Hi all,
Thought I'd take a second to recap what these semester long research projects are going to be in case any of you are confused.
1. On Wednesday, your groups picked a broad topic that they pulled from a news story. I had you all do the assignment this way because you all will have to learn how to extrapolate a topic from a text. In other words, you'll need to know how to read or watch something and then analyze it to think about what the major issues are relating to that book, movie, article, etc. That is the backbone of research!
2. Each member of your group is narrowing this broad topic in a different way, and your individual approaches to this topic will serve as the topic (and later research question) for the project that you'll research all semester and present on at the end of the semester. So, if my group's topic was "eating disorders" one person might look at how media influences eating disorders, another person might look at social stigma of eating disorders for males, etc etc. Your group can change topics down the road, but the earlier you can find a topic that you all like and can work with, the better.
3. In class on Monday, we'll begin to talk about turning your topics into research questions. Research questions are, believe it or not, the questions you want to answer in your research! Like your topics, you'll want refine these so they aren't too narrow or broad. You'll also want to make sure they they aren't subjective or too easily answerable.
4. As we move through the rest of the class, we'll be digging more deeply into the mechanics of research-finding books, articles, etc. You'll be using your individual topic to look for things in class, so you should have almost all the resources you'll need for your final project before any of your final project-related materials are due.
Please do not hesitate to ask any questions if there is an aspect of this that you are unclear about!
All best,
Jessica
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