Information for Academic Staff

StartSmart supports academic teaching roles by:

• Introducing the Subject Outline as a critical resource to help support transitioning skills
• Directing students to academic resources and away from a reliance on websites, which may be unreliable in an academic sense
• Reinforcing the need to acknowledge ideas and work of others in a systematic way relevant to their discipline
• Providing students with a solid basis on which Faculty Librarians can build through specific, staged and specialist information skills training. Basic skills are supplemented by the Resources for assignment guides which provide starting points for subject specific help

StartSmart supports the UOW Graduate Qualities

StartSmart will put students on the right path to acquiring some of the UOW Graduate Qualities:

Informed

• StartSmart will help students find and apply knowledge found in information sources about their area of study which will lead to an understanding of its current issues, locally and internationally
  

Independent learners

• StartSmart will engage students with new ideas and ways of thinking by seeking to extend their knowledge through ongoing research, enquiry and reflection. They will be able to do this by finding information, using a variety of sources and technologies. StartSmart will help them understand the need to acknowledge the work and ideas of other

Problem solvers

• StartSmart will help students gain critical thinking skills to respond effectively to assessment tasks

Effective communicators

• StartSmart will assist student to articulate ideas and convey them effectively

Responsible

• StartSmart will help students understand how to use information responsibly and ethically

StartSmart - Essential Academic Information Skills

The StartSmart program assists transitioning undergraduate students to develop skills required during their first 4 weeks of study at UOW during which time students are typically required to locate essential readings as well as independently search for books and journal articles for their first assessment task.

Essential Academic Information Skills assists students to:

• Appreciate the academic culture of UOW and the expectations for using resources provided for them
• Recognise that books, including the textbook, are important academic resources to use and the best Library tool to find them
• Recognise that journal articles, especially those online, are important academic resources to use and the best tools to locate them
• Know the values behind academic integrity at UOW and how to correctly use and reference their sources
  

The program consists of:

• 4 learning guides, which include interactive demonstrations and revision questions
• Compulsory quiz, delivered using the Moodle platform, where students must answer 21 questions and must achieve a grade of 10/10 to complete the program
  

Rules about StartSmart 

• Is compulsory for all new UOW undergraduate students
• Is important and results will be withheld if students don’t successfully complete it in their first session
  

N.B. Postgraduates students are encouraged to complete the StartSmart guides to start them on their research path. They can also login to enrol in the quiz using their UOW username and password and print out their Certificate if they successfully complete the quiz questions.

Some findings from our research

In 2009 new undergraduate students let us know about their confidence and abilities when searching for information.

• 63% searched the internet for all their research needs
• 53% either didn’t use journals or were not sure what a journal is
• 67% couldn’t distinguish a journal citation from a list of resources
• 49% either didn’t use databases or were not sure what a database is

Taken from: Presentation to UEC, 19 October 2009, by Margie Jantti Associate Librarian, Planning and Human Resources

This indicates the importance of assistance during the transition to university in order for students to:

• Develop student the information skills required at tertiary level
• Build awareness of UOW expectations in using academic information
• Be successful in finding and effectively using information for their first assessment task

StartSmart - Essential Academic Information Skills

UOW Library - assisting students to get the right start!