General Education

General Education courses help you connect ideas across communication, critical thinking, quantitative literacy, science, technology, society, culture, and digital literacy. Use this guide when an assignment crosses disciplines or when you need a reliable starting point before moving into a more specialised subject guide.

Use this page as a launch point, not a finished bibliography. Start with the section that matches your assignment, then follow the links to the library guides and source tools that fit your topic.

How to Use This Guide

1. Read the assignment prompt carefully. Identify the topic, task, required source type, date range, geographic focus, and citation style.
2. Choose a starting route below. A broad topic becomes easier to research when you begin with the kind of evidence your assignment needs.
3. Build a small search vocabulary. List important concepts, synonyms, alternative spellings, names, places, and discipline-specific terms before searching.
4. Move from orientation to evidence. Use a reference or overview source to learn the language of the topic, then locate scholarly articles, books, reports, data, or primary sources that can support your claims.
5. Keep a source record. Save the author, title, date, link or DOI, page numbers, and a short note about how each source may be used.

Best Starting Point by Need

• Communication, writing, or presentations: Start with the assignment requirements, then use the How to Write a Research Paper guide for structure and the APA Formatting & Citation (7th Edition) guide when APA is required.
• Critical thinking, ethics, or civic questions: Look for more than one viewpoint, identify the evidence behind each claim, and compare scholarly work with credible institutional or policy sources.
• Quantitative literacy, data, or statistics: Check who collected the data, how the sample was selected, what the measures mean, when the data was published, and whether the visualisation could mislead.
• Science, health, or the environment: Prefer current scholarly research, systematic reviews, government or professional bodies, and clearly identified datasets. Begin with PubMed, DOAJ, or OpenAlex when appropriate.
• Society, culture, history, or development: Include the geographic and historical context of the source. The Caribbean & Jamaica Research Guide is a useful route for local and regional topics.
• Digital literacy or technology: Check the author, ownership, evidence, date, privacy implications, and purpose of a website or digital tool before relying on it.

Choose the Right Source Type

• Scholarly articles: Research written for an academic audience, usually with references and a method or evidence base. Use the Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Articles Library Guide to understand peer review and article searching.
• Books and ebooks: Useful for background, theory, history, and sustained treatment of a topic. Check the edition and publication date.
• Reports, statistics, and policy documents: Often the best sources for current conditions, programmes, public issues, and official data. Record the organisation responsible and the date.
• Websites and media: Helpful for definitions, current events, examples, and public communication, but evaluate authorship, evidence, purpose, and update date before citing them.
• Primary sources: Original data, interviews, legislation, photographs, speeches, experiments, or other first-hand evidence. Explain what the source can and cannot show.

A Practical General Education Research Workflow

1. Translate the prompt into a question. Replace a broad subject such as “technology and society” with a focused question about a population, place, time period, issue, or outcome.
2. Search in stages. Begin with a few broad terms, then add quotation marks, synonyms, a place name, a date, or a source-type term such as report, survey, review, or case study.
3. Read beyond the abstract or headline. Check the purpose, method, population, limitations, references, and conclusions before treating a source as evidence.
4. Compare sources. Note where sources agree, differ, or use different definitions. Differences may reflect dates, locations, methods, or perspectives.
5. Organise notes around your answer. Group evidence by claim or theme rather than copying a list of quotations. Record page numbers and your own explanation of relevance.
6. Use sources honestly. Separate your ideas from summaries, paraphrases, and quotations. Follow your course rules for citation, collaboration, and permitted AI use.

Evidence check: Before using a source, ask: Who created it? What evidence does it provide? When and where does it apply? What is its purpose? Can I confirm its key claim in another reliable source?

Useful Starting Resources

• VTI Library Discovery for library search and access points.
• Full A-Z List of Library Resources for a wider list of open and library-supported tools.
• Google Scholar for broad scholarly discovery. Check the full record and find the item through the VTI Library where possible.
• BASE, CORE, and DOAJ for open scholarly materials.
• ERIC for education research and PubMed for health and biomedical literature.
• JSTOR Open Content for open articles, books, and primary sources where available.
• Zotero for collecting sources and organising notes. Always review imported metadata before citing.

Academic and Project Support

Use these VTI guides when you need more detailed help:

• Research Skills Guide for finding, evaluating, and using information.
• Research Process for moving from a topic to a supported answer.
• How to Write a Research Paper for planning and structuring a paper.
• Annotated Bibliography for summarising and evaluating sources.
• APA Formatting & Citation (7th Edition) for citation and reference-list details.
• Videos & Images for finding and evaluating visual and audiovisual materials.

Jamaica and Caribbean Context

For assignments about Jamaica or the wider Caribbean, look for sources that make the location, population, time period, and institutional context clear. Pair local or regional evidence with wider scholarly research when useful, and explain why a finding from another country may or may not apply locally. The Caribbean & Jamaica Research Guide can help you identify stronger starting points.

Before You Submit

• Does each source directly support a claim in your assignment?
• Have you checked the author, date, evidence, and context?
• Have you distinguished your own ideas from borrowed ideas?
• Are citations and references complete and consistent with the required style?
• Have you followed your course rules for collaboration and AI tools?
• Can another reader trace your main evidence back to the original source?

Keep Exploring

When your topic becomes more specific, move from this overview to the relevant Research Skills Guide, Research Process, subject guide, or Research Help collection. If you are unsure which route fits your assignment, ask the VTI Library for help before you begin searching.