Teaching Adventures

So, all my classes have major projects due on Wednesday, and so I had over 2 1/2 hours of discussion during office hours today. The last student was particularly having troubles with his literature review. We got through basic information like thesis and stuff, but he was stumped when it came to the author's methodology and evidence. I told him to work on it and we'd discuss what he found.

 And you know what he found? He found a "peer reviewed" predatory journal article written --and, apparently, edited by -- non-native English speakers. He was confused by everything in the piece, so when I myself read the abstract, I instantly recognized that this was pay-for-publication journal and a complete load of crap. Of course, I didn't make the student get a new source (it was clearly marked "peer reviewed" in our library database), but I certainly never had a student encounter this problem before!

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