships or a full team. But it is more than teamwork. In research, we have a sense that we are part of a community of discovery. We don’t launch out on the adventure of learning alone. We have been taught by others, and we enter the scholarly conversation at a certain point. Most of the research we do in our undergraduate degrees is to learn how to learn. Beyond that, our goal is to add to scholarship in some way.”
“Oh, like Sandy trying to solve the impossible math question. It’s about learning, but someday that exercise will create something new.”
“You’ve got it.”
“By the way, ‘community of discovery’ and ‘adventure of learning’ are kind of cheesy.”
“Ah, well. Sometimes, after-school specials actually teach us something.”
We both laughed, mostly because another student had made fun of me for a similarly cheesy statement during class that morning.
“So,” I continued. “Research is about entering a conversation. The game is already in play when you are subbed in. Like your play, your research has to be part of the full game, right?”
“I get it,” they affirmed. Suddenly, the light came on.
“Then by ‘credible scholarship,’ you don’t just mean accurate?”
“Accurate, yes, but deeper. If a paper in your bibliography is so complex that you can’t test the logic with your current understanding, it isn’t ‘credible.’ You can’t say something is credible if you can’t test its credibility, right?”
“I get it. So when you look at our Works Cited page, you are checking to see that it is full of good scholars who write in such a way that we can use their work in our research.”
“Right,” I answered eagerly. “When we contribute to scholarship, that also means we contribute to student learning. That’s why, when I can, I write my papers in such a way that smart readers can understand what I’m saying. And I want them to test my argument, so my references and footnotes need to be clear.”
“That’s why you give your stuff away on your website.”
“Well, folly comes in all kinds of forms. But I do prioritize placing my work in open-sourced journals or giving it away on social media or on A Pilgrim in Narnia.”
“So the citations in our References list have to be from the best scholars and accessible to us.”
“Sure thing. But it doesn’t have to be scholars, exactly. A TikTok influencer might be the best person to talk about parasocial relations. A farmer might be able to say more about breeding in a few lines than an Ag researcher can say in a chapter.”
“Oh, I see,” Skyler responded, building in excitement. “That’s what you meant about the two ways of seeing.”
“Right, exactly. We learn one thing from an anthropologist and another thing from the indigenous person they are studying.”
“I don’t know anything about Anthropology, but I got what you were saying when you talked about lovers in love–how the lover in love teaches us something different than the neuroscientist.”
“It wasn’t actually me who came up with that.”
“Yeah,” they said. “The Narnia guy.”
“Yes, that guy. And that brings us to the second kind of thing I can see in your bibliography: Are your references the best sorts of resources for your study? If you think of the 3S approach to research–Statistics, Stories, and Studies–you should be using case studies and personal testimonies for one kind of research, data analysis for another, and historical review for a third.”
“Can you have a mix of those?”
“Absolutely. It’s about the kind of writing you are doing. A student newspaper write-up of the Hippies of Harmony Happy Hallowe’en Horror House is going to be different than an academic research paper, a literary analysis, a lab report, or a pitch to investors, right?”
They nodded, eyes brightening. I seized the moment to press in.
“Interdisciplinary disciplines may include a lot of different kinds of research. History, Religious Studies, Social Psychology, Diversity and Social Justice Studies, Applied Communication, Leadership, and Culture….”
“I’m actually an ACLC Major!”
“Great! I love that program. A paper in any of these fields and a dozen others could combine all three of the S-research trio. A Social Psych References list often has YouTube videos, archival research, big data analyses, case studies, and experimental results.”
There was a sudden dawning in their eyes.
“Ah, that’s what my Religious Studies prof meant when she said we could choose any research methodology we wanted.”
“Yep, exactly. When I teach in Religious Studies, I use as many methods as I can so I can connect with as many different kinds of learners as possible, and so I can….”
“So you can model it for your class! I get it. Sorry for interrupting.”
“No problem, that’s exactly it. I keep harping on about it in class, but modelling lifelong learning and curiosity is key to my teaching philosophy.”
They flashed me a knowing smile. It is something I talk a lot about.
“This paper here,” I continued, holding it up. “Is a first-year foundation course paper. Although all the papers have a single theme for the semester, you were able to choose any research question and any way of answering it.”
“Except we must consult two peer-reviewed essays or chapters, right?”
“Not just consult, but utilize. It has to be meaningful. I love your project idea, where you have students audition for a role by reading famous Hollywood lines. I can’t wait to see whether AI can estimate their educational history by their reading. Having our Theatre Studies prof do the same analysis as a control is pretty neat.”
“I’m really excited about the experiment. I was afraid I wouldn’t think of anything.”
“Awesome. But before you experiment on your fellow humans and take a professor’s valuable time, I want to know who else has done this experiment, or something like it. What have they learned? What mistakes did they make that you can learn from?”
“I see,” they answered. They looked down at their paper, pondering.
“What is your research question, Skyler?”
“‘Can AI software detect educational backgrounds based on voice patterns?'”
“No, that isn’t it.”
“It isn’t?”
“It isn’t how you described it to your team. Are you trying to test AI capacity–whether it is good enough?”
“Kind of. Not really. I want to know about bias.”
“Exactly! So what’s your real research question?”
“I think it’s something like, ‘What biases does AI have when it comes to different accents?'”
“You are getting there. Do you think there is any research yet on AI and bias?”
“Tonnes,” they said. They were looking down at the paper resting against my knee.
“So,” I asked. “Did you want to submit this research background paper now, or would you like a bit more time with it? The deadline isn’t until Thursday.”
They looked at me with determination.
“I would like it back, please.”
“You know what to do?” I asked, handing them the paper.
“I do,” they answered, revealing new confidence behind the weariness students project at this time of term.
“Excellent. I look forward to reading it!”
“Thanks. See you Thursday.”
“See you then, Skyler.”
Readers may also appreciate the following pieces:
A Garden Gate Summer Note on Teaching and the First Days of School
A Rationale for Teaching C.S. Lewis’ Fiction in The Wrong Order
Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions, with the Right Question Institute
“Clarity, Care, Connection, and Credibility: Lessons from 15 Years of Online Teaching”: My Talk at the UPEI Community Teaching Conference
Experimenting on Students: A Thought about Playfulness and Personal Connection in Teaching
A Pilgrim in Narnia 