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Lessons
Module 1
1:
Orientation
2:
Goals
Module 2
3:
Euthyphro
4: The Library
5: The Apology
6: Citation
7: Crito
8: Phaedo
9: Exam Prep
10: Plato Exam
Module 3
11:
Research Project
12: Research 101
13: Books
14: the Librarian
15: the Web
16: conferences
17: Joy of Research
18: Reasoning
Module 4
19:
Outlines
20: Review the Plan:
21: Language
22: Dr E's Grammar
23: Peer Review
24: Hit Parade
Module 5
25:
About the Exam
26: Mock Final
27: Exam Prep
28: Graduation
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The
critical part of any research report is the research. The rest is only a
report of it. What are the types of academic research, and which
kind will we be practicing?
1. Primary
Research
In
scientific or "primary" research,
the research is conducted by experiment. Published
scientific articles, based on experiments, tend to be organized in a
standard seven-part structure.
1. Identification of the problem or
"research question".
First, the researcher indicates why the experiment is needed, what
problem or gap in knowledge is to be addressed by the experiment.
Normally this first part includes a summary of prior research that has
been conducted in the same area of study, so that the writer clarifies
how the experiment relates to other experiments--and also how the
write up of the experiment fits into the existing literature in the
field. (For instance: "A, B, and D have been researched, but C
has not.") To present the existing literature (A, B, D), writers
in the sciences, no less than writers in non-science fields, must be
able to find, analyze and carefully summarize sources.
2. Description of the methodology used
to solve the problem.
Next, the researcher describes the design of the experiment in detail,
so that other researchers will be able to duplicate it--and hopefully
to obtain the same results. Research proposals and funding
applications often consist of these parts 1 and 2 (identification of
the problem and proposed description of research methodology),
together with a list of references comparable to a works cited list.
3. Description and discussion of the
data. After the research
proposal has been accepted, and after funds have poured in and the
experiment has been conducted, the results are written up. These
"data" are described in as much detail as the experiment's
financial sponsor requires, but the published summary of the data for
public consumption may be much shorter. Many volumes of statistical
results may need to be compressed into a couple of pages of summary in
order to squeeze into a periodical.
4. Conclusion(s) to be drawn from the
data. The researcher
then interprets the results of the experiment. This important part
often discusses whether the experiment turned out as expected or, if
not, what surprises were observed. Ideally, skepticism
governs the interpretation of the results so that excessive claims are
avoided. Obviously, other researchers can challenge either the
methodology of the research or the conclusions drawn from the
resulting data, so that the overall research system in the sciences
tends to be self-correcting.
5. Statement of issues for further
research. Usually, the
researcher is careful to say what the experiment has not
proved. This statement of issues for further research prevents readers
from drawing the wrong conclusions. It also points out further
research opportunities in the field.
6. List of references.
a works cited list, a list of references or bibliography is appended
to the write-up. This section is much the same as an MLA Works Cited
list, but it will follow the slightly different writing rules of the
APA (American Psychological Association; see Hacker 156-182) or some
other professional scientific group.
7. Abstract.
A short summary of the overall article, usually in one-paragraph,
provides readers with a quick overview. Abstracts often are published
without full text articles attached in various journals and magazines
that specialize in publishing abstracts. When you need to keep up with
the research in your filed, you may subscribe to an abstract service
and quickly scan through the abstracts to see whether there's anything
being published that's of interest to you. In ProQuest, InfoTrac and
other databases, many so-called "articles" appear as
"abstract only." To get the full text version of the
article, you must ask a librarian to order it for you.
More comments on primary research are
offered later in this course.
2.
Secondary Research
This
scientific model of "primary" or experimental research
indicates what's different, if not wrong, in nonscientific fields of
study such as literature, history, politics, philosophy, and religion.
These fields that we call "arts" are not based upon the
physical world that we can observe or detect with technology. Instead,
they deal with "other-world" realms, such as the region of
Ideas or Forms that Socrates hoped finally to experience as a
disembodied soul.
In
spite of Socrates' attempts, and those of other investigators after him,
scientific experiments have yet to prove the existence or nature of any
"other-world" besides the physical one. How do we prove
anything in the arts?
If
I write a report about Socrates, or any other subject in "secondary"
research (that is, research that is not primary or
experimental), I am writing words about other words. I can use only
parts 1, 2, 6 and 7 from the scientific research model described above.
That is, I can review the literature of the field to find a
"problem" that seems to exist in the existing research, and
then I can propose a solution to this research question, and finally I
can provide a works cited list and an abstract. But I can't use parts 3
and 4 of the experimental model because I can't design any real
experiment to prove anything conclusively.
 If
I actually write an article about Socrates'
inter-brain activity, or Socrates' control of his body
temperature through Buddhist-style meditation (recall citation quiz #2),
I will have to raise Socrates from the dead or else travel back in time
to ancient Athens to prove my case experimentally. But history is gone,
and it can be "presented" again only in words or art. At best,
I can research the literature related to these topics, and then I can
draw my conclusions or interpretations about that literature. At best, I
can hope that other scholars in the field will find my arguments
persuasive or at least interesting. If I eventually become an
acknowledged "expert" on Socrates, it will not be due only to
positive peer review, not because I actually got Socrates hooked up to
some brain scanning or biofeedback measuring devices that proved my
claims about him.
Obviously,
in English 101; we don't have long white coats or mice or test tubes or
any other lab equipment. We deal in secondary research. Our method is
not experimental but investigative, and our writing is not
scientific but persuasive. We investigate by
reading. We persuade by offering reasoned interpretations or
conclusions about the readings. If I read some books about the human
brain and some other books about Socrates, I have gained information
that I can use to persuade readers that the two sets of writings are
related: "Socrates' conscience was
his cortex, in conflict with his lower mammalian and reptilian brains,
as can be inferred from Plato's dialogues in passages X, Y, and Z. .
." This secondary kind of
writing about sources aims to convince readers to believe in spite of
the absence of any physical proof. This job isn't easy, especially if
the audience is a skeptical academic one.
3.
Your Argument
I
am trying to emphasize that in secondary research, like our research
project in this course, the final report is an argument.
That is, the source "literature" has been investigated to find
a "research question": an
unresolved issue, an uncertainty or controversy or disagreement, among
the experts. After a thorough investigation of the question has been
made, by reading everything that there is to read about it, the
researcher takes a position and makes a persuasive argument--perhaps
agreeing with one side or another, or trying to reconcile opposing
sides, or taking issue with all sides and trying to advance the argument
in a new direction.
 Academic
writing is full of arguments, many of them in the arts not notably
practical, some of them (apparently) argument for its own sake. The
controversy over Socrates' politics is a good example. Was Socrates an
enemy of the democracy, as claimed by journalist I.F.
Stone and others, or was he an extraordinarily loyal
Athenian, as portrayed by Professors Brickhouse
and Smith and others? It might seem not to
matter one way or the other, but amateur and professional scholars have
participated in this particular debate for centuries (Lane).
One might question the importance of countless academic disputes of this
kind.
Debate
theory says that argument brings us closer to correct understanding. As
in Socratic "dialectical method," or in courtroom trials,
argument is supposed to be a process that leads generally toward truth.
But does it? It does in the sciences, where conflicting views often get
resolved with conclusive evidence, but argument is more problematic in
the arts. It's hard to claim that today's scholarship about Socrates is
more truthful than the scholarship of 100 or 200 years ago (though it's
clearly far more sophisticated these days). Perhaps the better
explanation for academic arguments in the arts is that, when advocates
put forward their best arguments, the competition strengthens them.
Perhaps it strengthens the contestants' minds for debates that really do
matter, such as current political controversies or personal decisions.
We
beginners may not be terribly persuasive, but we will have made
excellent progress if, by the end of our research training, we know how
to find relevant literature, how to identify some key points of
controversy or uncertainty in it, and how to summarize one of those
questions clearly and fairly using proper MLA form and standard American
English. We begin toward these goals now in the
preliminary (compare/contrast) essay of the research
project. We will make further progress later in this module with our research
journals (assigned today) and our research narratives
(to be assigned in Lesson 13).
4.
Selecting articles and books for your research
Your
eventual goal, in your written research report, is not to explain a
topic, but to make an argument of some kind about it, so look for
sources that will explain a topic to you, but also search for sources
that will suggest arguments that can be made about it. What's the
difference between explaining and arguing? Argument makes claims and
offers proof to support those claims in an effort to persuade. Here are
some examples:
topic:
trends in sci-fi films
what's to explore and explain?
What are some of the differences in sci-fi films of the 70s, 80s, or
90s or 2000s? What are some current trends?
what's to argue? Which
sci-fi features or trends produce the best movies ? What do
the current trends say about audience taste or values?
topic:
U.N. peacekeeping forces
what's to explore and explain?
Who are they ? Where have they been deployed? Which deployments have
been considered successes, which failures ?
what's to argue?
Advocate more or less deployment, or deployment in a particular
situation. Advocate changes that will make deployments more
successful.
topic:
pets used in therapy
what's to explore and
explain? whose therapy ... why animals ... what
animals ... which pets ...
what's to argue? more
dollars for research ... more animals used in therapy ... more
people trained in pet therapy ... more institutions (like nursing
homes and schools) involved
topic:
missile defense system
what's to explore and explain? costs,
types (land-based vs. sea-based systems; systems that target
missiles in their boost phase, mid-course phase, or descent phase);
problems yet to be solved (speed, accuracy); political acceptance,
international coordination
what's to argue?
Should the U.S. spend more, less, or nothing on missile defense?
Why?
topic:
the contamination of fresh water; the decrease in fresh water
supplies worldwide
what's to explore & explain?
causes; effects; (What accounts for the fact that every 20 minutes
water contamination kills 80 of the world's children, every day over
9,000 people die because they don't have access to clean, fresh
water?)
what's to argue?
Which policies (individual, national, or international) might
produce the best conservation of fresh water?
topic:
animals in circuses (or zoos)
what's to explore and explain?
current protections against animal abuse in circuses; current
conditions
what's to argue?
Are zoos and circuses abusive to animals ? Are legal and regulatory
protections adequate?
You
will find both explanatory and argumentative sources in your research.
After you have read a source, can you determine which category it
belongs to? If it is argumentative, what is its main argument? how is
the argument supported? is the argument persuasive?
5.
Keeping Research Journals
rough sourcebooks of
your research
 What
do we do with sources when we find them? In a small research project,
it's not a big problem. In the Plato exam, for example, we worked with
only one source--our paperback Five Dialogues--and all of the
notes that we might need for future reference could be written in the
margins and blank spaces in the book. Likewise, in a small research
project involving only a couple of ProQuest articles, we could simply
hold the sources as emails in a mail folder, or print out photocopies of
the articles and annotate them. There's not much to it.
But
in a big project, like our research project in this course, what can we
do? How can we collect and manage multiple sources so that we can pull
the information from them efficiently, as needed, when the time comes to
organize and write our research reports?
From
da Vinci to Darwin, great scholars have maintained research jounals for
their data, rough concepts, diagrams, memos and professional
what-have-you. A research
journal is simply a written record of research activities. It can
contain, among other things:
summaries
and evaluations of research "finds," such
as we have written in Library Assignments #1 and #2. Obviously it takes
time to summarize and analyze and cite each relevant article that we
read, but the time is very well spent. In the first place, writing these
things helps us to read the sources much more carefully than we would
read them otherwise as passive readers. Secondly, a written record of
our research will be invaluable when the time comes to begin writing our
research papers. Source information forgotten by our brains will be
remembered by our journal and so remain available for our use.
Developing a journal can be almost like growing a second head, one that
never forgets.
goals
and plans for research. We
also can use the journal to make "to do" lists, or plans for
further research, or outlines for the research report. Writing such
things down aids our commitment to do them. Reviewing and updating
research plans regularly helps to keep us on schedule and properly
focused on priority steps to be taken.
brainstorms
and other flashes of insight.
When a good idea suddenly occurs, add it to the journal so that it
doesn't get lost. Perhaps the idea will turn out to be an important
piece in your research report, or perhaps it will not. Postponing the
decision to write it down, however, often means forgetting it.
doodles.
Because the journal is not a finished product in itself, you are free to
experiment and play in it.If you want to draw a spiderman with eight
arms and legs, go ahead! Leonardo did.
Traditionally, research journals have used a diary format,
where all entries in the journal are recorded chronologically by date.
The beauty of this system is that it disciplines the researcher. If I
open my journal and realize that I haven't made any entries for a few
days, I know I'VE GOT TO GET MY ACT TOGETHER RIGHT NOW! If I have no
record of dates in my journal, however, I may not even notice my
inactivity as I drift down Research Road to Mediocre City and
Disasterville.
Leonardo
and Darwin notwithstanding, current technology should enable researchers
today to produce journals that are far superior to any in history.
Keeping a journal on a computer has great advantages in efficiency over
keeping a longhand notebook. For example:
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storage
is almost unlimited and almost infinitely flexible.
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source
information can be copied and pasted with ease. You might want to
cut and paste into your journal, for example, all of the abstracts
of the articles that you are summarizing. (But be sure to label
what you have pasted from any source so that you will avoid
unintended plagiarism)
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when
reviewing the research to figure out what we can say about it, we
can reorganize the order of the journal entries so that items 1,
17, 19, and 22 are grouped together because of some common idea or
relatedness that we find among them. Logically grouping the
entries into categories is one way to organize the research
details that we have amassed.
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when
we begin to write reports of our research, we may be able to
assemble some of the first rough draft by cutting and pasting
pieces of texts that we've already written in our journal
entries. Having good summaries in our journals can save a
lot of time in organizing and writing the COW.
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we
can write the reference information for our "works
cited" section once, as we find the research, and we won't
have to rewrite it again later (though it may need to be edited or
at least "cut and pasted" together).
The
Research Journal Assignment.
Keep a journal of
sources for potential use in your research report.
Over each of the next five Lessons of our course (Lesson 13, 14, 15, 16,
and 17) enter at least three separate sources into your research
journal. For each individual source, include correct citation
information, a summary of points that could be useful to you when
writing your research report, and a comment on the possible value of the
source in your research project. Write up each source independently of
the others; don't try to combine them in your journal. Your overall goal
is to build a journal that describes at least 15 good sources. (Although
the draft research report to be written later will require citations
from only eight sources, the investigation underlying that report needs
to be broader, to assure that stones are not left unturned.)
Other recommendations: (1) email sources to
yourself whenever possible; (2) make printouts of sources that you can't
email; (3) cut and paste into the journal any abstract or executive
summary that a source may contain; (4) cut and paste into the journal
key paragraphs of information that you are likely to cite when it comes
time to write the draft research report. Be sure to identify all
cut and paste information so that you don't accidentally plagiarize from
it when you write your report.
This assignment is worth 1 course point per "Lesson," for a
total of 5 points. Installments of the journal are due in Lessons 13,
14, 15, 16, and 17. For a student sample research journal, see "Student
Sample Research Journal."
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Left:
Socrates' prison cell today. Proof positive that he must have flown the
coop after all?
Left:
After Socrates helped to break the mould, Greek statues took on a more
realistic and democratic cast, as shown in this Hellenistic statue by
Appollonios of Athens (cir. 150 BCE), known as "the Boxer,"
broken nose and all.
Left:
from Leonardo da Vinci's notebook, one of the most famous of all
journals. Leonardo used the journal as a workbook--most famously to make
sketches for inventions and to practice rough drawings that he would
later turn into finished paintings. Artists' sketches serve the memory
by focusing attention and also rehearsing the lines prior to producing
finished pieces of art. Think of your journal as a sketchbook where you
can get the feel of writing about your subject.
Left:
Young Darwin, an unmotivated student, took up journal writing on a long
and lonely voyage at sea. The result years later shook the world.
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Instructions
for Lesson 12: