Research Process Journal

Library Instruction course, I took it on December of 2012 at Des Moines Area Community College. It helped me big time during my research journey in college and after transferring to the university. I would assume that this course should be available everywhere especially here in the United States and available in community colleges or even High schools based on what I heard few  years back from some students. 

Highly recomandded, because this is considered a master class through a whole semester that you can take a learn all the steps, techniques and seek well written paper for a certain research subject or even an outside project that you may do independently on your own as a personal studies that might might be developed into graduate levels, or taking those writings that includes other sources and get them published on a book, online, etc.  

Research Process Journal

Week 1: Information literacy, Introduction to the research process

After watching the Info whelms video and completing the readings for the week, what are your thoughts about information overload and information literacy? Why does this matter to you as a person, as a student, and in your future career?

First of all, we need to know exactly what overload information means when it comes to us as students who seek for the most valuable, current, and developed information to learn and know more details about a particular subject. Basically the overload information is when someone gets too much information at one time, for example on the Internet, and becomes tired and unable to think very carefully about any of it. Which it happens most of the time with me when I look up for a certain topic to search about then I get lost with tons of information that I totally looking forward to know as much as I could about my selected topic but not any type of information that we see available on the web would help us to develop a good research method.  After watching the Info whelms video we can tell that there’s a big responsibility on us to gain more information not just through school text books that most of students only focus at without searching into different sources that may open for them a variety and multiple options of useful, new, valued, and important information.  Specifically students need to learn how to use reliable and appropriate information and how to access into a developed internet sources, learning more style in education and especially in research method area. 

 Technology is what’s important to take an advantage of to work on a research progress. When technology is responsibly and effectively used in the classroom, students learn faster and in more depth. The use of technology can be intensely motivating and engaging. It provides a link to real-life developments. It can be a catalyst that changes the educational school systems. Technology changes the instructional role of the teacher and the educational environment of the school, and much responsibility for learning is now in the hands of the students. They are transformed into masters of their own education. For this, they must possess the cognitive strategies inherent in Information Literacy.  

To be information literate we must learn that are some strategies that any student not just me personally should follow to develop a high, developed skills in research method, such as recognizing the need for information, Identifying and locating the appropriate information sources, access information contained in those sources, Evaluating the quality of information for the chosen subject, organizing the selected information then take a good advantages of how to use the information effectively through the research progress. These matters a lot for me as a student now, or even in my future career specially that my major would be focusing on asking questions, search, and evaluate the information that I have been looking for, so I don’t feel limited, or disorganized when it comes to my professional career as a journalist whose job is mostly all about seeking the correct and the most reasonable information to use as a reference or to create a established and advanced informational strategies for research or even if I would ever go  to document such a valuable information that I might need to use as a personal references in future.

How do you tackle research projects now? What is your current process and what resources do usually turn on first? Think about the process you have used to do research in the past.  How does it compare to the process I posted this week? Where do you need to make changes? What parts of it are unfamiliar to you?  

After going over the discussion posts and the video and completed the readings on the book about the research process I’m tackling my research process with exploring more details about the online websites and what’s available and most current to find for my chosen topic. My current process for week one was using the Google engine and type a topic or question and hit the search button after that I skim through couple web pages to see which site that it would be most helpful for me to include on my research paper! Specially as a beginner student or student who doesn’t have so much knowledge on how to go into the scholarly databases to search for a particular subject because I wasn’t familiar with that type of databases before I took this class.  I used to do my papers manually or ask for a librarian help in Urban Campus to get me through the steps on how to create my citation work specially if the resources that I came up with as a result I have chosen them from couple of Google web pages which they include articles, radio interviews, YouTube videos, or an opinion that’s been said in a newspaper from a professor or an author of a particular book in a particular field.  To my research habits with the material that my professor Jenna Ehler have posted I don’t think that there’s much of similarities since I never gotten into a good chance to show me how to start with a research, and how to look for an information in different and multiple ways, that are more advanced and academically well developed more than the research method that I used to relay on in the past few semesters at DMACC. The changes that I need to make or to pay attention to is the research strategy itself and from where to start, I have been able to notice that not only using the internet sources will pretty much give me a good information to include in my research paper, but also there are a lot of sources that are available for us to use starting from our college library and then look more in depth to which resource that might be helpful and related to my chosen topic in order for me to indicate it in my research assignment such as, books, journals, magazine articles,  scientific newspapers, and there might be more than what I have listed above are available in college library that any student whose looking for a strong and a correct way to use for his/her research progress then college or even public libraries are good places to start looking for at first.  The unfamiliar parts of this week’s material was the information literacy I had few background about it though but never enough to develop a better understanding of how to make my research strategy stays accurate and clear not only as required assignment that I have been asked to do for my class but also, this will allow me to obtain a better outstanding knowledge of what I should do first, how to plan for my research topic a head of time, and spend a reasonable time to read and take a necessary notes of both the subject that I’m going to represent on the research project or looking in advance for the right steps on how to starts a research for its information in able to work on it ahead of time as well.

How do you imagine this class will be helpful to you? What do you want to get out of this class?

Personally I think that this course will lead me to use the right directions to understand the research method more in depth and how I would be able to develop a good research projects not only for present but also in future. What I want to get out of this course is how I could reach my future goals to become a good researcher student or as an independent individual; for me to earn a bachelors degree I would not be able to graduate or receive a full education if my research method was not done in a professional, academic way, also learning how to avoid plagiarism and stay out of the trouble that plagiarism would make for me in near future inside or outside the school environment.

Week 2: Choosing and refining a research topic

Describe the process you used to choose your topic.

I’m that type of person who sometimes think that I’m not organized when it comes for choosing a topic to write about for an essay, or for a discussion or for power point presentation either, because I know myself that I change my mind couple times even when I’m in the middle of writing a first a first draft or the introductory paragraph sometimes I just leave what I have choose and what I was already working on because in the middle of my process I simply go ahead and change the entire topic or even write about different subject if that’s a choice has been left for me to do. However, I still take notes in my notebook of what I’m going to write or search about first, and go on the internet to search on my selected topic and have a background information of what I will be writing about, specially if it was a broad topic which I mostly experienced in some of my science, composition, history and art classes often times.  At the beginning I decided to search on the famous Spanish artist Pablo Picaso and choose a side to write about, either a painting or his projects, his early life, his style and techniques in the modern art but then I changed my mind to search and write about a psychology method and choose a topic about one kind of mental disorders which I have already used in my annotated bibliography assignment before I chose that topic because I have studied psychology at DMACC couple semesters ago and I just wanted to learn more about the schizophrenia disorder for a personal knowledge.

What topic did you consider for this project? What did you choose the one you did, and why did you discard the others?  

I was more interested to search in political science field, art appreciation and modern artists, and psychology which it came as a last option for me to use for this course.  As I said earlier, I have chose to do my research on psychology method specifically Schizophrenia disorder. The reason why I have encouraged myself to work on the last one which was (Schizophrenia Disorder) is because I wanted to learn more about that sort of mental disorders, causes, side effects, treatment and even the untreated disorders why or why not. I should say here that I had a good time searching and looking for a worthy information that I never received the opportunity to learn more about specifically in the past and also in order not to repeat myself when I chose familiar, very known, or repetitive topics that I might consider for myself, so that’s also one of the reason that made me to go and do my research on a psychology major.

How is your chosen topic a solid choice? How will it contribute to a great research process? Write out your preliminary outline.

A scientific research topic should begin with a short and clear description of what was done, why it was done, and what the main results are. I think it is not a novel where the reader should be kept in suspense until he/she reaches the last page, being able to tell the ending on the first page and then use the rest of the research to fill in the details. To reach the level of making a good and positive and well done research paper a student needs always to keep in mind the following basics and the very general steps in order to accomplish a great and successful research process and they are: Select a general topic that interests you in some way. List key words to help you look up information about the topic. Go to an encyclopedia, or other reference source, to get an overview of the topic. Using the general overview, begin to focus the topic into something you can cover well. Write a statement of purpose about the focused topic. 

Brainstorm questions about the focused topic. Ask more questions regardless to your chosen topic. Repeat step 2, listing more key words from your newly focused topic and questions if you turn to look for more information. Make a list of possible sources that can answer your questions. Identify the best sources to use, be able to know why or why not that particular source would not meet your topic requirement needs if necessary. Most importantly is to find the sources for your chosen subject in the library, on the computer, etc. and try as much as you can write down good notes about each site or source you would find in the library to use them as a guide once you start organizing your research paper.  Outlining your research process if possible. Write the body of your paper from your notes, and in some classes if you are doing a complete research paper you should prepare to write your introduction and conclusion paragraphs. Creating a title page and then work on a cited work as well as annotated bibliography page that explains each source main points and evaluating the each resource you have been using for your topic using the CRAP test.

Critical thinking is the process of critically judging the validity of information while using a specific set of criteria that help you to better understand your outcomes, thereby enabling you to make better and more educated decisions about the problems confronting your reality.

The better critical thinker you become, the more effective your decent Critical thinking allows us to see things from unique perspectives that under normal circumstances we might not have been aware of.  And the ability of making a good analysis out of the chosen research topic in which I have focused more was specifically that an outstanding critical thinker always thinks about information from an analytic perspective, in which I hope I did meet that category at some point in my research method in assignment 3 of past’s week material. They are constantly questioning, ordering, and comparing different pieces of information, which helps the student to discover new insights and create better understandings that enable them to find suitable answers to the most difficult challenges.

Week 3: Evaluating information: why does critical thinking matter for good research? Why will it matter in your future career? What are your thoughts regarding the use of Wikipedia and Google for academic projects for everyday tasks? How can you apply these skills to your everyday life, not just in school? 

Well, first of all let's discuss what is critical thinking and it's importance. 

The importance of critical thinking and why it's good for research is relatively due to the following reasons supported with examples: 

Critical thinking is a domain- for general thinking skill. The ability to think clearly and rationally is important whatever we choose to do. If you work in education, research, finance, management or the legal profession, then critical thinking is obviously important. But critical thinking skills are not restricted to a particular subject area. Being able to think well and solve problems systematically is an asset for any career.

Critical thinking is very important in the new knowledge economy. The global knowledge economy is driven by information and technology. One has to be able to deal with changes quickly and effectively. The new economy places increasing demands on flexible intellectual skills, and the ability to analyse information and integrate diverse sources of knowledge in solving problems. Good critical thinking promotes such thinking skills, and is very important in the fast-changing workplace.

Critical thinking enhances language and presentation skills. Thinking clearly and systematically can improve the way we express our ideas. In learning how to analyse the logical structure of texts, critical thinking also improves comprehension abilities.

Critical thinking promotes creativity. To come up with a creative solution to a problem involves not just having new ideas. It must also be the case that the new ideas being generated are useful and relevant to the task at hand. Critical thinking plays a crucial role in evaluating new ideas, selecting the best ones and modifying them if necessary.

And of course, we shouldn't forget the relations of critical thinking to the research method and how effective it can get on somebody's life whether a student, graduate, or a business owner.
Not  far from the subject,
After the development and boom of the modern era, known as the age of globalization, it has been shown that technology has a great advantage over our daily lives and we may not be able to dispense with it now, not even in the future. Because it has become an important means of transmitting information, taking advantage of it and even a way of resorting to the means of searching through the internet browser for many purposes, including but not limited to:

A search for a 16th-century book, novel, and perhaps the sources are somewhat weak or almost non-existent, and many people are not available for travel through cities or travel to other countries to search for certain sources in order to complete a specialized research in the preparation of a master's thesis. But at the same time, we believe that Google provides this book or at least information about it and the author by adding sources referred  by  reliable university sites, or it might be a research that was originally written and published from professors and philosophers in literature and the arts and their research is documented not only as books but also were documented online and it's available for researchers benefits and students from different grades and majors.

And on the other hand, not far from the importance of research but related in terms of understanding how does research really works:

The benefits of the Internet as a source of information, many researchers use the internet to obtain information and references, and the Internet is a fertile information environment for teachers and specialists in every field who are looking for new and new topics that interest them in their various specialties and fields. The Internet as a source of news, many people benefit from the Internet as a quick and easy means of communication to get the latest political news and updates on the local and international scene in a real and urgent way, and many people on the internet provide people with news of the political and economics and so on.
The Internet as a means of entertainment and pleasure, many sheets and websites on the internet contain games for young people and adults alike, and it contains sites that display movies and entertainment for those interested in following what they miss on tv. The Internet is a business that uses the Internet to market, make money and trade, many business-people enter the financial markets and the economy online for speculation and profit, and many trading companies create their own websites and pages to view their products and market them online.

The Internet is a means of communication, communication is done in many ways, such as written and conversation, there are many sites that are full of web and that provide people with a way to communicate with each other through voice communication or conversation.
The Internet is a means of booking where the internet is used to book travel tickets, hotel rooms, etc., many airlines and hotel owners offer room booking or studying through their website.
The Internet as a means of providing government service there are a number of countries that have taken advanced steps in providing government service through the internet pages where the person can inquire, submit transactions, submit complaints, suggestions, etc. There are dedicated software downloaded to the computer that needs the Internet to locate a particular geographical location via satellite.