Initial Research

Submission: N/A

Spend a full-week here.

Now that your lotus diagram is looking nice and full, you have a good idea of your topic, and maybe even a rough research question, we ask that you spend Week 3 completing some initial research on the top two topics that you are considering for your Research Project. You should aim to collate and take notes on at least 3 sources using a note-taking method, over this next week.

Why do we need to do this?

This process is super important because you might find, (students often do), that:

After some initial research your first-choice topic may no longer be your favourite. This could be for any number of reasons, including the fact that the research could be hard to find, or that the topic isn’t as interesting as you imagined.
You might find that you are unable to find relevant, high quality sources.
It will help you discuss your ideas in more depth in the Proposal (the next step in the RP process)
You will be able to design a better research question.

It will also help you meet the performance standards. In the Folio and the Evaluation you will be asked to provide strong justifications that make it clear to the marker that you have considered multiple topics, and that you have chosen your topic after in-depth consideration. By conducting initial research on two different topics, you will be able to provide those justifications in a sophisticated way.

What if I 100% already have my topic/question?

Then you will be able to spend this week conducting initial research on just the one topic. We expect that this process will still significantly help you refine and/or develop your research question.

Video: Here are some videos outlining different ways to take notes:

Conducting high-quality research

(Google is not always the answer)

Most, if not all, of you will be conducting research projects that require peer reviewed, or high quality data.

Below are 6 highly recommended search engines you can use to assist you in your searching. I haven't included Google Scholar, because most students know about it, and I find it not always that useful for contemporary topics, but if you haven't heard of it then I recommend you try it as well.

1) Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)

www.eric.ed.gov

One of the best deeper web search engines designed for academic research, ERIC is maintained by the U.S. Department of Education. You’ll find more than 1.3 million bibliographic records of articles and online materials just a click away. The extensive body of education-related literature includes technical reports, policy papers, conference papers, research syntheses, journal articles, and books.

2) Lexis Web

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/litigation/b/productupdate/posts/search-the-best-of-the-open-legal-web-at-no-charge-on-lexis-advance

Indispensable for law students and research projects that require legal citations, Lexis Web populates this search engine with validated legal sites. It’s easy to narrow your search by site type (blog, news, commercial, government) and filter by jurisdiction, practice area, source, and file format.

3) Microsoft Academic (MA)

https://academic.microsoft.com/home

Enjoy fast access to “continually refreshed and extensive academic content” from more than 120 million publications including journals, scientific papers, and conferences. Because MA is a semantic search engine, not a keyword-based one, it uses natural language processing to understand and remember the information contained in each document. It then applies “semantic inference” to glean the intent of your search and delivers rich, knowledgeable results that are relevant to your needs. MA 2.0 debuted in July 2017 and gives users even more personalised and improved search capabilities.

4) iSeek Education

http://education.iseek.com/iseek/home.page

This targeted search engine was created for students, teachers, administrators, and caregivers, and all content is editor-reviewed. You have access to hundreds of thousands of trusted scholastic resources provided by universities, government, and reputable noncommercial sites. Numerous filters in the sidebar make it easy to quickly target your results and refine your search by topic, subject, resource type, place, and people.