Journal Articles

The Research Databases licenses are purchased to support the courses taught at CSUSM. The following databases provide either full text or abstracts of articles from thousands of journals and other sources on good pedagogy, learning styles, classroom management, and much more on teaching rhetoric and writing.

Some databases, such as MLA, do not offer full text of the articles. Use the button to check our other resources for full text.

Most Useful

Project Muse
Full-text coverage for hundreds of scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics
Coverage: 1993→current

JSTOR
Contains complete full-text back files (EXCEPT for the latest five years) of core scholarly journals in such areas as sociology, history, economics, political science, mathematics, African-American studies, Asian studies and others.
Coverage: 1838→1999

ERIC
A national database of education literature, including reports and journal articles.
Coverage: 1966→current

Also Useful

Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA)
Provides abstracts of articles from about 2,000 journals (published worldwide), coverage of recent books, book review citations and dissertation listings.
Coverage: 1973→current

MLA
Includes abstracts of articles from critical literary and language journals.
Coverage: 1963→current

ScienceDirect
Provides full text access to over 1,000 journals covering all fields of science.
Coverage: 1995→current

Books

To search for books, you need to use our library catalog although it is easy to extend your search to other local academic libraries (Circuit) or the world (WorldCat).

Books at Cal State San Marcos

Library Catalog
Search our local collection of approximately 250,000 books. Use either keywords or subject headings. Some subject headings for teaching writing are:

College prose -- Evaluation
English language -- Composition and exercises
English language -- Composition and exercises -- Research -- Methodology
English language -- Grammar -- Study and teaching (Higher)
English language -- Rhetoric -- Study and teaching
Language arts -- Correlation with content subjects
 

Other Options (use the same subject headings as our catalog)

Circuit (1-3 day delivery)
Search the collections of other San Diego area libraries -- about 3,000,000 books. Find and request books directly online; pick them up at our Library in 1-3 days.

WorldCat (5-10 day delivery)
Search the collections of libraries world-wide -- about 52,000,000 books. Find a book in this database, and fill-out an Interlibrary Loan delivery request. Book will be delivered to the Library for pickup.

Teaching Writing

• Creative Writing Helps (Bibliography assembled by the CSUSM Humanities Librarian)
• Resources for Writing and Writing Instructors
• Rhetoric and Composition
• Rhetoric Page at Kettering University
• Using Writing to Teach (Full-text book from Syracuse University, this is a 2.6 mb PDF file, so a bit slow to load.)

Assignment Tips

The Humanities Librarian is available to work with you to create assignments that are successful for both student learning and your instruction.

• General Education Writing at CSUSM (especially the "Practice" section)
• Creating Effective Research Assignments (University of Maryland)
• CELT: Teaching Tips: Learning-Centered Syllabi Workshop (Iowa State University)
• Designing a Syllabus (Syracuse University)
• Designing Library Assignments (Delta College)
• Information Literacy and Writing Assessment Project (Tutorial from University of Maryland University College)
• Library Based Assignments: Tips for Creating Effective Coursework (UCSD)
• Plattsburgh Tip Sheet (Plattsburgh State University)

Assessment Tools

• California State University Information Competence Assessment Task Force and Final Report (CSU-wide project)
• Center for Instructional Innovation: Writing Evaluation Guidelines
• Assessing Writing (somewhat dated bibliography)
• Authentic Assessment Toolbox: Rubrics
• NCTE/CCCC Position Statement on Writing Assessment
• SLOA: Student Learning Outcomes Assessment (California State University Chancellor's Office)
• Voice of the Shuttle Technology of Writing
• Writing Assessment and Evaluation (Southern Illinois University, Evansville)
• Note: The journal Assessing Writing is available to CSUSM users through Science Direct

Plagiarism

• CSUSM Plagiarism Tutorial
• Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Use in Assigning Research Papers (Richard Harris' 6 points)
• Bruin Success with Less Stress (a tutorial with a fun presentation, but does have an emphasis on UCLA's resources)
• Plagiarism: What It Is and How to Recognize and Avoid It (for students, from Indiana University)
• Plagiarism.org (The people who bring us TurnItIn, the online plagiarism detection program). For more information on using TurnItIn, contact Teresa Macklin, Director, Academic Technology Services.
• Resources: Research Ethics and Academic Integrity (Syracuse University) a discussion guide and short Quicktime or MediaPlayer vignettes.

Citing Sources

As students write their papers, they may find the following sites useful to supplement Wadsworth  and the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.

• MLA Citation Guide
  Examples of how to cite the most-used sources from CSUSM.
• Humanities: Documenting Sources
  Diana Hacker's site demonstrating in-text and bibliographic formats.
• Online! Using MLA to Cite and Document Sources
  From BedfordMartins publishing company, lots of examples on citing electronic resources and web pages. 

Professional Organizations

• Association of Teachers of Technical Writing
• CCCC Conference on College Composition and Communication
• Educause
• National Council of Teachers of English
• Preparing Future Faculty (mentoring program for doctoral students)
• Rhetoric Society of America