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Interactive Tutorials

The Claremont Colleges Library offers several self-paced, graded, asynchronous tutorials to introduce learners to the research process.

Please note that while these tutorials have graded quizzes for the learner to get feedback, there is no way for the scores to be recorded. Those who complete the tutorials can generate a certificate of completion, but the individual quiz answers will not be recorded. If you would like to assign portions of a tutorial, or the tutorials in their entirety, to a class and have the scores recorded for a grade, please send an email with your request to AskALibrarian@claremont.edu

Students can give feedback at the end of each tutorial. If you are faculty, staff, or an administrator who would like to give feedback, please do so through this form.

Start Your Research contains 4 modules, each requiring 10-15 minutes to complete. After completing all of the modules, learners will be able to

  • Understand the goal(s) of your assignment
  • Determine the information you need
  • Explain how knowledge is created over time
  • Find the information you need in the library

Module 1: Understand Your Assignment

By the end of this module, you’ll be able to

  • Explain what your assignment is asking you to do
  • Choose your topic
  • Modify the scope of your topic

Module 2: Types of Information

By the end of this module, you will be able to

  • Recall that information is classified into different types
  • Recognize that different disciplines use distinct information sources
  • Explain how information is created over time after an event
  • Identify the information sources available on your topic

Module 3: Search Strategies

After completing this module, you’ll be able

  • Explain why search strategies are necessary
  • Describe key search strategies
  • Break your topic down into keywords
  • Describe how to apply the operators AND, OR, NOT, asterisk, and quotation marks, in your database search to produce targeted results
  • Revise your search based on the results

Module 4: Find Books, Articles, and Media

By the end of this module, you will be able to

  • Describe how to conduct a broad search across all of the library’s resources
  • Choose the specific database(s) best for your topic
  • Remember how to request items that the library doesn’t have

Exploring Academic Integrity contains five modules, each requiring 10-15 minutes to complete. After completing all of the modules, learners will be able to

  • Discuss the importance of academic integrity at The Claremont Colleges
  • List the best practices for working with integrity
  • Apply your understanding of attribution to your research and assignments
  • Recognize how copyright and fair use affect producing your scholarly work

Module 1: Understanding Academic Integrity

After completing this module, you’ll be able to

  • define academic integrity
  • explain the crucial role that academic integrity plays in the scholarly community
  • describe your responsibilities as a student to act with integrity
  • recall where to go to review your college’s honor code

Module 2: Attribution and Citation

After completing this module, you’ll be able to

  • Describe what attribution is
  • Explain why attribution and citations are an important part of academic integrity
  • Differentiate between paraphrasing and quoting a source
  • Determine when you need to provide attribution or citations
  • Recall where to go for information on different citation styles

Module 3: Plagiarism

After completing this module, you’ll be able to

  • Recall different types of plagiarism
  • Explain how to avoid plagiarism

Module 4: Copyright and Fair Use

After completing this module, you’ll be able to

  • Define copyright
  • Define fair use
  • Explain how copyright and fair use apply to your assignments

Module 5: Guidelines for Working with Integrity

After completing this module you will be able to

  • Define academic dishonesty
  • Give examples of dishonest practices
  • List the reasons students resort to dishonest practices

Getting Started with Literature Reviews contains one module, requiring about 20 minutes to complete.

By the end of the tutorial, you will be able to:

  • Understand the purpose of a literature review- and more importantly, understand the purpose of your literature review
  • Develop effective search strategies
  • Save your sources and take notes on your reading
  • Synthesize your research in order to write your literature review
  • Use some helpful tips for avoiding “research overwhelm”
Video Tutorials

The Claremont Colleges Library has a YouTube channel that includes a variety of short instructional videos. Topics include how to use features of our website, how to use various software we support (like Zotero), and search strategies to make searching for sources more effective and efficient.