Hello everyone,
My name is Allison Chang and I have been a student at
Brandman since last fall. This is one of my last classes… so this is my last quarter
as an undergrad student! I am a psychology major. I am very excited to be
finished with school for the time being. I decided to take some time off from
school before I continue on to my Master's. I would like to go to CSUN for my
Master's in Special Needs. I would really like to work with children with
autism. I have a family friend who has a four-year-old who has autism and she
is one of my favorite people to be around. I work at a charter school as an
after school care teacher. I currently love my job and never want to leave my
kids. They make my heart so happy even though the job can be trying at times. I
am going to be interviewed (hopefully in August) for a position at a company
working with autism therapy for toddlers. Other than school I love my work and I love to read and watch movies. I am a big YA reader. I love going to book signings and Festival of Books at USC. I have a growing book collection, and I'm open to book suggestions. I look forward to the year I am taking off of school to discover what I want to do as a career and have time to relax from going to school for so many years as a full time student.
I think that I can become a better scholarly researcher
through this course because it will provide me with more information about
research articles and how to conduct research for assignments. I also feel that
it will provide me with more effective and efficient methods to access research
(ACRL, 2000). I like how the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards
for Higher Education stated that people are at different levels of their
research, and I agree. Some people are starting out their education after a
break or from a different school where the level of researching was not as high
as it is at Brandman. It all depends on where the student is in their education
to determine how well they will do in their research and if they have the tools
and knowledge necessary to complete the research. Some people may not be as
computer literate so they do not know how to use some research search engines.
I know that when I started writing research papers using APA format, it was a
little foreign to me. My high school focused on MLA format and did not help us
learn APA. It is a process to have to learn and remember each component of an
APA paper. FInding proper research articles and knowing what information to use
is also a challenge that I have been told, comes with practice. The first standard
defined by ACRL to describe an information literate student is to define and
articulate the need of the information that was found (ACRL, 2000). I have
taken the research writing class and my professor told me that the ability to
articulate an article and find the key information that you are looking for
come with practice. It is a process to learn to write amazingly.
Thank you for visiting my blog,
Allison Chang
References:
Association of College & Research Libraries. (2000).
Information literacy
competency standards for higher education. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/standards/inf
ormationliteracycompetency.cfm
