“SEARCH AND QUICK WRITE” EXERCISE

You’ve completed your college education and are now a consultant for a Human Resources Department (aka Personnel Office) of a large company. Your manager has asked you to research current information that would help him/her write a policy on employee use of social networking sites or social media such as Facebook and Twitter. You are being asked to find studies or information that will help your manager determine whether or not employee use of these sites impacts worker productivity in a negative or positive way.

Using the skills you just learned in this workshop, research this topic online. Find two articles you believe provide current, authoritative information. One article should be from a scholarly journal; the other should be from a general interest publication (a “popular” source).

Begin this exercise by copying and pasting the questions below into an email window. (Use a separate browser session to conduct your online search.) Answer these questions in your email window and send your finished work to:
instructor’s name@smccd.edu


1. Paste below a citation on this topic for an article from a scholarly journal:

2. Briefly explain why you believe this article is relevant.

3. Paste below a citation on this topic for an article from a general interest publication:

4. Briefly explain why you believe this article is relevant.

5. What online search tool (i.e. database, search engine, catalog, etc.) did you use to find your two articles? Please provide the name of the search tool you used.

6. What search terms did you use? Please specify exactly what you typed -- i.e. your search statement(s) or search string(s) -- that gave you the best results.

DO NOT PUT YOUR NAME ON YOUR WORK. THIS EXERCISE IS NOT GRADED.