As students formulate questions to advance their studies, they define and refine a clear line of inquiry that elucidates the unknown while questioning the known. Students learn to assess the breadth and depth of their studies and to approach their question(s) with an open mind. They learn to gauge a scope of work that is feasible in terms of their time, resources, and skill level. This process of inquiry allows them to gain confidence in taking appropriate risks when examining and analyzing relevant issues and questions.
Do some reflective free-writing about your topic. Take a quiet moment (10-20 minutes) to answer these questions: Why am I drawn to this topic? What do I expect to find in the process? What do I hope to learn? What concerns do I have about the work? How can I address those issues? And, at the very end of your assignment, take 5-10 minutes to reflect: What surprised me about my discoveries? What did I accomplish, and what do I wish I had more time to accomplish?
When assigning a research paper, make background reading a step in the research process. After the students pick a topic, require them to use 1-5 background reading sources to gather information to inform their possible thesis. This activity helps them develop a big picture idea of their topic before they can adopt a strong thesis statement.
To help students develop better keywords for database searching, have them write out their thesis statement or research inquiry in the form of a draft paragraph. Then, have them identify three explicit keywords from the text of the paragraph and three implicit keywords based on the ideas in the paragraph. Use those keywords in a database search to lead to stronger results.
Rather than assigning a list of required source types (eg. 2 books, 3 journal articles, 1 web) for a research paper, ask students to reflect upon the kind of information they need and to propose or find sources to match.
Introduce students to relevant subject-specific reference tools, including encyclopedias and websites. Using the background sources, have the students do mind mapping of the main issues related to their topic. This will help students narrow their focus, pick a thesis, and choose relevant keywords.
As part of a research paper assignment, ask students to identify seminal or early voices in the conversation about their topic. Students can turn in a timeline of sources in the conversation.
Use concept maps to brainstorm topic ideas and generate keywords.
Am I an impartial researcher? Present a topic or issue and ask students to list the steps to take to prepare a paper or presentation. In their results, does research precede or follow their thesis or position? Discuss the process of research and the challenge to remain open to different points of view.
Students sometimes find too much information when searching library databases. To help students narrow their research inquiry have them ask question words: who, what, when, where, or how? For example, if the topic is "activism" adding "students" as who, and "college" as where, and "social networks" as how, will create a much more focused search.
Students sometimes find too little information when searching library databases. To help students broaden their research inquiry, have them separate their question into key concepts. Identify elements of who, what, when, where, how into the inquiry. Brainstorm ways to broaden the topic. For example, if the inquiry is the "economic impact of CSAs in Bennington," broadening CSAs to "small farms" or "agriculture" and Bennington to Vermont will provide more results.
Begin with an “innocent” question about your topic. For example: What are trees anyway? What was Caravaggio’s childhood like? What is a prisoner’s day like in Arkansas? Find three library sources that address your question. Use these findings to support your work on this topic and to expand your approach to research.
Another exercise to help students broaden or narrow inquires is to introduce the use of Boolean/advanced searches and truncation. For example, using "and" in the search terms will narrow the topic and decrease the number of results, using "or" will broaden and increase the number results. Truncation will increase the results, for example "photography" can be truncated to "photog*" and the results will include all words with that root such as photography, photographers, photographed, etc.
