How Can I Teach Students to Organize Research Using Zotero?

Zotero is a referencing tool that you can add on to your Firefox browser as an extension. If you’re browsing a page and want to keep track of the source information, this extension does exactly that. It also allows you to store the information in a format you prefer (e.g. APA, MLA). In this way, you have a record of details like author, article name, year, web location and so on, in a library that you can search through for later reference.

Though most commonly used among students while writing papers, Zotero can help greatly with your lesson planning and pre-planning research by helping you keep track of your sources, especially if you want to make them available to students to read later.

When teaching older students, you may want to encourage the habit of citing their sources in specific formats. Zotero helps students practice this skill without having to memorize the different referencing formats.

It is also a brilliant tool to keep track of the sources you use for a lesson. It enables you to share material with students, parents and colleagues later and keep it for your own future reference.

If you publish your lesson notes or teaching methods in an article, it can be very helpful to have easy access to all the references you used. The Zotero word plug-in even helps you generate in-text references as you type your article.

Apps with similar functions:

Mendeley, Endnote, JabRef

 Let’s Discuss

What are some ways in which you help students keep track of their research references?