Welcome to the research guide for Critical Reasoning about Weird Things - First-Year Seminar!
Welcome to the research guide for Critical Reasoning about Weird Things
This guide will assist you in locating resources for your First-Year Seminar research project and coursework.
Take some time to explore the tutorials on the First-Year Seminar Library Guide to sharpen your skills in finding, retrieving, analyzing, evaluating, and using information for college research.
If you have any questions about research or library resources don't hesitate to contact your embedded librarian for this course, Nathan Filbert, using the contact information to the left, or stop by the reference desk at Ablah Library.
Core Resources for FYPL 102B: Critical Reasoning about Weird Things:
How to Think about Weird Things by 
My Broken Language: A Memoir by 
My Broken Language: A Memoir by Ablah Library Resources
Free online workshops for all your research needs!
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Ablah Library has 20 study rooms. Due to Covid-19 most study rooms are single occupancy focus rooms, and some allow two people. Reserve online.
WSU Resources
Verified by
An indispensable guide for telling fact from fiction on the internet--often in less than 30 seconds. The internet brings information to our fingertips almost instantly. The result is that we often jump to thinking too fast, without taking a few moments to verify the source before engaging with a claim or viral piece of media. Information literacy expert Mike Caulfield and educational researcher Sam Wineburg are here to enable us to take a moment for due diligence with this informative, approachable guide to the internet. With this illustrated tool kit, you will learn to identify red flags, get quick context, and make better use of common websites like Google and Wikipedia that can help and hinder in equal measure. This how-to guide will teach you how to use the web to verify the web, quickly and efficiently, including how to * Verify news stories and other events in as little as thirty seconds (seriously) * Determine if the article you're citing is by a reputable scholar or a quack * Detect the slippery tactics scammers use to make their sites look credible * Decide in a minute if that shocking video is truly shocking * Deduce who's behind a site--even when its ownership is cleverly disguised * Uncover if that feature story is actually a piece planted by a foreign government * Use Wikipedia wisely to gain a foothold on new topics and leads for digging deeper And so much more. Building on techniques like SIFT and lateral reading, Verified will help students and anyone else looking to get a handle on the internet's endless flood of information through quick, practical, and accessible steps. For more information, visit the website for the book.
Notes on My Dunce Cap by
This is my favorite book about learning together (your librarian). A text for those curious about education as a context for creativity and collaboration, and for teachers who want to reconsider hierarchy in their classrooms, Jesse Ball's Notes on My Dunce Cap includes advisory material regarding the creation of syllabi and the manner in which groups may evaluate the work of an individual without harm. Ball is renowned for the unique courses he teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago, which are compiled in this volume along with extended notes on pedagogy. His meditations consider pedagogy in terms that are at once usefully broad and insightfully profound: "When it is possible for any of us to simply go and sit somewhere in the grass, and when it is such a delightful thing to do, to go and sit in the grass, whether by oneself or with others, then it is important to remember that anytime we think about teaching, or indeed, about any other activity--that we do it instead of sitting somewhere in the grass. We are passing up on the joy of solitude, and all its virtues and pleasures. Therefore, it is crucial that what happens when we teach be of the same value as time spent alone. And that is true both for ourselves and for those we teach." Jesse Ball (born 1978) is the author of five novels, including The Curfew, Silence Once Begun and A Cure for Suicide, which was longlisted for the 2015 National Book Award, as well as several collections of poetry, including March Book. His work has appeared in numerous publications including The New Republic, The Paris Review, Oberon, Circumference and Guernica Magazine.
Unflattening by
The primacy of words over images has deep roots in Western culture. But what if the two are inextricably linked, equal partners in meaning-making? Written and drawn entirely as comics, Unflattening is an experiment in visual thinking. Nick Sousanis defies conventional forms of scholarly discourse to offer readers both a stunning work of graphic art and a serious inquiry into the ways humans construct knowledge. Unflattening is an insurrection against the fixed viewpoint. Weaving together diverse ways of seeing drawn from science, philosophy, art, literature, and mythology, it uses the collage-like capacity of comics to show that perception is always an active process of incorporating and reevaluating different vantage points. While its vibrant, constantly morphing images occasionally serve as illustrations of text, they more often connect in nonlinear fashion to other visual references throughout the book. They become allusions, allegories, and motifs, pitting realism against abstraction and making us aware that more meets the eye than is presented on the page. In its graphic innovations and restless shape-shifting, Unflattening is meant to counteract the type of narrow, rigid thinking that Sousanis calls "flatness." Just as the two-dimensional inhabitants of Edwin A. Abbott's novella Flatland could not fathom the concept of "upwards," Sousanis says, we are often unable to see past the boundaries of our current frame of mind. Fusing words and images to produce new forms of knowledge, Unflattening teaches us how to access modes of understanding beyond what we normally apprehend.
Information Now by
Every day researchers face an onslaught of irrelevant, inaccurate, and sometimes insidious information. While new technologies provide powerful tools for accessing knowledge, not all information is created equal. Valuable information may be tucked away on a shelf, buried on the hundredth page of search results, or hidden behind digital barriers. With so many obstacles to effective research, it is vital that higher education students master the art of inquiry. Information Now is an innovative approach to information literacy that will reinvent the way college students think about research. Instead of the typical textbook format, it uses illustrations, humor, and reflective exercises to teach students how to become savvy researchers. Students will learn how to evaluate information, to incorporate it into their existing knowledge base, to wield it effectively, and to understand the ethical issues surrounding its use. Written by two library professionals, it incorporates concepts and skills drawn from the Association of College and Research Libraries' Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education and their Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Thoroughly researched and highly engaging, Information Now offers the tools that students need to become powerful consumers and creators of information. Whether used by a high school student tackling a big paper, an undergrad facing the newness of a university library, or a writer wanting to go beyond Google, Information Now is a powerful tool for any researcher's arsenal.
What the Best College Students Do by
The author of the best-selling book What the Best College Teachers Do is back with more humane, doable, and inspiring help, this time for students who want to get the most out of college--and every other educational enterprise, too. The first thing they should do? Think beyond the transcript. The creative, successful people profiled in this book--college graduates who went on to change the world we live in--aimed higher than straight A's. They used their four years to cultivate habits of thought that would enable them to grow and adapt throughout their lives. Combining academic research on learning and motivation with insights drawn from interviews with people who have won Nobel Prizes, Emmys, fame, or the admiration of people in their field, Ken Bain identifies the key attitudes that distinguished the best college students from their peers. These individuals started out with the belief that intelligence and ability are expandable, not fixed. This led them to make connections across disciplines, to develop a "meta-cognitive" understanding of their own ways of thinking, and to find ways to negotiate ill-structured problems rather than simply looking for right answers. Intrinsically motivated by their own sense of purpose, they were not demoralized by failure nor overly impressed with conventional notions of success. These movers and shakers didn't achieve success by making success their goal. For them, it was a byproduct of following their intellectual curiosity, solving useful problems, and taking risks in order to learn and grow.
