English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

I thought the Thompson Handbook did a good job of bringing up a lot of very valid points for researching topics. Rather than saying not to procrastinate like we hear over and over again, it brought up that you should have a sense of urgency when doing your research. I think it is a common misconception that because you start early, you are going to keep pace. Many people start early but lolly-gag and end up having to cram it all in at the last minute. I think this is where they got the saying “If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.”

This week’s reading in the Thompson Handbook covered the importance of research and gave several strategies for doing it effectively. The reading covering the Gantt charts also provided insight into Gantt charts and how to go about creating them.

Research. The backbone of most major educational writing endeavors. Something that most of us have done to some extent since we started school. This week’s reading covered various ways with which to not only conduct research but also to organize the resulting data efficiently.

One thing that I learned that I plan on using in my own research is a research journal. This will greatly help me not only write a more thorough research blog but also help me track the various sources I’ve found.

One of the key points that I took away from this chapter is making effective use of your research. I realized while reading this that our group had chosen a rather large audience in our original proposal. I think that by narrowing this down to something smaller would allow us to find research that is more specific. I think we should focus our white paper on a small middle school. This would be the optimal environment. The fact that they would have a limited amount of resources makes an open source solution perfect.

After getting through this week’s assigned readings, I have a little bit of a clearer insight of what it takes to affectively research, and how exactly I’ll apply research methods to our White Paper project. A key point that was made in the Thompson Handbook reading regarding researching is that you (the researcher) need to have some type of fundamental interest in the topic in question. Or, at the very least, understand the importance of the topic and see a reason for others to be more informed on the subject. Research takes time; in many cases it takes a lot of time.

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.