As a girl who genuinely loves learning and enriching her education, it may come as surprise that I HATE research. It’s the formality of it all. Typically it’s over a topic I don’t really care about, I’m required to collect information from certain (extraordinarily complicated) databases, and to be frank, bibliographies straight up give me anxiety. Personally, I think it’d be a whole lot simpler if we were encouraged to use search engines like google. Like Professor Lueck said in class, at this point, google is everything. While I always follow procedures and requirements laid out by teachers, I think research could be much more effective if students were given more freedom in their source section. This being said, I do understand the problems with the article we read in class. While I agree with the student’s claim that many research technicalities are pretty pointless, (let’s face it, we all use wikipedia for at least a little back up info) I also think that some of the “shortcuts” he took while writing his paper crossed a moral line. When it comes changing quotes or lying about sources, you not only risk getting in trouble but you are lying to your readers. I am all about making research easier and less time consuming, but I think that the student in the article did make some questionable decisions. Additionally, I think students would enjoy research more and take less “shortcuts” if they were able to pick their topics. Personally, I’ve only enjoyed a couple research projects and it was because I was allowed to study a topic that interested me. I’m far more likely to read an entire book opposed to an online summary if I actually enjoy the topic.
I think that through loosening research guidelines and allowing students more freedom on research topics, teachers will see a dramatic improvement in research quality. Too many students, including myself, dread research projects despite their interest in school. If Liw’s letter showed us anything, it’s that something about standard research guidelines needs to change.
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