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.
The first topic is how I am going to use online researching to help benefit my time without wasting it. For my project we are covering the topic of choosing a smart phone. Online there is an abundant amount of information that is given through online reviews. The reviews can be directly from the website given a description of what the phone’s capabilities. Another type of review that is easy accessible is from a personal review. This type of review can be helpful in the fact of what is liked and disliked about the phone. It can show another side that the vender isn’t showing. Also from this chapter is shows how to effectively search key word while researching.
Field research, this is one thing I hadn’t practiced for a grade, but I have done plenty of for curiosity. From this chapter there was a section that was labeled project checklist. In this list it gave detailed points about how to properly interview. Some of the topic I hadn’t thought about until reading through them.
Overall, having researched extensively through the last couple years, I have read and discovered a few knew techniques to use to optimize my resources.
Good research strategies.
I like what you said about keeping notes as you research. This could be very beneficial because it would make it easier to know what kind of information is at each site and it will also help you keep track of your sources better so you can site them all at the end of the project. I think that going online and using people’s individual reviews on your particular subject will be very beneficial. If you take information from their reviews it may contain less bias because you can basically pool the reviews together to come up with a general consensus on the issue. If you just look on the individual phone manufacturer websites it seems like there will be lots of bias involved because they will most likely try and have good reviews and information on their sites and little about the bad parts to their phones. I also think that field research will be a good way to gather information and it might be a little more interesting than just searching for information on the internet.
Notes
Yeah when I was reading the Thomson Handbook I thought the taking notes thing could be very efficient. I don't know about it for research or anything but it could come on handy for our individual activity assignment. It seems like a lot of people were having problems (including me) on how specific to be on the individual assignments. If the individual activity reports have to be more specific then keeping a journal on what I did everyday during the week will help me be more specific on making my individual activity report. With research I think just keeping a list of sources and a summary of the source would be the best idea.
The Project Diary
The thing I most agree with in your response from this week is your reference to ‘researching properly,’ by “keeping a small booklet, notes, or anything to record my thoughts,” as covered in Part 3 of The Thomson Handbook. This is not something I’ve done in the past, at least in regard to my research methods. However, I have started following such a strategy, courtesy of my previous English courses, and it has proven very beneficial. In keeping a project notebook and recording your (project related) thoughts, ideas, research summary, etc., you save both time and effort when composing the physical drafts, which is an obvious benefit. Also, as covered by 'bjdunfor' before me, such a notebook enables you to manage your content and sources better.
I really like this idea of
I really like this idea of creating a notebook and will also do so. I am most definitely a non-written type person, so I would have a digital notebook, but this is still a great idea. I will also try to do this while researching our topic for our white paper. There have been times when I wish I would have written a thought down, or remembered something rather simple, maybe this will assist me in preventing that in the future. Another important note is that it will be a time saver for sure, and as we all know time is extremely important.
www.JFlitt.com
Notebook instead of Note card
I had previously been focusing on the thought of using note cards for my research but after reading your thoughts here I may change my mind. I have come to like the idea of keeping a notebook instead. This will allow me to write down more information than I can on a note card and it will be all organized and together. This still allows me to keep my thoughts written as this helps me to remember what I have found. I like your take Jason on making a digital notebook instead for those other people who just absolutely hate writing on paper or just can’t read their own handwriting. Ha
-Chris
Research Notebook
I haven't ever kept a research notebook before but after reading TH it sounds like a really good idea. Especially when ask how can online research best be done without wasting time. When doing my own personal research, especially over different days, I find myself searching for the same keywords and going back to the same websites. I think that a notebook would be a great way to track what you've searched for and the results. You could then look at the results and try and find a different way of wording your search terms to try and garner different results. This will also help you avoid wasting time looking at websites that weren't any help. As an added bonus all you will probably have to do for your research blog is type up your research notebook.
Andy
Interesting topic
I think your white paper topic of choosing a smart phone is pretty interesting. I haven't completely read through your proposal yet, but are you planning on doing some personal research on the selected phones? Will you be testing them yourselves, possibly at the store or if someone in your group already has those particular phones? When reading through reviews, I think you might encounter customers with bias/reviews towards a service provider rather than with just their phone. Are the particular service providers going to be researched or talked about in your white paper as well? These are just some things I have thought of, sorry if they're posted in your proposal and I completely missed those parts.