Busy, Busy
Unsurprisingly, college is a busy time. Between all the classes, various clubs, sports and socializing with friends, sometimes it seems a little crazy for professors to expect students to write research papers in just two weeks. So it’s not extremely surprising that Michael Kleine is horrified to see college students just “copying” and not “analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating, selecting, rejecting…” different sources to create research papers. In his article, “What is it We Do When We Write Articles Like This One – And How Can We Get Students to Join Us?” Kleine explains ways for students to get away from how they typically conduct research and also tests to see what these typical methods are.
Hunting and Gathering
Kleine breaks down the research process into eight different boxes, four categorized as “hunting” and four categorized as “gathering.” Within each of these subsections there are four different categories, “collecting, rhetorical sifting, pattern seeking and translating.” Each box corresponds with a different part of the research process. This was a tool that I found extremely interesting. Prior to the reading, I had never explicitly thought about the different subsections of research, I’ve always had one big category: do research. However, I think by using this method, I will be able to make sure my research is more complete.
However, while I now have the ability to make sure I don’t skip any part of a good research process, that doesn’t mean it’s always going to be feasible for students to abide by this model. As I previously mentioned, college life is busy and while schoolwork is always going to take precedent over other activities, It may not be necessary or practical to use them all.