COM151 Week 3 - What is Research? Melissa Schroder All Sections No unread replies.No replies. Hi everyone, Welcome to week 3 in Developing Research and Analytical Skills. This week we will look at what is research? What does it mean to be a research student? We explore how to develop familiarity with a research field; taking a position within a field; research concepts; and some methods for successful research at university. Something to think about: research can vary between different disciplines (i.e. how creative writers research can vary to how a historian approaches research, likewise how scholars in the humanities approach research may be different to how those in STEM research). Week 3 Readings Set Text: Making the Grade Chapter 4 Finding out - becoming well informed, pp. 41-61 Readings: Rhodes, Karen in Adams, Paul, Openshaw, Roger and Trembath, Victoria 2006, Score more: essential academic skills for tertiary education, Thompson/Dunmore Press, South Melbourne, Chapter 12: Making sense of academic texts, pp. 62-67. *the above reading is listed under the book authors (Adams, Openshaw & Trembath) in the Readings area. Week 3 Tasks for the weekly Discussions Task 1: Locate two government sites on the internet. What kinds of information can you gather from visiting these sites and how might you use it? Find out your local Member of Parliament is, or the list of noxious weeds for your area. Task 2: Spend ten minutes looking for the latest research on chocolate. Consider how three different sources of information on the internet provide material on chocolate – industry (chocolate and confectionary companies), bloggers or online discussion sites, and academics publishing research. Experiment with searching for new research on chocolate on Google Scholar. How do the articles you found on regular everyday Google and Google Scholar differ? Record your thoughts on the different agendas and motivations behind the publication of information about chocolate in the public sphere. Task 3: Check out the Griffith Library’s research resources designed to help you with your studies. The first step is to log on to MyGriffith then find the link to the Library; or, go to www.griffith.edu.au/library. Then, go to Study and scroll down the page. Click through all these links so you know what’s where. Do the Orientation if you’ve never done it before (located halfway down the page). Make sure you also have a look at the other sections on this page as there are a lot of resources specifically designed to help online students. Hint: There's great information about writing literature reviews on this page. This will be useful when you write your Research Report! Task 4: Go back to the main Griffith Library site and look at the databases. There are a number of Databases that publish material for particular fields. Go to Library > Borrowing and Resources > Library Guides (on the lower right-hand side). Select the Humanities field and peruse the databases. Spend a few minutes now exploring subjects of interest to you, to take it for a “test drive”, if you like! The aim is to develop some familiarity and confidence with how these databases work – and practice makes perfect, so make this Task count! Task 5 (Advance learners): Experiment with searching within a journal - try New Media and Society as it’s one we discuss in this unit. Locate the journal via a library catalogue search, then find the "Search within this journal" box on the top right. Use this search box to research within this journal. Explore what using key terms such "Facebook" or "privacy" brings up in this journal. Explore another journal that you find listed in the source list of an article from New Media and Society and see how it compares (This will be fantastic practice for your final assignment). What do you think the benefits are of researching within a particular journal? A student from our group mentioned that the self-management readiness quiz wouldn't work. It seems to be working for me, but if you have issues please go here: https://app.secure.griffith.edu.au/rso/index.php, or google the Griffith University self-management readiness quiz - it will be the first entry that comes up. Please keep checking in on our course site for weekly announcements. If you have any questions or need assistance, please post your questions on the Discussion Board.