This paper provides undergraduate students with a practical overview of essential academic competencies needed to succeed at the university level. It addresses how to conduct effective library and internet research by evaluating source credibility, explains the principles of academic honesty and how to avoid plagiarism, and offers strategies for developing personalized study skills. The paper also covers time management techniques — including balancing social life, extracurricular activities, and academics — and concludes with guidance on setting short- and long-term educational and career goals. Together, these sections form a foundational guide for students transitioning into higher education.
Research papers are less daunting when you know how to use library and internet sources to their fullest and become comfortable with the process of seeking appropriate sources for your material. Some papers may require that you rely exclusively on scholarly sources published either in books or peer-reviewed journals. In this case, the internet is a poor source of information, as few academic books and peer-reviewed journals are freely available in digital formats. Services like Google Scholar may point you in the right direction, but unless you have access to an online academic library, you may be better off using the search engines available through the university intranet. Those databases contain massive digital libraries of entries from peer-reviewed academic journals. Ask your instructor whether remote login to scholarly databases is available.
University libraries offer a plethora of sources on any number of topics, and almost any book or journal you find there will be appropriate for use in an academic research paper. Internet research is not so straightforward. As a general rule, information culled from personal websites, blogs, and wiki sites cannot be cited as authoritative material. Such sites are unreliable academically but may offer ideas to expand your search elsewhere. Generally, sites published under university domains are reliable. Some mainstream news sources may also be appropriate, depending on the topic or class you are writing for. Government sites also tend to offer reliable information. Publications from well-known think tanks or NGOs can likewise be cited as scholarly sources.
What sources you use and where you find them will largely depend on the class, topic, and instructor. Some research papers can be sourced almost entirely from online publications, while others cannot include any online sources at all. When in doubt, ask your instructor which online sources are appropriate. As you write more research papers, you will become better at evaluating sources for their biases and credibility. The guidelines above can help you narrow down your choices to sources that are either cited in academic databases or published by credible institutions — including universities, professional organizations, governments, and think tanks. You would do best to avoid most material published on .com sites; relying on .org and .edu sites is generally a sound approach. The Library of Congress research guides offer additional direction on evaluating sources for academic use.
Academic honesty refers to a broad set of ethical principles and practices you should uphold while at university and beyond. Generally, academic honesty centers on understanding what plagiarism is and how to avoid inadvertently using someone else's ideas or words without credit.
Plagiarism at its most obvious entails verbatim copying from something you read online or in print. Similarly, reproducing what you hear on television, in a film, or in a lecture is also plagiarism. Whenever you write down what someone else has said or written, you must give credit in the form of a citation. When you copy word-for-word, the reference will almost always include quotation marks followed by either a footnote or a parenthetical citation. The specific format of your citation depends on your class and your instructor's preferences. A wealth of information about properly citing direct quotes is available online.
However, plagiarism is often more subtle than verbatim quotation and can create complex and confusing situations as you write research papers. As you write, you will be tempted to borrow ideas from others — often without realizing it. Try to become more aware of which ideas are your own, arising from your own creative and analytical thought process, and which ideas originated from the sources you read.
Paraphrasing from sources usually requires proper referencing; to paraphrase without giving credit can be considered plagiarism. Many students wonder where they can draw the line between common knowledge and proprietary ideas. Use your best judgment. If an idea is a matter of opinion, or if it constitutes a novel hypothesis about a given subject, you are better off providing credit. If the idea is something widely known — something your mother, roommate, and younger sibling would all have heard of — you can probably get by without a citation. Citations for paraphrased ideas do not require quotation marks but may demand parenthetical or footnote references. Ask your professors which citation format they prefer, or use one of the standardized styles such as APA or MLA. Style guides for both are available online.
"Personalizing study methods by learning style"
"Balancing academics, social life, and priorities"
"Planning educational and professional future goals"
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