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.
The RM Group (#5) will also post their presentations on Part 8, which is our reading, this week. Also, to help us prepare for Week 14, Group #7, or MOD, will post presentations on Part 10 of Patten & Newhart (2017). Part 10 is not covered in any tests, but it does discuss research reports and should help you prepare to write your proposal.
Turning to this week’s post, 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.
Additionally, now that you’ve done a variety of searches and, possibly, found everything there is to know, write a brief annotated bibliography to share in your post. Include at least five sources in this bibliography but feel free to include up to ten. The rubric will only judge the best five annotations on each post.
Also, in class this past Monday, November 15, we reviewed the Week 12 post and discussed your upcoming posts for this week and Week 14. If you use the bookmark icon in the lower right, you can access the chapters and go to a specific discussion about one assignment or to the APA tips and other elements we discussed.
Only a few final tips were needed by Wednesday. We’ll meet briefly again on November 29, and I encourage students to set individual appointments with me for our last weeks of class.
Learning Activities:
- Reading: Duesbery & Twyman, Part 8
Assignments:
- Week 13 Blog Post
- Presentations by:
- The RM Group (#5) – Part 8 of Action Research text
- MOD (Group 7) – Part 10 of old text
Week 13 Blog Post — Finish Secondary Research
Conduct at least five more searches, explain whether you’ve reached saturation, and annotate the most important citations you have found since you started.
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 (see above)? Why or why not?
- Include an annotated bibliography for at least five sources. Use the Bibliography Instructions from Week 10 to ensure a good format. Be sure to start each entry with the source cited in APA format and, then, the annotation.
- Additional resources include examples at Purdue’s Writing Lab and making sure your annotations are just five to six sentences that each help connect the study to your research topic, as suggested in Forsyth’s tutorial.
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 50 points. The annotated bibliography is worth 30 points.
You do not need to connect sources in your annotated bibliography to any specific sources. However, I do think this post-by-post research diary you’ve created will be more useful for you if you note or describe sources you find at each fruitful search.