Web Links
Improving Your Study and Learning Skills
Students sometimes approach faculty members and ask questions such as "What can I do to improve my grade?" On some occasions these questions are precursors to requests for "extra credit" exercises, but sometimes students are truly seeking guidance of a more fundamental nature: Is there a better way to study, to learn, or to solve problems? McGraw Hill Publishers have asked this question of faculty across the country, and they have posted a number of short essays on their website:
McGraw Hill Study Tips
We encourage you to read through this collection to find ways to improve your critical thinking skills, how to learn while in class, to manage time, perform better on tests, study efficiently and effectively for tests, write better term papers, and solve word/logic problems through means other than guessing.
Improving Your Writing Skills
Faculty members in the Department of Psychology are now requiring more writing assignments of their students. The sites identified below provide information that may assist students in preparing these assignments.
OU Writing Center
The Oakland University Writing Center is located at 212 Kresge Library; look for the Joan Rosen Writing Studio in the northwest corner of the library. Staff, faculty and peer writing consultants are available to assist you in improving your writing skills.
Psychology Writing Guide
The psychology faculty at George Mason University have created this site especially for psychology majors. This guide provides resources for writing, presenting and researching in the field of psychology, as well as providing general reference to APA format and helpful resources for doing any sort of writing. Suggestions for writing better essays, lab reports, literature reviews, research proposals and posters are provided. Do yourself a favor -- visit this site.
UW Psychology Writing Center Handouts
The faculty and staff of the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington have prepared over 20 guides to writing scientific papers, using APA citation format, writing personal statements for graduate school, taking essay exams, and avoiding plagiarism.
Purdue University's Online Writing Lab
This section of Purdue's OWL provides a very useful summary of APA style.
Psychology with Style: A Hypertext Writing Guide
This website provides a useful and friendly introduction to APA style. Examples of title pages, abstracts, and reference sections are presented. The author also discusses the differences between a research report and a research/literature review.
Style Tips from APA Online
This site contains a list of FAQ's (and answers) concerning APA style.
Russ Dewey's APA Research Style Crib Sheet
This was the first APA crib sheet to be placed on the web, and continues to be one of the most often used.
APA Style Essentials
This website provides a summary of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The basic elements necessary to write a paper "in APA style" are presented. Examples of a brief but complete research article and a research proposal are presented as well.
Literature Search Essentials
This website will be useful to the undergraduate student who needs to do a literature search either as a specific assignment or as part of a larger research project. Information on the use of PsycINFO are available. Most importantly, the author provides a framework to assist student in getting started with a literature search assignment.
Writing a Psychology Literature Review
This file provides a thorough guide on how to preparing a good literature review. Please note that a literature review is not a series of summaries of research articles. This article will help you to understand the distinction.
Summarizing a Research Article
This file, a companion to the previous one, provides a thorough guide on how to prepare a good summary of a research article.
The links below have been contributed by various members of the department as sources of information that may be of interest to psychology majors.
Page last updated on May 25, 2007, 8:20 AM.
