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:
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
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