A Study on the Prospect of Library Resources Utilization Education Based on the Results of Short Thesis Writing Competitions

Take Mingdao High School as an Example

Abstract

In 2004,Taiwan’s Ministry of Education initiated the first Short Thesis Competition for Senior High School Students for the purpose of helping them cultivate reading and researching skills as well as guiding them to make use of library resources and services to do research.Mingdao High School has been practicing a program called “Learning to Learn”, in an attempt to make students, by using various learning strategies, think and learn for themselves so as to adapt themselves to the constantly changing society. To ensure the success of this program, the school library offered courses in short thesis writing, and encouraged students to participate in the island-wide Short Thesis Competitions. To Mingdao High School’s satisfaction, the contestants’ theses were all highly rated.The object of this study is, through an analysis of the results of the short thesis competitions, to understand the efficiency of Mingdao High school’s current education on students’ application of the library’s resources. In addition, we also want to share our experience about how we lead students to write their theses, hoping it will serve as a reference for other senior high schools. The research method this study adopts is called the content-analysis approach. In this paper, the award-winning short theses of the previous years are analyzed, including the types of topics chosen and how reference books are cited. A questionnaire is also used to help us understand how short thesis writing helps students learn.