24-25 JSK Workshop 2: Finding and Understanding Scientific Literature

Overview

On Wednesday, October 30th, The International SeaKeepers Society's Education Manager, Toni Lohroff, hosted the second Junior SeaKeepers Program workshop for the 2024-25 cohort of students with guest speakers from FAU's Undergraduate Research Leadership team. This was another Junior SeaKeepers workshop aimed at personal and professional development for students of the year-long program, and we were thrilled to host students and give them a crash course locating and understanding scientific literature as a follow-up to workshop 1, where we introduced the scientific method. We started the workshop by discussing the peer review publication process and why it is the standard for sharing valid scientific research. Students were introduced to research databases like JSTOR and Google Scholar and were given a tutorial on how to utilize them to find peer-reviewed publications and other types of information that can help them formulate a literature review for their personal research projects. JSKs were also given the opportunity to read through a scientific publication on marine conservation research done locally in Miami-Dade County. In doing so, they are able to practice breaking down the publication into sections and using each section to answer specific questions about the research, including what question was answered, how the data was collected, what the results mean, and why the conclusions of the study are valuable/who they are valuable for, amongst others. Finally, students learned how to understand and assemble the format for APA citation references, which are the standard for sourcing information in peer-reviewed scientific research. While these will be invaluable skills for JSKs throughout their potential academic and/or scientific careers, they will also be vital for their Junior SeaKeepers research project, which they will complete and present by the end of their year with us. Special thanks to FAU's Undergraduate Research Leaders for joining us today and helping share their resources with our Junior SeaKeepers.