Fueling Green Debate: Creating Student Reading Lists for Environmental Science Debates Using RefShare

Environmental Science is a high-enrollment, freshman-level course in the Biological Sciences Department at the University of North Texas. Dr. Ruthanne Thompson, one of the Environmental Science professors, asked the library liaison for the Biological Sciences Department to create reading lists to support student debates on evolution and global warming in the course. This paper describes the guidelines established for selecting the readings and the sources that yielded the most suitable readings for the debates. Besides impacting the science education of a large number of college students, the librarian saw an opportunity to introduce a green collaborative approach to the professor. The paper elucidates how the librarian and her graduate assistant used the bibliographic management software RefWorks and its collaborative feature RefShare to collect, organize and share the readings with each other and the professor without printing out any materials. The final reading lists are included as an appendix.

The authors searched the online library catalog first to identify monographs and reference works. Initial keyword searches identified the most relevant Library of Congress (LC) subject headings for the topics. The team also searched for review articles with a general audience treatment of the scientific support for and against evolution and global warming. The literature search encompassed these electronic databases: Academic Search Complete (Academic, 2011) and Environment Complete (Environment, 2011) from EBSCOhost, andOpposing Viewpoints in Context (Opposing, 2011) from Gale Cengage Learning. Table 1 below shows the most relevant subject headings for the catalog, Academic Search Complete, and Environment Complete. The authors narrowed the database searches by combining the above subject headings with the keywords, "controversy," "debate," and "review" in Boolean statements. For example, they used the search string, [evolution AND (debate or controversy) AND review]. An alternate approach in Academic Search Complete is to refine the results by the publication type, "review," after the initial search.
Opposing Viewpoints in Context (OVC) is organized into broad topic areas that include viewpoints, reference works, journal articles, newspaper articles and more. This resource is more easily searched by first browsing for the desired issue, and then searching for the material type of choice. OVC and the print Opposing Viewpoints series proved to be good sources for debate readings on global warming, but not for evolution because the viewpoints opposed to evolution were mainly based on religious beliefs, rather than scientific evidence.
After compiling the potential readings, the authors identified the types of sources that best met the guidelines for the Environmental Science course. The sources listed in Table 1 were suitable for both topics. Entries in science reference works Entries in many science encyclopedias and handbooks are short, written for a high school audience, and based on scientific evidence.
Introductions to science reference works These sources often discuss both sides of a controversy, are written for a high school audience, and are based on scientific evidence.
Opposing Viewpoints, print series -the suggested readings following the viewpoints Many of the suggested readings are short, written for a high school audience, and based on scientific evidence.
Review, panel or interview articles These articles are generally written for a high school audience and discuss both sides of the controversies.
O'Toole found it challenging to locate appropriate readings in support of creationism or intelligent design. Scholarly science journals appear to publish few research papers by scientists, such as Michael Behe and William Dembski, who represent the intelligent design school of thought perhaps because the peer reviewers find fault with their scientific methods (Espinosa, 2010;Gold, 2007). Thus, she turned to chapters from books by the intelligent design scientists, and science magazines written for a more general audience, specifically American Biology Teacher and Natural History, the latter being published by the American Museum of Natural History. In addition, a reference book of primary sources proved to be a rich source of manageable excerpts on the evolution controversy. Evolution and Creationism: A Documentary and Reference Guide edited by Christian C. Young and Mark A. Largent contains one to five page excerpts of primary documents from the major figures and institutions in the evolution debate preceded by contextual comments (Young & Largent, 2007).
Surprisingly, sources that were not suitable for the evolution debate readings were the viewpoints in OVC or Opposing Viewpoints print series. Most of the viewpoints opposed to evolution were based on religious beliefs, which did not meet the professor's requirement for arguments based on scientific evidence. Sources that did not meet the requirements for the global warming debate readings were primary and secondary sources that delved into economic analyses of global warming. The advanced terminology and statistics used in such articles were inappropriate for a freshman audience.
The authors compiled the lists of potential debate readings, annotated individual readings for the biology professor's elucidation, and delivered the lists approximately three weeks after they were requested. The two lists are included as Appendix A. Upon receiving the list of evolution readings, the professor responded: "Wow, Erin!!! This is great!! You know, I haven't used RefWorks but would like to. Is there a steep learning curve? (personal communication, May 18, 2009). She eventually used eight readings in the Environmental Science course, which are indicated on Appendix A. The professor reported in later emails that the students' first debate went very well (personal communication, October 16, 2009), and that she has continued to use the readings in the course since fall 2009 (personal communication, November 1, 2010). She has decided to have one debate per semester and will eventually alternate between the topics of evolution and global warming. Therefore, she has not used the global warming readings yet, but plans to in Fall 2011 (personal communication, January 19, 2011). The authors considered their impact on the education of the Environmental Science students a success, but were they successful in encouraging "green" collaboration by introducing the assistant professor to the use of RefWorks and its feature, RefShare?

Collaboration Using RefShare
The UNT Libraries have subscribed to the bibliographic management software RefWorks since 2007 (RefWorks home). Access to the resource is through the Libraries website and is available to all UNT students, staff and faculty. Despite marketing, a substantial number of faculty and students are still not aware that RefWorks is available for their use, so UNT librarians take advantage of any opportunity to introduce faculty to the resource. The biology professor's request for debate readings was such an opportunity.
RefWorks was central to collaborating with her throughout the process of developing reading lists for debate in the Environmental Science course. The authors used the software to store references and readings, annotate the references, and share them with each other and the professor. The project was completed without printing one sheet of paper or sending articles as attachments to dozens of emails. With this method of storing and sharing references, the collaboration was green and nothing was lost in the research and evaluation process, which can happen when an email is overlooked or lost.
The UNT Libraries have purchased a RefWorks module called RefShare that allows the researcher to share collected references and accompanying files with collaborators (RefWorks, 2009). The user can email a link to the recipient, granting access to the contents of a folder designated for sharing. The recipient can view the contents of the folder without even establishing a RefWorks account. The shared folder options in RefShare allow the researcher to control the extent of folder access, including the recipient's ability to make comments on individual references, access attached files, receive email updates, and generate reference lists. Comments pertaining to a specific reference stay with that entry, making it easy to track ongoing discussions when multiple references are involved. RefShare made the process of identifying and sharing readings for a class much easier for the authors to organize, manage, and share with a faculty member.
In the first phase of the debate readings project, the authors created reference folders for the topics of evolution and global warming respectively in their RefWorks accounts. Then they searched the UNT online library catalog, the EBSCOhost databases Academic Search Complete and Environment Complete, and OVC. The UNT Libraries have taken advantage of a RefWorks option to insert export buttons into records in the catalog. On both browsing pages and bibliographic records, a button allows the user to export a title's reference directly to the user's RefWorks account (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Refworks Export Button in UNT Libraries Catalog
If the account is not open already, the RefWorks login screen will pop up once the export button is selected. Many databases also provide an option to export references for articles directly into RefWorks. This is true of the EBSCOhost databases used in this project. At this time, Gale's OVC does not have an option to export references to bibliographic managers. Any references from OVC had to be entered manually into RefWorks.
The authors imported references into their RefWorks folders designated for tentative selections for the debate readings. Each individual reference screen in RefWorks contains numerous fields for the information that will be used in the resulting citation, plus fields where users can communicate about the reference. The team chose to annotate the readings in the title field so that the comments could easily be seen on a list screen of abbreviated references, as in Figure  2, rather than having to open each reference entry to read the comments. Of course, the annotations must later be removed from the title field before a Cited Reference list can be generated. Graduate library assistant Adkins shared his folder of tentative readings for global warming with O'Toole through the RefShare module, which gave her editing privileges. She reviewed his initial selections and her own based on the professor's criteria, and transferred the final selections to new RefWorks folders containing 10 to 12 readings each. The team then took advantage of RefWorks' storage capacity of 1 gigabyte per account for files, which can be attached to individual reference records, to gather the full-text of all the readings and attach them to the folders. In keeping with their green goals, print readings were scanned and saved as PDF files, rather than reproduced on a copying machine. The researchers then attached the PDF files to their corresponding reference entries in RefWorks, as shown in Figure 3. The team saved readings from electronic resources to their computer desktops, and then attached them to their corresponding references. The end result was two neatly packaged folders for the biology professor to evaluate, each containing the selected readings, their references, and comments about the readings.

Figure 3. PDF File Attached to a Reference Entry in RefWorks
RefWorks is not alone in providing a collaboration feature for researchers. There are two other internet-based bibliographic manager programs that can be used to share references: EndNote Web from Thomson Reuters (EndNote -bibliographies, 2011), and the open source resource, Zotero (Zotero home, 2010). EndNote Web and Zotero both allow users to share references and set edit or read-only privileges for recipients. Researchers cannot attach files to references in EndNote Web, but can attach both files and images to references in Zotero and RefWorks.
When O'Toole shared the reading folders with the biology professor, she explained the options the professor had for managing the readings and offered to give her individual training in RefWorks if desired. Because she did not receive a reply about the training, O'Toole contacted the professor after several months and asked whether she had continued to use RefWorks. The biology professor made the following comment: "Yes. Thank you for teaching me about these valuable tools!!!" (personal communication, November 1, 2010). Apparently the learning curve was not steep because she was using RefWorks and RefShare without instruction from the author.

Conclusion
The authors successfully selected appropriate readings to fuel debate on the topic of evolution for a freshmen-level environmental science course. This result provides evidence that the selection guidelines were valid for first-year college students who are not biology majors. This selection process could also be applied to readings for high school students because the guidelines and resulting readings would identify materials at the appropriate level for high school students in AP biology courses. Whether the global warming readings will also be suitable for the students will be determined at a later date; however, it is likely the readings will be suitable because they were selected using the same criteria.
Finding readings that supported creationism or intelligent design with scientific arguments proved to be more difficult than expected. Research-based articles on these concepts are rare in mainstream, peer-reviewed scientific journals. O'Toole had to turn to reference books and journals for a more general audience to find the readings required by the biology professor. Surprisingly, the Opposing Viewpoints print series was not a good source for scientific arguments. Even the electronic OVC from Gale did not provide the readings sought in either the Viewpoints or Reference categories.
The authors also achieved their green goals of sharing reading lists with a faculty member without using paper, and encouraging the professor to do likewise. They created their initial lists of evolution and global warming readings in the bibliographic manager RefWorks, and then shared their lists with each other using the collaborative feature, RefShare. Once the reading lists were finalized, they shared the lists with the biology professor through RefShare. She was impressed with the organizational capabilities of RefWorks and RefShare, and has used them since her introduction to the software. While introducing groups of faculty members to RefWorks and RefShare would certainly be more efficient, it is next to impossible to get them in one place at one time for a class. The authors hope that this assistant professor will pass the word to other faculty, while they continue to convince one faculty member at a time to give up paper-intensive approaches to gathering readings and sharing them with collaborators.
Based on a presentation at An Amigos Online Conference: Going Green @Your library 2. Working Green, Teaching Green on November 3, 2010.