Hello again! I am back blogging about my next English assignment: a research paper. Throughout this quarter, my professor has asked us to continuously blog about our research. And it is no question that research takes time, dedication, and effort. It definitely is not an easy task, and contrary to the photo below, research is not as simple as pushing a button.
However, the article “The Great Research Disaster,” written by William Badke, an associate librarian at Trinity Western University, reveals one student’s research strategy. The article contains the text from the student, Liw Ekdab’s, research experience and how he used techniques to fulfill requirements. Ekdab used techniques such as using Wikipedia for background information, citing quotes from an abstract, searching for sources on Google Scholar, using lengthy summaries to quote, and using incomplete quotes from incomplete articles. Although Ekdab’s techniques in producing quality research are questionable, most college students can relate closely with it.
My personal research experience is limited to writing high school level research papers. But similarly to Ekdab, I have used Wikipedia to gain basic background information about a certain topic. An example topic could be cheating in high school. After gaining a simple understanding of the topic, I proceed to develop an essential question that I attempt to answer through research. For instance one question in regards to cheating in high school could be, “What factors motivate a student to cheat in high school?”
After developing an essential question, I usually start with Google and type key words to find articles related to my topic and essential question. If I were still researching on cheating in high school, some example phrases I could type into the search bar are “cheating statistics in high school” and “factors that cause students to cheat.”
” 
However, if I fail to find any relevant articles, I would narrow my search by focusing on a specific part of the topic. For instance, if I was focusing on the different factors that cause cheating, I could research information on each individual factor related to cheating.
Similarly to Ekdab, I would also use Google Scholar as a second resource if I could not find anything by simply using the Google Search engine. Another experience I shared with Ekdab was quoting from the abstract of scholarly journals. Although this practice is not beneficial to the quality of my research, I only did this because in high school we did not have access to the majority online journals and were only limited to what was free on the internet.
Overall, I admit that the quality of my research was not very high. However, I believe that my research techniques are valid and useful. And since I’m in college and have access to a broader database, I can use these techniques on more credible resources resulting in producing credible research papers.
Photo Credits:
Pingback: Klein and Research | research and rants