Jesus A. Diaz, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Philosophy (retired)
Kean University
1000 Morris Ave
Union, NJ 07083-7131
Email: jdiaz@kean.edu
https://philpeople.org/profiles/jesus-a-diaz
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesus-diaz-311a6311/
The purpose of undergraduate research is to learn how to find materials, to evaluate them, and to integrate them into new relations. These are basic research skills; taking notes and documenting are incidental. The basic skills are fundamental to what education is all about---first, looking at what was and is as a means of looking ahead.
Resourceful persons are not those who carry the greatest amount of information in their heads, but the ones who know where to find answers to their questions.
- Irmscher, W. (1972). The Holt Guide to English: A Contemporary Handbook of Rhetoric, Language, and Literature. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 305.
Chart of Selected Requirements
FINAL PAPER
Instructions for Selecting the Topic of Your Final Paper
DATA AND INTERPRETATIONS
You Still Need Your Brain Willingham, D. (2017, May 19)
The Present Limits of AI Chomsky, N. et al. (2023, Mar. 8)
Chomsky et al. (2023) is among the best about AI’s limits & promise. I include it for two reasons: (1) As Willingham (2017) above & Holmes (2015) below, for its relevance to the research process, especially its description of how humans reason, use language, pass from data to explanations, and engage in thinking about morals. Today, AI cannot match these human abilities; (2) How ChatGPT answered the questions an author asked about the ethics of transforming Mars to support human life. Some assignments in this course involve data and others require interpretation of data. If the author’s questions to ChatGPT were an assignment and I get from students the answers ChatGPT provided, their grades would be low. Under CULTURAL EVENTS below, look at Water: Suggestions for Interpretative Essays. If confronting the issues in Suggestions, it’s obvious ChatGPT would produce nothing of value. NOTE: On Mar. 16, 2023, NYT published several replies to the article.
IDENTIFYING RESEARCH PROBLEMS, DATA, AND INTERPRETATIONS
Research Begins with Ignorance Holmes, J. (2015, Aug. 24)
DATABASES
Database Searching: Subject vs. Keyword
Database Searching: Strategies
The Inverse Relation Between Precision and Recall
Where Does the Phrase "Card Catalog" Come From?
List of Academic Databases and Search Engines
IMPORTANCE OF EVALUATING SOURCES
Five Criteria for Evaluating Web Pages
(A) In Social Media
(B) In Academic Research
Campaign for Accountability. (2017, July 14). Google academics. Retrieved August 3, 2017, from Google Transparency Project: https://googletransparencyproject.org/articles/google-academics-inc
Bridy, Annemarie et al. (2017, July 21). Has Google paid off an army of academic researches. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 3, 2017 from http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-bridy- perzanowski-google-tp-20170721-story.html
The original Beall's List was a live link on this site until legal threats forced its author to remove the site from the web. I plan to provide more information about predatory journals. For now, check Kolata, G. (2017, Oct. 30). Many academics are eager to publish in worthless journals. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/science/predatory-journals-academics.html
RISK OF INFORMATION OVERLOAD
Example from National Security Angwin, J. (2013, Dec. 25)
DOCUMENTATION
Where are In-Text Citations Placed?
AUTOMATED CITATIONS:
PRINT:
- APA, MLA, Chicago – Automatically Formatted Bibliographies
AUDIOVISUALS:
In English:
- How to Use the References Tab
- Create a Bibliography Using Word
- Microsoft Word 2010: Citations, Bibliographies and Cross References
En Español:
- Cadifre
Council of Science Editors:
www.councilscienceeditors.org/scientific-style-and-format
EXERCISES:
ETHICS: RESEARCH ON HUMAN SUBJECTS
Protecting Human Subjects Research Participants
This online class was a free NIH service when I taught the course; anyone could take it and, if passing its tests, earn a certificate. I would not use it now because it is no longer free. It would be unfair to offer an extra credit opportunity only some students can afford. Calculation of Final Grades explains how the option worked.
CULTURAL EVENT
Cultural Event as an Assignment: Difference between group project and interpretative essay
Resources for India: History, Society, Religion, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Water: Suggestions for Interpretative Essay - Your interpretation of the data
Bibliography - Reading at least some items in this bibliography will inform you about the economic and social conditions in which people live. This can improve your work on the Interpretative Essay.
This bibliography contains what Microsoft Word calls headings, i.e. the names of the countries listed appear in a column. Clicking at any country’s name moves the screen display to the section dealing with that country. If the headings don’t show up, download the file & open it in Word. In the View tab, select Navigation Pane (Document Map in Word's older versions).
ETHICS ASSIGNMENT - NARROWING YOUR TOPIC - click here
FINAL EXAM AND FINAL GRADE
Study Version of Final Comprehensive Multiple Choice Exam
(1) I thank Karen Harris, Randy Henningson, and Sergio Saravia, of Kean's defunct Center for Professional Development, for teaching me to build and maintain this site. Their team was second to none. I also thank Kean librarians Linda Cifelli and Caroline Geck who, at my request, developed just for my class Resources for India: Society, Religion, Gender and Sexuality Studies (above). Last but not least, I thank Luis Rodriguez, Kean University Library Director, for sharing with me Buckland et al. 1994 paper, referenced above in The Inverse Relation Between Precision and Recall. Any misunderstanding of that paper is my fault.
(2) www.kean.edu/~jdiaz was this website's original URL. A few years later, I followed the Center for Professional Development's recommedation to move the site to Google Drive. After the move, the original URL automatically redirected to the present URL. This redirection ceased after I retired. Many documents in this site still have the original URL. Unless I teach the course again, I cannot justify spending time updating this detail.
(3) I retired from full-time teaching on June 2017; I may adjunct occasionally. Unless I teach this course, I am not obligated to update this website or finish items in progress. I may do these things as conditions and time permit.
© Jesus A. Diaz, 2005 & future years.
Last revised/updated: Jun. 18, 2024
I am not responsible for the contents of links following my copyright information and last revision/update date. The links below are not parts of this web site. I add them because they seem reliable and contain information relevant to the course.
(1) Purdue Owl © :
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/
(2) The Writing Center: University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill:
http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handou
(3) Grants: