EndNote as a Learning Tool
for Undergraduate Research in Political Science
Teaching students to locate, evaluate and document scholarly publications and
additional sources of empirical evidence is a key element in a political science curriculum,
and the political science major at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, is no exception.
“Analyzing Politics and Policies” is a course requirement for all political science majors
before they move on to their Level III research seminars, and most majors fulfill this
prerequisite in their sophomore years. In this course, students examine the various qualitative
and quantitative methods in empirical research and, in their own independent projects, learn
the steps, standards and skills of political analysis, all the while incorporating scholarly
literature, government documents and other research sources. The course satisfies a general-
education writing requirement and calls for drafts and revisions at numerous stages of the
research process.
As I worked to prepare the syllabus for this newly defined course for fall semester
2001, St. Olaf College had just acquired a site license
regular user of the software program and had consistently promoted its benefits to my
colleagues for their own research and writing. Now that St. Olaf had become one of the
nation’s early initiators of the site license arrangement, I believed that my students also
should have access to this information-literacy tool and decided to integrate its use into the
course syllabus. I believe the succeeding four years have validated this decision, suggesting
that a positive correlation exists between classroom use of bibliographic database
management programs such as EndNote and student learning and competence in
undergraduate political science research. Specifically, my observations lead me to conclude
1
The St. Olaf library was responsible for the early initiation of the EndNote site license at St. Olaf College.
Administration and maintenance of the EndNote program remain within the college library, backed by technical
support from Information and Instructional Technologies.
2
Although this paper clearly indicates that I see advantages in the use of EndNote for personal research and
teaching purposes, I have no official or informal relationships with EndNote developers or marketers.
1
Convention