English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

The Thompson Handbook discusses the different effective ways to do research and ideas to consider. After reading Chapter 14 in the Thompson Handbook, I realize some methods that will be resourcefully to keep in mind during our research process, specifically considering elements and potential logistics.

After looking over the instructor’s feedback on our white paper rough draft my group, group 3#, has decided to change our original proposal just a little in order to make it a more qualifying white paper. We have decided we will specifically do this by writing our white paper so that the primary reader is a contracting company that is reading our white paper in order to choose which form of alternative energy they will choose for a residential energy system. The instructor feed back was a big help on exactly how a white paper should read and now we are much more on track as a group.

As the Thompson Handbook says the key to good research is to actually “care” about the topic on which you are researching. If you don’t really care about the topic you are trying to research odds are the information you gather and write about will be weak and not able to complete the task it is supposed to. Another important element in researching is to make sure to plan ahead. Many people tend to procrastinate and wait until the last minute to research their chosen topic, which typically ends up with poor results.

I think that the Thomson Handbook has a great definition of research in saying that, “research projects typically involve posing problems and answering questions about a subject that you want to learn about or that you think others should understand better.” In my eyes, that is probably the best definition of research that I have ever heard. I know that I personally hate to do research for schoolwork and assignments, but if it is something that I am genuinely interested in than I thoroughly enjoy learning more about a subject that I like.

This week’s reading from the Thompson Handbook went into extensive detail about the process of finding and gathering research. This will certainly be the most important, and time consuming, portion of completing our white paper, so I think it’s definitely crucial that we pay particular attention to it. For our focus, we’ve decided to pursue a mainly online research approach that will involve using multiple search engines to locate the desired information.

After reviewing the instructor’s feedback regarding our white paper proposal, my team and I are confident that we have chosen a sound topic and now have a more precise heading to guide our research. Initially, we had planned to target organizations of all sizes with our white paper, regarding both problem and solution. However, as Nathaniel has suggested, we have tightened the focus of our paper to target a single group, small organizations that suffer from a lack of collaboration, which in turn affects performance in each business sector, as well as in the organization as a whole.

I believe that one of the most important things that needs to be researched for our white paper topic is the audience. Our main audience needs to be researched in particular. Once the basic knowledge of our audience is understood it will be easier to tailor our white paper to suit their needs. We also need to understand the basic needs of our white paper. In short, we basically need to know why someone needs to be reading our white paper. It would also be a good idea to research the basic or more common implementations of wind turbine technology.

From the Thompson Handbook, this chapter covered a huge portion of how to research and effectively use it. The two main ways that I will be researching the White Paper project are going to be online research and field research.
How to conduct research? It is a pretty generic question for most college students. We have all conducted research, but have we properly been doing it? From this chapter I have picked up on a couple of things I have been leaving out in the last couple of years. One thing that I haven’t done was keeping a small booklet, notes, or anything to record my thoughts.

Research is an important tool to use when writing any document. It is needed for accurate results, procedures, facts, and other important items that will soon flow through our fingertips when we are writing our papers.

For our project (wireless router options), we have decided that we’d like to research three or four routers in a relatively narrow price range. These routers will probably be designed for home use. The intent of the research is to document the advertised features of each product, but also find the strengths and weaknesses. My plan is to check the manufacturer’s website for specs on my assigned router, as well as find related reviews and benchmark reports via various search engines.