This weeks reading in the TH focuses on how to do a research project. For our white paper it seems like research will be the bulk of the work that we do. From the very beginning of the reading the TH lays out ways to make sure your research project is a success. TH says to make sure you start early and plan your research ahead of time. I think that my group and I have a good start on this after completing our Gantt chart where we divided up the research and set up initial time frames that we want to have our research accomplished by.
The part in chapter 14 about keeping a research journal to keep track of where you have done research and when is something I have never tried before, but I think I might do it during this project to help keep track of my work.
Chapter 15 was probably the most useful of the readings since I believe most of our research will be done online. The beginning of the chapter seems outdated, most people, especially in college should already know basic online research strategies. However the section about more advanced searches such as directory searches will probably be very beneficial and allow us to find information that may not come up just from typing our search terms into google.
Overall the instructor feedback and the reading have helped make sure that our group is pointed in the right direction with its research at this point. However I think researching our audience and what they are going to be looking for in a solution is equally important as researching the solutions themselves. The reading gave very sound advice on how to go about a research project and make sure it is done right. With that hopefully we will be able to make a white paper that is able to objectively inform its audiences so that they will be able to make an informed and unbiased decision.
Research Journals
I was also interested in the idea of using a research journal. For previous reports, I've come up with a list of sources and then forgotten what kind of information was included in each of them. I believe the section from TCT suggested adding a short summary after each log entry, making it easier to reference later. I'm hoping that this will effectively reduce the amount of reading that I have to do, as it could eliminate the need to re-read each article if I forget where I saw a certain piece of information. As for internet searches, I'm not so sure that all college students really know how to perform efficient searches. They know how to find Google, but I rarely see any of my peers using search symbols, boolean operators, or the "advanced" options. The chapter in TCT could really help us save time and find better sources using these methods. I think their statistic, "only 5% of users utilize these functions," was pretty accurate.
Off-Topic: There's a group at Purdue that actually advocates a more educated internet community. They host the Digital Literacy Contest, which tests the searching abilities of the participants.
Remember to include information about your research plan
This is a good point: "However I think researching our audience and what they are going to be looking for in a solution is equally important as researching the solutions themselves." Audience awareness is a vital part of every document.
You discuss the TH reading well in this post, but please make sure to follow through with the full prompt for this week: "Use the reading response to identify the research you will need to conduct and to create a research plan." We are looking for detail about what you plan to research in the context of this project as well as how the TH reading helps you accomplish that.
Researching
I like your point about the research journal mentioned in our reading. One thing that many people do is they forget to write down information that have seen online. Later, they forget some of this information and lose the ability to use it in the white paper. Almost as worse, even if people remember the information, they might forget where they got it. This presents a problem when they can't cite it. For one, not citiing the source becomes a plagiarism, but secondly the information does not seem very reliable. Keeping a research journal as you conduct your research can certainly take care of these problems.