- Mission and history
- Platform features
- Library Advisory Group
- What’s in JSTOR
- For Librarians
- For Publishers
- For Educators
Foster essential research skills for student success
Equipping students with strong research skills is crucial for their academic success and lifelong learning. This page offers a variety of practical tools to help you guide your students in developing these essential competencies.
On this page
Teach core research and writing skills.
- Master JSTOR’s research tools
- Self-guided research basics course
Introduce text analysis with Constellate
More resources.
- Latest resources and events
- Resource library
- Boost student engagement
- Enhance learning with primary sources
- Amplify diverse voices
- Access teaching and learning content and tools
In a series of articles on JSTOR Daily, Nicole Donawho, professor of history at a community college in North Texas, outlines strategies for helping students develop analytic and scholarly questioning skills, summarize scholarly works, and learn how to complete an academic research project.
Asking Scholarly Questions with JSTOR Daily
Help students develop analytic and scholarly questioning skills using a quick activity built on JSTOR Daily roundups and syllabi.
Teaching Summary Skills with JSTOR Daily
Helping students to summarize scholarly works starts with getting them to ask the right questions about the material and the purpose of the exercise.
Scaffolding a Research Project with JSTOR
Use JSTOR resources and this five-step process to help students learn how to complete a scholarly research project.
Support student research projects
Master JSTOR’s research tools
Getting started.
Share these resources with your students to help them effectively navigate JSTOR and build skills such as using advanced search techniques, using workspace tools to save and organize research, and citing their sources.
- How to use JSTOR (LibGuide)
- How to create a JSTOR account–for anyone! (video)
- Slide decks you can adapt to:
- Research on JSTOR (Google Slides)
- Images on JSTOR (Google Slides)
Novice researchers often struggle with constructing effective search strategies and may feel overwhelmed by the volume of results. These short video tutorials provide students with practical guidance on refining their searches to find the most relevant content quickly.
- JSTOR isn’t Google: Quick tips on searching JSTOR (video)
- Advanced Search on JSTOR (video)
Peer review
Students often ask whether all the content on JSTOR is peer reviewed. Nearly all journals on JSTOR are peer-reviewed, but the archives also contain primary sources and content that predates today’s standard peer-review process. However, all content on JSTOR is considered scholarly content.
- Peer Reviewed Content on JSTOR (LibGuide)
Interactive research tool
Developed in collaboration with our community, this tool employs generative AI and other technologies to empower people to deepen and expand their research with JSTOR’s trusted corpus.
- Sign up for JSTOR’s free interactive research tool (in beta)
- How one teacher used the tool to boost student engagement, teach key skills, and streamline workflows (blog post)
JSTOR’s citation tool simplifies research workflows and helps students cite their sources correctly. The tool automatically generates citations in your choice of MLA, Chicago, or APA styles. The tool also supports exports to various citation managers.
- Exporting Citations from JSTOR (how-to)
Organizing research
The JSTOR Workspace offers an efficient way for students to track their research. It’s easy to organize items into folders, make notes about each source, and export reference lists.
- A Tour of the JSTOR Workspace (video)
- Organizing and Presenting Research (how-to)
Citation trails
Introduce students to an effective research method: using citation trails. JSTOR’s “Cited by” feature on item pages automatically displays content that cites that item, allowing students to find highly relevant sources, understand the broader academic context of their research topic, and follow the scholarly conversation.
Jump-start research skills with a self-guided course
JSTOR’s free and open self-paced course is designed to help college-bound high school students and first-year college students learn academic research skills. Course topics include effective searching, evaluating credibility, and properly citing sources.
Students will encounter three learning modules divided into lessons. First, they’ll watch short videos to learn about particular research concepts; then, they’ll practice a few activities before moving ahead. Upon completion of a module, learners take a brief assessment to gauge their understanding.
The course can be found at guides.jstor.org/researchbasics . Please share this URL with your students. The site also offers an instructional guide for educators.
Access the course
Text analysis allows students to uncover patterns and insights in large collections of texts, enhancing their data literacy and critical thinking abilities. Constellate, a text analysis platform, offers tools and support to help you confidently teach this advanced research method to your students. It facilitates the entire text analysis process—from content exploration and dataset creation to analysis—and provides free classes and expert support.
Getting started is easy: you can create an account, join our webinars, and begin working with datasets and creating visualizations for free. For more advanced features, recommend the Pedagogy Package to your library; free trials are available.
Connect, share, and grow with JSTOR
Stay informed with teaching and learning updates.
Sign up to receive occasional updates packed with teaching resources, new tools, educator success stories, and details on upcoming webinars and events—all designed to support your teaching.
Join a growing community
Be among the first to connect with a global community of educators in the Teaching and Learning with JSTOR LinkedIn group. Share best practices and find fresh ways to boost student engagement with JSTOR’s extensive resources.
Share your expertise
We love working with educators to co-create teaching resources and opportunities to document and celebrate innovative teaching.
Stay connected
Follow JSTOR on social media for valuable content and the latest resources to share with your community.
Image credits: 1. Quiringh van Brekelenkam. Life of a Student (Scène d’intimité; La vie studieuse) (detail). 1662. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lille. 2. Getty. 3. Getty. 4. Getty.
Initial Thoughts
Perspectives & resources, is it the responsibility of teachers to teach study skills strategies (opinion question: no resources), which study skills strategies can improve students’ academic performance.
- Page 1: Introduction to Study Skills
- Page 2: Graphic Organizers
- Page 3: Comprehension Strategies
- Page 4: Mnemonics
- Page 5: Note-taking
- Page 6: Materials Organization
- Page 7: Time Management
- Page 8: Self-Regulation
- Page 9: References, Additional Resources, and Credits
Executive Functions (Part 2): Strategies to Improve Students’ Academic Performance
This companion to the Executive Functions (Part 1) module reiterates the importance of teachers providing explicit instruction to students with executive function difficulties on the use of effective strategies. It then overviews a number of these strategies: graphic organizers, note-taking, mnemonics, organizing materials, time management, comprehension strategies, and self-regulation strategies (est. completion time: 2.5 hours). If you have not done so already, consider completing part one before beginning this resource:
- Executive Functions (Part 1): Understanding Why Some Students Struggle
Work through the sections of this module in the order presented in the STAR graphic above.
Related to this module
Copyright 2022 Vanderbilt University. All rights reserved.
Research Basics: an open academic research skills course
- Lesson 1: Using Library Tools
- Lesson 2: Smart searching
- Lesson 3: Managing information overload
- Assessment - Module 1
- Lesson 1: The ABCs of scholarly sources
- Lesson 2: Additional ways of identifying scholarly sources
- Lesson 3: Verifying online sources
- Assessment - Module 2
- Lesson 1: Creating citations
- Lesson 2: Citing and paraphrasing
- Lesson 3: Works cited, bibliographies, and notes
- Assessment - Module 3
- - For Librarians and Teachers -
- Acknowledgements
- Other free resources from JSTOR
Module 1: Effective searching
To get started, choose “Lesson 1” from the navigation bar on your left. Each lesson has two components—Watch and Practice. After watching the video, practice what you’ve learned before proceeding to the next lesson. After you complete all three lessons in this module, choose “Assessment - Module 1" from the navigation bar on the left. Have fun!
- << Previous: Welcome
- Next: Lesson 1: Using Library Tools >>
- Last Updated: Apr 24, 2024 6:38 AM
- URL: https://guides.jstor.org/researchbasics
JSTOR is part of ITHAKA , a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.
©2000-2024 ITHAKA. All Rights Reserved. JSTOR®, the JSTOR logo, JPASS®, Artstor® and ITHAKA® are registered trademarks of ITHAKA.
JSTOR.org Terms and Conditions Privacy Policy Cookie Policy Cookie settings Accessibility
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
The topics covered are subjects that will help you prepare for college-level research. Each module ends with an assessment to test your knowledge. The JSTOR librarians who helped create the course hope you learn from the experience and feel ready to research when you've finished this program. Select Module 1: Effective Searching to begin the ...
The Research Skills Certificate consists of learning modules designed to increase participants' knowledge and skills to plan and conduct credible research. ... The course focuses on all aspects of initiating a research project, research study design, data management, statistical analysis, interpretation and dissemination of research results ...
The study skills module includes a complete lesson plan, slides, activities and assessments. The goals of the module are to teach students the principles of learning based on cognitive research that will allow them to identify the components of effective studying and to design an effective study plan.
JSTOR's free and open self-paced course is designed to help college-bound high school students and first-year college students learn academic research skills. Course topics include effective searching, evaluating credibility, and properly citing sources. Students will encounter three learning modules divided into lessons.
Platform 1:1.7 Describe the principles of research and how research findings are . used to inform evidence-based practice. Platform 1:1.13 Demonstrate the numeracy, literacy, digital and technological skills . required to meet the needs of people in their care to ensure safe and effective practice.
Research annotations. High-Leverage Practices. IRIS resources on HLPs. Films. ... Which study skills strategies can improve students' academic performance? Page 1: Introduction to Study Skills; ... module reiterates the importance of teachers providing explicit instruction to students with executive function difficulties on the use of ...
Research and Writing Skills Module Hub. Research and Writing Skills Module Hub. Research and Writing Skills Module Hub. Strategies and Resources for Searching the Literature. Strategies and Resources for Searching the Literature. Strategies and Resources for Searching the Literature. Being clear about your purpose. Being clear about your ...
Research Skills Training Curriculum study is to identify the minimum set of skills, knowledge and key ... undertake health research in places and settings inexperienced or new to research. This set of 13 modules covers all aspects of the research cycle including study design, conduct, analysis and ...
A study motivation and study skills module is given in the first semester of the first year of the Computer Science and Engineering program and the Media Technology program. The module consists of the following parts (see also the timeline in Figure 1): (1) The students are instructed to look at at least four of nine short videos, where Björn Liljeqvist, a young specialist in study skills ...
Module 1: Effective searching. The first step in a research project is to look for sources to use in your writing. In Module 1, you'll learn techniques for successful database searching. First, you'll discover how to navigate and select from the resources available on your library's website.