Research skills tutorial

Congratulations! You have reached the final step, using the information you have found to meet your need.

You may wish to revisit the other steps in this process:

• Step 1 Define your information need
• Step 2 Develop your search strategy
• Step 3 Choose information sources
• Step 4 Find Information
• Step 5 Evaluate Information

Academic Writing

Using the information you have found may mean writing a speech or a report, creating a presentation, or responding to a question.

No matter how you use this information, you need to correctly cite (reference) it.

Academic Skills has online help for:

• Plagiarism
• Study Skills
• Academic Writing
• Essay Questions
• Thesis Statements
• Referencing Styles and Guides

You can book an appointment with an Academic Skills Adviser through Student Hub.

What is Plagiarism?

Research involves using other people's ideas and work to develop your own conclusions. You must acknowledge all of the sources you have used.

If you try to pass off someone else's work as your own, that is plagiarism.

If your work contains plagiarism, you may be penalised by:

• having to resubmit your assignment
• being marked down
• failing your assignment
• failing your course.

Plagiarism may be accidental or deliberate.

How to avoid plagiarism?

Whenever you use information that has been written by another person, you need to reference or cite the source. There are many referencing styles, but ultimately they all include the following elements:

• The author
• The year and date publication
• The title of the work
• The title of the publication that work appears in
• The name and place of publication

Learn more about plagiarism

You should be aware of the University of the Sunshine Coast Student Academic Misconduct - Procedures and Student Academic Integrity - Governing Policy.

Learn more about academic integrity

Why is Referencing important?

When you have an accurate reference:

• you can find an information source again quickly and easily
• your lecturers and tutors can find the source of the information you used in your assignments
• other people reading your work can find the source of the information
• you can share information without the need to give a copy of the source
• you acknowledge the effort made by the original author, who may have spent years creating that source of information, or finding the facts.

Visit the Referencing and Academic Integrity Guide on the UniSC website.

See how Step 6 relates to Ethical (Graduate Attribute)

              

Back to Step 5 - Evaluate Information

See an example of Step 6

Go to Tips and Tricks