III. RESEARCH AND WRITING
Chapter 24: Getting Started: From Planning Research to
Evaluating Sources
Teaching the Concept
Inevitably, students respond to the assignment of a research
paper with some anxiety. Breaking down the research project into manageable
steps and walking students through the process will reduce the anxiety and
dread with which many students approach it. In addition, if you require
students to hand in preliminary work, such as a working thesis and
bibliography, you’ll help them to avoid some (if not all) of the problems they
will encounter if they try to write a major paper the night before it’s due.
Emphasize that writing a research paper is a multi-step
process that takes time to do well. Take a look at the research process flowchart
on page 399. Note how much of the process takes place in the distinct steps
that occur before students actually draft their papers. With adequate time to
plan and conduct research and to think about what they have to say about their
subject, students may find drafting the paper an easy part of the process.
Before they research, have students choose one of the four
note-taking systems outlined on pages 419–421. Stress that such a system will
save a great deal of time later on by preventing students from having to search
for a lost source or double-check quotations. In addition, the system will help
students avoid unintended plagiarism that often arises from sloppy note-taking.
Assign a portion of the research as homework, so that students will have to
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© 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
hand in two or three research examples. Review these
examples in class, using the benchmarks on pages 414–415 as guides to the
credibility and reliability of sources.
Additional Classroom Activities
To jump-start the research-paper assignment, conduct a
brainstorming session with your class. Remind them of the basic rules of
brainstorming or listing (see Chapter 2), and put all the ideas your class
comes up with on the board. You can let students start to develop a subject
from this list, or you can evaluate the ideas first in class, highlighting
those that will make good research subjects and analyzing why others would not.
Bring several potential “sources” to class for your students
to evaluate, some valid for research purposes and others not. These might
include an encyclopedia article, a personal website, a popular magazine
article, a scholarly journal article, and a chapter from a biography. As a
class, apply the evaluation standards on pages 414– 415 to the works. How well
can your students identify valid sources?
Bring in samples of brief passages from the types of sources
used in research. Students should paraphrase a sample and then swap it with a
classmate who has written a paraphrase of the same text. In groups, have
students analyze these paraphrases, in particular making sure that the main
idea has been captured accurately and that there is no unintentional
plagiarism.
Chapter 25: Conducting Research; Primary, Library and Web
Teaching the Concept
This chapter features the “nuts and bolts” of conducting
research and should be read carefully by students as they go through each step
of the research process. Your students may already have experience using
primary sources if you have had them write interview reports, experiment
reports, or literary-analysis essays (if not, you might refer them to those
chapters). Using secondary sources may be more unfamiliar, and the chapter’s
suggestions on using the library will ease them through this process. A
problematic issue for students may be the distinction between primary and
secondary sources (and tertiary sources, for that matter). Spend time
clarifying the distinction and explaining why it matters. If possible, have
students brainstorm possible primary and secondary sources for their own
projects.
If it is at all possible to build into your course a tour of
your school’s library and an orientation to its resources and services, we
recommend that you do so. While this chapter has clear guidelines for using the
library for research purposes, this instruction is no substitute for actually
learning to use your library’s search tools and walking through the stacks of
books. Most librarians are happy to conduct informational sessions tailored to
individual class assignments. If that is not possible, then give a tour
yourself. We cannot overstate the value of walking your students through the
library doors and showing them where to find useful materials. Practice
brainstorming for keywords and then keyword searching with your class.
Your students probably know a lot about using the Internet,
especially the free Web. For some, it is the first or even the only information
source they go to for research. Ask students to share why and how they use the
Internet. Debate the merits of various search engines, including Google.
Discuss the use of Wikipedia as a resource for college-level papers: what
limits do you and others at your institution put on this resource? You will
need to emphasize and show the difference between, on the one hand, scholarly
sources available in and through the library and, on the other hand, free-Web
sources (some reliable and others suspect).
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© 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be
scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
Additional Classroom Activities
Library orientation (whether one trip or several, with or
without online tutorials) is most useful if you tie it to students’ actual
research projects, or, at the very least, to a specific classroom assignment.
Arrange class time in the library, if at all possible under the instruction of
a reference librarian. Work with students as they find sources for their
research papers using the online catalog, subscription databases, and other
resources available in and through your library. To help students focus and use
their time wisely, provide a library worksheet where they must list the sources
they find. Have students turn in that worksheet and a working bibliography at
the next class meeting, so that you can help students engage and evaluate
sources before they write the paper.
In the absence of a specific library research requirement,
you might design a library scavenger hunt, requiring students to find ten
sources, including electronic, reference, journal, and book resources, and
perhaps a resource from a video or special collection.
Have students choose a current topic of interest and ask
them to find information on it from a variety of Internet sources, including a
government site, a commercial site, a nonprofit organization, and an
educational site. Have students assess what they find in terms of various
issues, from credibility to depth.
When you demonstrate Internet research to your students, ask
them to discover what they can about Mankato, Minnesota, through the Internet.
Chances are, one or more of your students will discover the Mankato, MN,
homepage at http://city-mankato.us. This site describes Mankato’s hot springs,
which keep the Midwestern city at balmy temperatures year-round. Students learn
about whale watching on the Minnesota River and skiing on Mt. Kroto. All the
information on this website is, obviously, hilariously false, yet hopeful
travelers have actually taken trips to the real Mankato based solely on the
information provided on the site. They were no doubt disappointed to find a
typical Midwestern city whose chief attraction consists of a small petting zoo
and a mall. This will be a good cautionary tale for your students, who must go
out of their way to make sure the information that they get from the Web is
reliable.
