Research Plan template
Research Plan template Section 1: Topic Development In the Module 2 Discussion: Research Area Exploration assignment, you identified some research questions that interest you. In this assignment, you will select one of those questions to focus on and develop a plan to research it. Identify your research question here and describe your topic in 1-3 sentences. With your topic outlined, begin to explore it through keyword searches. Remember, you can use the Learning Commons Search Strategy Worksheet provided in the assignment to help get you started with this process. As you move through different keyword search combinations and different databases, complete the table below by listing and providing brief notes on the most promising keyword/database combinations. Describe the results generated from your searches: do they seem relevant to your topic? How would you describe the types of sources listed? Are they academic articles? Dissertations? Or sources from popular magazines and other media? Keyword Combinations Used Database or Website Searched Notes Table One: Keyword and Database Combinations Reflect on the results of your preliminary searches. What implications do they have for your research question? Should you narrow your topic? Reframe it? Incorporate new elements that you may have overlooked? Now that you have preliminarily reviewed some of what is “out there” on your topic, draft a revised research question that reflects a more appropriate or more targeted intervention in your field: Section 2: Building Your Notetaking Database: “Scholarly reading serves a purpose. The goals of scholarly reading are to provide you with an understanding of the conversation, the tools to provide evidence that you are in the conversation, and a foundation from which you can contribute to the conversation. As such, scholarly reading is inextricably linked to effective and, hopefully, efficient notetaking. With interactive reading, you can listen to and interact with the conversation in your field. Interactive note taking provides you with a risk-free forum for experimenting with academic writing. As you take notes on others’ work, you are writing about your topic and experimenting with you academic voice before your internal critic awakens” from Demystifying Dissertation Writing, Single (2009) In this section, you will develop a system to read individual sources deeply and identify themes, trends, and patterns across fields so that you can work in conversation with other researchers. Step One: The Tool Before you dive into specific sources, your first task is to consider what citation management software you intend to use and to justify why this citation management software will work well for your project. Review the options available to you (for example, Zotero, Refworks, or Endnote) and answer the questions below in a short paragraph: What citation management software have you chosen? Why have you chosen it? Step Two: The Structure With a citation management software chosen, your next task is to outline your strategies for 1) taking source descriptive notes that Read More …