10 Tools to Make Your Students Research Pros

by Antonio Tooley

As teachers and educators, it is our responsibility to shape the young minds and prepare them for what lies ahead of them. Aside from teaching students how to think and accept new information, we should also take the time to reflect on the importance of research in one’s academic life. Everything starts with it, so it’s imperative that we also teach students how to do it properly, because poor research skills have a whole array of negative side effects.

Not having sufficient or incorrect information, plagiarism, whether accidental or intentional, missing deadlines, not having enough time to edit – these are just some of the problems students face if their research skills are not up to the job. But, thanks to modern technology, there are ways of showing them how to develop their research skills and ultimately, help them become better students. We have put together a comprehensive list of 10 excellent tools which will turn your students into research pros. 

Mind Meister

MindMeister is the leading mind mapping software on the market that takes brainstorming and transports it into the world of digital. This tool will allow your students to develop their ideas by presenting them graphically, making sure that none of them ever go missing among the clutter that is inside their minds. Another useful feature of MindMeister is that it allows the students to do some collaborative brainstorming and mind mapping with other students. All in all, it provides them with way more possibilities than the traditional method of using pen and paper.

Evernote

Thorough research creates a whole stockpile of ideas, notes and data that can be hard to sift through for most students, but you can help them make sense of all that by getting them to try Evernote, which is probably the best tool they can use to categorize their research results. Not only can they organize, archive, share and upload their research, but they can also search through it and access it easily by using tags.

Mendeley

Although Mendeley is primarily a reference manager, it is actually so much more than that. Apart from a PDF editor, it is also a full-fledged academic social network that allows your students to collaborate and network with students from all over the world. They can also create and manage their own bibliographies, and seek out additional papers on the topic they are currently researching. Mendeley’s party piece, however, is its sleek user interface, which is guaranteed to keep your students glued to the screen.

EduGeeksClub

EduGeeksClub is a versatile service which can help students during all stages of their academic work, including research, writing, and editing. What makes it such an effective tool for research is that it allows students to get in touch with professional researchers and scholars which can teach them all the ins and outs of efficient research, and they can also provide them with research assistance if they are really stuck on a particular subject. That also means they will have no trouble providing proper citations.

My Science Work

It’s hard to describe MyScienceWork in a few words, because it’s such a powerful platform. Basically, it is a scientific network that allows researchers and scientists to communicate and exchange their knowledge. Your students can benefit from its fully searchable database of over 31 million papers, publications and documents from multiple disciplines. Best of all, 20 million of those are free. 

PubNiche

Another useful source of research data for your students would be PubNiche, which is a webpage that curates news from a bunch of different sites dedicated to science. It may take them some time to locate the content they are looking for, since the page itself is pretty basic, but good research always takes time. PubNiche is very active on social media, so make sure the students follow it on Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr.

Sciencescape

One of the biggest problems every researcher faces, including your students, is the sheer volume of all the different data that is available online (approximately 22 billion papers!), making it really easy for anyone to miss not only essential information, but entire research studies. Sciencescape is different from its competitors because it uses advanced algorithms that process natural language to discover content in real-time, and make it available for scientists and researchers.

Cite Fast

Citefast is a tool that will help students create proper citations when writing papers and essays. It allows them to generate citations using one of three major citation formats: APA, MAL, or Chicago. The entire process is incredibly easy, and the service is completely free. Students can also export their citations to Microsoft Word, and automatically look up publications, papers and webpages.

Paperity

Paperity differs from other research services because not only does it index, but it also aggregates research papers and journals. There are other aggregator services out there, but all of them are limited to just one discipline, whereas Paperity is multidisciplinary, and best of all, Open Access, which means all the content it aggregates is free to use. A truly useful tool for teachers, students and professional researchers.

PlagTracker

Although most teachers will immediately think of PlagTracker as a tool to discover plagiarism in their students’ work, students can also benefit from using it themselves. In order to avoid being penalized for plagiarizing someone else’s work by accident, they can check their papers and essays with PlagTracker to make sure they are on the safe side. The service is free, although they will gain access to some additional features if they decide to sign up for a premium account.

These tools will not only help your students get a firm grip on how to properly research, organize and reference their papers, but they will also help them emerge as better writers, because they will be able to save time by looking for the right information in the right place, and by collaborating with the right people. 

Short Bio: Antonio is a hopeless optimist who enjoys basking in the world's brightest colors. He loves biking to distant places and occasionally he gets lost. When not doing that he's blogging and teaching ESL. He will be happy to meet you on Facebook and Twitter.