This week’s reading covers data. It discusses statistics, analysis, data presentation, and evaluating quality. Like last week’s material, it will be covered in Quiz 5, available Next Week.
Do you remember how your previous text discussed “saturation” (Topics, 29, 33, and 84)? This week’s blog assignment makes sure you have reached saturation in your examination of research relevant to your proposal. That concept from qualitative research, which suggests you are not finding particularly new information and have limited areas for new exploration, is a good way to judge when you’ve done enough secondary research. Particularly, when you are a graduate student.
For your undergraduate proposal, I just want to make sure you’ve done a few more searches to really cover your bases. If you have trouble thinking of additional searches you can complete to fulfill this assignment, I’d strongly suggest you reach out to me or a librarian for assistance and additional ideas. This assignment expects that there are at least five more searches you can run to find material, but it does provide an option if you’ve truly used up all possibilities before you run those searches.
Learning Activities:
- Reading: Duesbery & Twyman, Part 8
- Video: The video below covers some of Part 8, the proposal, and next week’s proposal outline.
November 11, 2020 Video:
- Starts with a discussion of the last two weeks of class.
- 8:00: Covers next week’s blog post
- 11:00: Looks at last year’s grade distribution similar to this semester
- 12:00: Quick comments on how to share documents on the blog
- 15:00 – 26:00: Discussion of questions 78 – 82 in Part 8
- Concluded with an extended discussion of the proposal and one student’s proposal outline, for week 14
Assignment: Week 13 Blog Post — Finish Secondary Research
Conduct at least five more searches and explain whether you’ve reached saturation.
This blog post should:
- Use appropriate categorization, tagging, and visuals.
- Remind us of your search topic
- Document the search using the same detail you used previously. Exactly what search did you conduct in which database, and how many results did you get?
- Be clear about whether each search proved helpful. Did you generally get material that may be relevant to your topic? How much of the results appeared to be relevant? Were they barely relevant, generally relevant, or spot on? Why or why not? How so?
- Discuss whether additional searches are needed: Did you reach saturation? Why or why not?
The rubric is in My Grades. It has 20 points for good blogging techniques. The searches and the clarity of the information required for each search are worth 80 points altogether.
You do not need to list any sources you found. However, you are welcome to do so, and we will try to provide feedback on your APA style if you do include citations.