Developing Research Questions
- One page personal reflection - write a one page personal reflection responding to the following question:
- What are you hoping to learn about the topic of this class?
- Finding a relevant question - draw a question that interests you from the one page personal reflection.
- Search for journal articles and/or book chapters that are in dialog with your question. That is to say, find articles that address, fill in gaps, change your thinking, etc., about your question. Create a bibliography of five citations that you think inform your question the best.
NOTE to Professor: Beginning this part of the assignment could involve having a librarian meet with the class to introduce article resources.
- Refining your question - Based on what you learned about your question by reviewing journal articles and book chapters, you will probably want to refine your researchable question a bit.
- Search for more journal articles or book chapters, only this time try to closely match the articles to the most recent version of your researchable question.
NOTE to Professor: Consider having students meet a librarian (office visit, in class, or at the reference desk) to discuss avenues for finding articles that closely relate to their new questions, e.g., subject-specific databases. This must be arranged in advance by contacting your library liaison. Students should be made aware that individual meetings with a librarian might lead to further development of their question based on engagement with newly found scholarly material, or it could also validate the appropriateness of the materials already located.