Overview
Why Research?
- The skills you learn will be useful in other classes
- The skills you learn will probably be useful in your job and career
- You can contribute to scholarship and the world's collection of knowledge
Nature of Research
- Research is like a puzzle—it comes together as you work through it
- When you start you don't know if your questions are good ones
- Discoveries are made only if you undertake the actual research
- What you end up learning will be different than what you thought you started out to research
- Research requires you to be flexible, ready to change plans, go in unexpected directions, able to adapt to new ideas and information
From Chapter 8—"Beginning a Research Project." Veit, Richard, Christopher Gould, and John Clifford. Writing, Reading, and Research. New York: Macmillan, 1994.