Polk LibraryWRT 188 Benson
Class Poll:
What is your tentative research question? Click this link.
3 Research Steps to a Successful Paper
- Explore and pick a topic
- Learn the basics of your topic: Who, what, when, where, why. You should be able to talk for a minute, without repeating yourself, on your possible topic.
TIP: When you participate in research or scholarship, you are entering into an ongoing conversation; you have to listen or read about that conversation before find an interesting, relevant question. Many try to skip this step and end frustrated. You wouldn't want to go up to two strangers on the street and join their conversation before you knew what they were talking about.
3. Find an interesting question--not too easy, not too fuzzy, not too many parts, not too impossible. Should
require analysis. The question should require you to identify a solution or answer to a problem.
Try to stay away from open ended questions, such as... "If we were to ban all fishing in certain waters, what
would that look like?" OR "What would be the consequences of doing this to the environment?"
Topic Exploration Resources
AI search tool page for students - Tips and prompts
Perplexity.ai (https://www.perplexity.ai)
Use it for: Initial topic exploration with quick, easy summaries to get started. Then be ready to pull out keywords
to use in the library catalog.
Tool: Consensus (https://consensus.app)
Use it for: Quickly testing and verifying research questions by finding consensus from scientific research,
summarizing evidence from peer-reviewed studies to support or challenge claims.
Databases
CQ Researcher Archive-- (Background)
Opposing Viewpoints in Context (Background)
Citation Resources
