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The End of All Things
I’m pretty sure that the title of this blog is a Panic!At the Disco song, so shoutout to P!ATD for that. I am also similarly sure that the title of this blog is also part of a very well known Frodo Baggins quote from the Lord of the Rings series. Turns out, I’m right on both accounts.
Source: Giphy
But seriously, here we are at the end of all things. The last week of classes of my first year of college, and I am going to reflect the baggins out of this blog post. Here we are supposed to reflect upon our research process. How it was, how it changed, and what it is is like now – in addition to all the little things in between like Stuart Greene & his BEAM method and everything.
The Beginning of the End
So in the beginning, I talked about my research process like it was some unruly cat who came into my room, scattered my papers, and left me to pick up the pieces without knowing how the pieces fit together until finally at the last moment everything fell into place. Tabs were my best friend (still are, to an extent) and everything was kind of a hot mess that eventually worked out. Okay, so sometimes things are still like that, but aren’t they always?
In any case, while I describe the beginning/origin of my research process, I did have some key elements down – they just weren’t refined enough. Outlining, organizing my arguments and information, those were good starts, I just needed to learn how to polish them into something more. Also, I needed to learn how to more effectively gather my information, and make sure that my sources were credible.
The Between
Turns out, a lot of the methods we were taught in class really helpful in developing those initial research skills. The BEAM method, for example, which introduced a way to categorize sources as Background, Exhibits, Arguments, and Methods, was very helpful in allowing me to organize my information better. Though I could establish the general timeline of my papers, BEAM really enabled me to also organize the information I pulled from outside sources like academic articles. It also made it easier to keep track of the sources and the information that they were attempting to convey, which made my overall searching and then later synthesizing much easier.
Moving forward, though I’ve mentioned it a few times, the archival research skills that we’ve currently developed as a class are going to forever be useful to me. Tirabassi’s principle of closure is something I especially have to keep in mind, as I have a tendency to try and do everything, without much success. Likewise, Gaillet’s guiding questions on how to think about what I’m reading have also proved useful, making me think further about the source that I am using and its surrounding context.
There are a lot more skills, but I’ve discussed those in other posts, and frankly I don’t have enough room to write about them without this post turning into an essay.
The End
Okay, so here we are at the end. (See, I got it in there Frodo Baggins. I did it, and I didn’t have throw a cursed ring in a volcano to do it.) And so, how has my research process changed as a result of the research methods that I have learned? Well first, I’m more strict about learning about who my sources are, and how legitimate they are. Second, I’ve become more organized both with regards to my sources, how I use them, and the flow of my actual narrative. Then it comes to the actual act of researching, and that has definitely improved. Being taught how to use the databases, how to effectively search, has made my life so much easier, especially in this time of final papers, final projects, and final everything.
So yeah, it was a pretty productive, if stressful, year of researching. But if anything, learning these skills has had a very real and very welcome impact on how I write when I write, and what I say when I write.
Source: Giphy
Posted in Spring Blogs
Tagged end of the year, gone forever, spring is over, the end of all things
Applying Archival Research to Essay Writing
Upon making my multimodal fake magazine images, I realized that yeah, I tried to take on way too much for my actual research essay. The breadth of the subject was just a hair too much and there wasn’t enough depth. Despite taking into account Tirabassi’s principle of closure when doing the actual research for my essay, I forgot to incorporate it into articulating my argument and findings.
To remind any readers, Tirabassi’s principle of closure is defined as such:
- “the researcher’s understanding that there are inherent gaps in archival records and that while the archive is complex and rich, it cannot be searched exhaustively” (Tirabassi 171-2)
Translating this to writing however, it means that you as a writer cannot cover all aspects of a subject within a single paper, article, essay, or whatever you’re writing – you have to recognize the limitations of your narrative, address them, and narrow your focus to a simplified topic within the subject.
Thankfully, I was able to apply this to my mutlimodal project. Though not as detailed, and designed as a *fake* educational magazine directed towards students, it is short, sweet, and to the point. Rather than exhaustively explaining all aspects of my argument, I instead offered up a simplified version of what I had been trying to say in my research paper. Here’s a quick sneak peep of the final version – though I’m just showing the cover to my fake magazine.
Source: K. Harada
Multimodal/Multimedia
Images from: Georgia State University and Corpus Christi College
The Great Research Disaster Version 2.0
First, the title of this post is hyperbolic. Hopefully.
Second, allow me to throwback to an earlier post with this gif:
Source: Giphy
Why exactly am I bringing back this particular image? Well, because it summarizes my mental state of being right now after turning in my argumentative research paper which focused on archival research and archival knowledge. In all, it was two parts good research, three parts attempted organization, two more parts hopefully sound arguments, and three parts shaky implementation of sources as support, background, and examples.
Outlining and organizing my arguments was not the problem for this essay, rather, my problem was making all the arguments I wanted to make – and being able to support them. Depth, instead of breath, is what I struggled with this last essay. In retrospect, I feel that my essay was actually a duology of two essays that were very relevant and connected to each other. I might have taken on more than I was able to handle, but hey, what’s done is done.
Moving onward then, for my multimodal translation of this research, I will definitely trim down what I have to say. I need to really narrow down my arguments/information to a point, and have fun doing it.
Posted in Archives and Students, Spring Blogs
Tagged archival research, archives, argumentative writing, undergrads
to Annotate to Annotate to Annotate
So, as of this Tuesday our class turned in our annotated bibliographies, which are, if you didn’t know, really annoying to say the least. It’s not that the process is necessarily hard, but reading the articles that you find is a really big time suck. Especially if you can’t understand what the author is saying in a single read.
I spent a lot of time reading.
But besides from that, what was the most difficult part of creating the annotated bibliographies was connecting the articles together. Comparing them, contrasting them, how they aligned with one train of thought, how they aligned with another. It was all really messy.
Source: Awesomely Luvie
So what I did was I started to write all the articles down on a piece of paper. Then I sorted them into different categories: archival research, modern undergraduate research, and archival research for undergrads. And what I ended up with was an outline for how I wanted to write my essay, the plotline for the narrative that I was going to create. Thus, while annotating was annoying, mostly because of the time it took to complete the annotations, it also proved to be extremely helpful to me overall.
Posted in Archives and Students, Spring Blogs
File Me
Source: Giphy “As of right now we’re re-entering the library.”
Okay, so we (my class and I, though I assume you know that by now) have once again visited the great lands of the library to learn about annotated bibliographies. Please take note however, that we turned in our annotated bibliography assignment the day that we went to the library.
[Cue X-files theme.]
But anyways, I don’t know if I necessarily learned anything from this library session, mostly because the last time we were there our ‘bonus round’ game was basically what this session taught. Okay, that was a little wordy. What I mean is: we repeated the activity that I got to do last time we visited the library. Bonus though, Gail (the very helpful and very grandma-chic librarian) still had candy.
What we did however, was helpful in that it was review. The activities which Gail tasked to us were essentially the things that we had to do in our annotated bibliographies. We had to take into account what the content of our article was, who the author was, and how the context of both the article/author affected how we read/summarized our sources. So yeah, while nothing was new, it was still applicable for future projects.
I’m Illiterate?
Source: Tumblr
As a disclaimer, I had no idea what information literacy was, at all. I had no idea that these two words could even be joined together to form a single phrase. I had no idea what this term could even refer to. And I definitely didn’t think that it had anything to do with me – or anything really, but we’ve established that I was clueless about this subject already. So, what is information literacy? (I’m asking because I am also assuming that you have no idea either.)
Information literacy is according to the Association of College & Research Libraries, essentially, a set of abilities requiring individuals to ‘recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information’ (ACRL). So, essentially, information literacy is a skill set identical to the one that archival researchers have and continue to advocate – locating, evaluating, analyzing, and effectively using your sources (the information) to support your arguments/viewpoints.
So am I as illiterate as I thought I was? Hopefully no, because it seems that all I need to do to become information literate, is to change the dialect in which I speak. I need to expand my vocabulary, and like that – bam.
I’m speaking plain English.
Posted in Archives and Students, Spring Blogs
Roadmap to Archives
Source: Giphy
Alright, so I’ve been talking about the archives, about research, about research skills, and undergraduates for a while now. I’m sure for anyone reading this, you’ve might have gotten bored with the whole “Wow, archives! Wow, undergrads! Wow, no information!” song and dance. But, please stick it out a little (actually, probably a lot) longer, for me? Thanks in advance.
Okay, so, we were asked by our professor (the whole class, that’s the ‘we’), to explain the “territory” (the subject) of our research and the gaps (literally, the gaps in knowledge) that we had observed when reading various sources for research purposes. Recap: I have been reading long articles, and trying very hard to finish homework up for this class, a bit unsuccessfully because I’m one or two annotated citations behind. But I digress.
Original Image: Barnes&Noble
Edited Image: K. Harada
The “territory” that I’ve been exploring is the realm of dusty books, the archives! Big surprise right? More specifically, I’ve explored the field of archival research and the available methods/methodology written accounts created by researchers. Furthermore though, I’ve also broadened this territory to include the modern day research methods which students are more exposed to, or the methods which are directed at students. The latter is more to illustrate the extent of the ‘undergrad desert’ that I have observed in archival research literature.
And it is this ‘undergrad desert’ that acts as my “gaps in knowledge”. The gaps that I’m seeing are the same that I saw before, which come as no great surprise. There is a lack of archival research literature, it appears that no researchers had really thought about writing down their processes. But furthermore, it seems like researchers never gave the thought of student research the time of day. Archival research literature almost entirely neglects to include undergraduates, focusing more on academics and graduate students. And even when research skill literature does focus on undergrads, often these skills are not explicitly related to the archives/they don’t provide the instruction needed for archival research.
So, I’m therefore planning on further staking it out in the ‘undergrad desert’, and expanding on how this desert might be crossed.
Posted in Archives and Students, Spring Blogs
Tagged archival research, archives, gaps in knowledge, research, undergrads
Can you or Kantz you?
For our latest writing assignment, as a class we were tasked on reading Kantz’s “Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively”, which focuses on the methods students can use to rhetorically read their sources and then use rhetoric devices (like questions such as “Why?”, “How?”, and “So what?”) to frame/write their arguments and/or papers. As such, post-reading, I am now expected to reflect upon the ideas which Kantz lays out, and connect said ideas to my own research process.
“Studnents Vs. Non-Pro/Con Sources” Source: Giphy
So, Kantz describes that many students struggle with creating original material when they are asked to use resources to create an argument or idea. As such, many are apt to repeat the ‘facts’ their sources provide or they see their sources as only ‘pro/con’, as disagreeing or agreeing with an idea – and that students become confused and often unable to reconcile with sources that do not fit into these categories. To help cope with these struggles, Kantz suggests that teachers should introduce students to tools like “Kinneavy’s triangular diagram of the rhetorical situation”, which allows sources to be read in three different aspects (Kant 74). These aspects include:
- Speaker/Writer (The Encoder)
- Audience (The Decoder)
- Topic/Subject (Reality)
Likewise, Kantz also suggests that students focus on finding and filling in ‘gaps’ in the literature to create original ideas and thoughts. What doesn’t the author say? What doesn’t the text address that affects how it communicates its ideas? What unintended effects did the text have? Why? How? And so what?
Now, I have definitely fallen on both sides of the student spectrum which Kantz implied, and I have gone through the same struggles that Kantz describes in regards to examining my sources. I’ve only recently gotten better at the entire thing involving finding and addresses gaps in what others have said. (In fact, that’s what I’m hoping to really get into when writing my argumentative essay that’s coming up). And like Kantz, I also agree that students would benefit greatly from being taught these patterns and lessons concerning reading texts – for said gaps, for the context of these texts, and then their overall meaning in a broader view.
So the question is, can or Kantz you apply these ‘triangular’ skills from now on?