Skip to Main Content

Assignment 1

This page will help get you started on assignment 1.

You should use a range of quality sources to support the arguments in your debate. Please refer to the learnonline course site for assessment instructions.

1. Formulate the debate question

You need to construct a statement for the debate from a clinical practice issue (an important topic or problem) discussed in class.

Mind maps are a useful tool to brainstorm the health topic that you chose to debate about and formulate a debate question.

Watch this video to see how to do this.

2. Plan your search

Step 1: Identifing concepts and alternative words

Start by identifying the concepts (main ideas) from your debate topic prior to searching. Then consider alternative words for these concepts which, together with the concept term, become your searchable keywords.

Watch this video here to learn more about addressing a topic.

Example search topic: Birthing on country should be practiced for indigenous Australian women.

Lets identify main concepts from this topic.

Concept 1: Indigenous Australian women

Since only women give birth,  you do not need to search for the word women. Therefore, concept 1 can be refined to Indigenous Australians. You will be able to locate more relevant results by searching for Indigenous and Australians, as separate concepts.

Concept 2: Birthing on country

As well as searching for "Birthing on country" as a phrase, you can locate more relevant results by searching for birthing and country as separate concepts.

Concepts Keywords
indigenous Aboriginal, Torres strait islander, Torres strait islanders, Oceanic ancestry group, oceanic ancestry groups, australian aborigine, australian aborigines, australian race, australoid race, australoid races
 
Australian Australia
Birthing child birth, pregnancy, pregnancies, obstetrics, maternity care, antenatal care, prenatal care, labour
country Traditional land, ancestors' land, ancestral land, remote community, remote communities, birth on country, remote dwelling, remote dwellings

Step 2: Combined search string

Combine concepts of your assignments using AND
Combine the alternate words using OR

indigenous OR aboriginal OR aborigines OR Torres strait islandar  OR Torres strait islandars OR Oceanic ancestry group OR Oceanic ancestry groups

AND

Australia OR Australian

AND

Birthing OR pregnancy OR pregnancies OR obstetrics OR maternity care OR antenatal care OR prenatal care OR antenatal care OR prenatal care OR labour

AND

Traditional land OR birth on country OR ancestors' land OR ancestral land OR remote community OR remote communities OR remote dwelling OR remote dwellings

Step 3: With truncation / phrases

  Add double quotes eg "registered nurse" for phrases using
  Add truncation symbol * to search for different word endings
indigenous OR aborigin* OR Torres strait islandar* OR Oceanic ancestry group*

AND

Australia*

AND

Birth* OR pregnanc* OR obstetrics OR maternity care OR antenatal care OR prenatal care OR labour

AND

Traditional land OR "birth on country" OR ancest* land OR remote communit* OR remote dwelling?

3. Searching for Information

For your assignment you need to consult and reference peer reviewed journal articles. See learnonline course site for more information.

Useful databases to search for peer reviewed articles:

Watch the following video to help you plan your search strategy and search for information.

The internet can be a useful source of information for this assessment. Use the key concepts and synonyms that you identified in step 2 to search.

Useful internet sources include:

LibKey Nomad

If you are looking for information on the internet, it's worth downloading LibKey Nomad. It's a browser extension that will look for full text PDFs of journal articles from websites outside of the Library Catalogue. This is helpful when looking on pages such as Wikipedia, because you can easily access and read the articles from the reference list. Instructions to download LibKey Nomad are available here.

Tips when searching in Google Scholar

Use Google Scholar to find more scholarly material than is usually found in search engines — for example from educational and government web sites. An advantage of Google Scholar is that it provides access to the full text of many scholarly/academic articles if you connect to it via the link above (i.e. via the Library website).

4. Evaluate your references

You should critically evaluate all resources found to determine their appropriateness for your assignment. The video below explains more.

  • Having access to a lot of information can be overwhelming.
  • Evaluating information helps you decide what resources you should use.
  • One technique you can use is the CRAAP test.
  • Currency: How recent is the information? Does it suit your needs?
  • Relevance: Is the information relevant to your assignment?
  • Authority: Who wrote the information? Are they an expert?
  • Accuracy: Is the information accurate? Is it supported by evidence?
  • Purpose: Why was the resource created? Is there any bias?
  • You can use the CRAAP tool to think about these issues when evaluating your resources.

5. Construct the Debate

Use the resources below to learn how to formulate the debate.

Correctly reference your sources

You must appropriately cite (‘acknowledge’) all references used in your assignment to avoid plagiarism.