How to solve a problem like researching for your first science assignment!

At university, you will complete a range of assignments.

You need to draw on high quality and academic information to help you complete your assignments

This guide is here to help you:

• make sure your work is based on high quality information.
• find books and journal articles using Library Search.
• know how to identify different journal article types e.g. a review journal article and a primary journal article.
• know how to find specialist Biosciences and Chemistry resources using the Biosciences and Chemistry subject guide.
• know how to evaluate information.
• know to cite and reference information.

Each section contains information to read, videos to watch, activities and quizzes to put your skills into practice and test your knowledge.

This guide represents between one and two hours of study time.

The study time for each student may vary as we all have different levels of research knowledge and search skills. Some tasks may take longer than others and if you read all the resources that are linked to from the guide and the journal articles, then the study time may be longer.

Is this the guide for me?

This guide is written to support students within the Department of Biosciences and Chemistry

• students on the foundation degree.
• students in the first year of their undergraduate programme.
• MSc students returning to study after a break.

If you are studying within another area of Sheffield Hallam University, you can find about more about search skills using How to Search.

The guide is split into sections.

You work through the guide from top to bottom using the sections. You can move through the guide using the sections or the navigation buttons at the end of each page.

In each section, the content is arranged in one column and in linear order which means you can scroll down the screen box by box. All the boxes are numbered and include a title to make it clear what you are working on in that section.

When you see this symbol -  Activity - this is your time to put into practice your skills, complete the activity and then return to the guide.

Be kind to yourself!

Some sections are longer than others. Each section, after this page, includes a Take a break box to encourage you to take time to pause and have a rest from the screen.

We are going to take a snapshot of how confident you feel about searching for information for assignments at university.

All you need to do is to select the radio button that best describes your confidence levels. All responses on the polls are anonymous.

At the end of the guide, we will ask the same question to see if there are any changes to confidence levels.  There will also be recommendations for you to follow to build and develop your skills further depending where your confidence levels are at the end of this process.

  Activity 1: Answer the poll