Module 5

Module 5

 

Module 5 is pretty straightforward. First, you need to send me your first draft of your Literature Review. That was last week’s assignment. In case there are technical glitches, please email it to me AND also post it to your blog. I’ll send you my comments within 2 days so you can revise it by the end of Week 5. 

 

1) By the end of Week 5, then, you should have a revised final draft of your Lit Review posted to your blog. 

 

2) Please also record a brief oral presentationto share with your classmates. In your presentation, you should a) introduce yourself, b) introduce your topic, c) share a couple of things you’ve already learned about your topic as you began your research this semester. Post the video somewhere online (e.g. youtube) and post the link to your survey to your blog.

 

3) Meanwhile, start to think about the next phase of your research, the survey questionnaire. What aspects of your topic could you learn more about if you conducted a survey? Sticking with the sample topic from last week, for example, a researcher might survey college students about their attitudes toward water pipe smoking. Maybe the researcher wants to find out if the practice is most common among freshmen, sophomores, juniors or seniors; or why they do it; or whether they do it alone or as part of a group. Thinking about your own topic, how might a survey of attitudes, or usage, or practice, experience, etc. shed light on your topic? Describe, in a sentence or two, your initial thoughts about your survey, and post this to your blog.

Module 4

Module 4

 

DUE: Read Galvan chapters 4 through end of the book. Write draft of your lit review.

 

I hope last week’s exercise was helpful in further refining your topic. I’ve been emailing with you all individually and you’re moving in the right direction. The Galvan text we use in this class is a great resource. It may also seem intimidating! Keep in mind that the process you’re using is one you’d apply in grad school if you were preparing to write your dissertation. You might spend an entire year or more on your literature review in grad school. Your literature review would become a process of self-education on your chosen topic, your topic would be something you attempt to delve into more deeply than any other scholar ever has, or in a novel way that nobody has yet thought about… you’d be spending years exploring it and it quite possibly would become a lifelong and career-defining pursuit. 

 

We don’t need to go that deep in this class. But we do need to introduce you to the process. This week, you’ll finish reading the Galvan text all the way through, and you’ll write your first draft of your literature review. At the end of the Galvan text, there are several examples of lit reviews. The one that may be most relevant to your framework for this particular class is the third:

 

3) Grekin E.R. & Ayna, D. (2012). Waterpipe smoking among college students in the United States: A review of the literature. Journal of American College Health, 60(3), 244-249. 

 

I recommend that you read that example FIRST, then read the remainder of the Galvan chapters, all the way to the end of the book. As you read, you can concurrently begin writing your first draft of your literature review. Next week, you’ll revise to a final draft, and then we’ll already be moving on to our next steps… thinking about your survey.

Module 3

Module 3

 

This week, you’ll continue to narrow and refine your topic. You should find that your topic evolves the more you think about it. If your topic isn’t evolving, you’re probably not thinking about it enough. It can be helpful to have the big picture in mind from the start, so here are some things to keep in mind about how you’ll explore your topic:

 

* Keep in mind the nature of this course – research methods in the social sciences. You have a lot of leeway to choose a topic of interest to you, but you do need to approach it from a social scientific perspective. If you cannot yet do that, your topic will need to continue to evolve. I am available to help you think it through by email.

 

* In addition to the Literature Review, you’ll also be conducting a survey later in the semester. It might be a survey of opinions or a survey of experiences, there are many ways to focus your survey. Don’t worry if you can’t yet imagine how you’ll form a survey to enhance your research; just know that this will be part of what you’ll be doing. 

 

* Once your survey is complete and you have your results, you’ll be analyzing your data and interpreting the results in the context of what you’ve learned about your topic overall. 

 

* You’ll bring everything you’ve learned together in a formal paper.

 

* Finally, you’ll present your research.

 

With that in mind, please read chapter 3 of Writing Literature Reviewsagain, carefully. Note that the process described is extensive - 14 steps! It is designed to help you question and challenge your initial concept by learning about the relevant existing research. Your topic will become more unique as you learn about what others have already written about it… and what hasn’t been written yet. 

 

Your task this week is to improve your research topic by going through, and documenting in your Module 3 blog post, the 14-step process described in Chapter 3. If you feel it is appropriate to skip a step, explain why that step did not seem necessary.

 

At the end of this process, and keeping in mind how you will use the topic over the course of the semester, you should have a much stronger topic with which to proceed. Again, I am available to help by email. Just let me know if you need that help.

Module 2

Dear Students,

 

Thank you for your blog links and initial entries. You’re already thinking about research topics and that is excellent. We want to take some time at the beginning to be sure you’re selecting a topic that will keep you motivated all semester. Once you get started, you are going to stick with your topic and explore it deeply in a variety of ways. The first way is the one you started reading about last week – writing a “literature review.” Hopefully, you have a better sense now what that means… before doing your own research, you simply need to know what other people have already written about your topic. If you were in grad school, or writing a book, you might spend an entire year – or more! – doing your literature review. For this class, you’ll only spend a few weeks. You will not finalize your research topic until your literature review is complete.

 

1) With that in mind, this week’s assignment is to re-read chapters 1-3 of Writing Literature Reviews, and do the Activities for the other two chapters (i.e. the ones you didn’t do last week). Remember, there is a version online at this location:

 

https://uomustansiriyah.edu.iq/media/lectures/8/8_2019_03_09!10_09_36_AM.pdf

 

2) Post your replies in a blog entry titled “Module 2.” Once you’ve done that, take an entirely different approach to clarifying your research topic by describing it in oral conversation to someone you know. Explain to the person that you’re choosing a research topic you’ll be exploring for an entire semester - ask the person to question you a little bit… Why this topic? Isn’t it too broad? Or too narrow? Is it really meaningful to you? If the person knows you, he or she should be able to ask you some good questions that help you refine your ideas. Include a brief summary of that conversation in your Module 2 blog entry.

 

3) In a separate blog entry, describe your research topic as it is shaping up in a paragraph or two. Include any questions you want to resolve before finalizing your topic and committing to it.

 

4) Finally, look at the blogs of your class-mates and make constructive comments about their topics.There are only 4 of you in the class, so each of you should be able to comment on 100% of your  class-mate’s research topics. You'll find all student blogs on the class website which, as noted earlier, is located at:

https://ndnurm.blogspot.com

 

I will also give you some feedback and my thoughts on your topics before you finalize them. Let me know if you have questions along the way!

 

Patti Andrews