How to Use This Guide

This document is intended to highlight resources that can be used to address the topic of Conducting Research in a Second-Year Writing Course. All resources are Open Access and can be downloaded or added to a Course Management System via hyperlink.

Introduction

This portion of the course is intended to recommend the best open educational resources related to presenting research, including creating a defensible research thesis; supporting and defending ideas in writing; understanding and debating the arguments of others;  selecting credible source material to use in a persuasive research essay; avoiding plagiarism; formatting and presenting sources in an approved academic format; and the process of drafting, revising, editing and polishing an academic research paper. These skills will overlap with other learning objectives (e.g. Reading in Academia, Persuasion and Argument, Rhetorical Situations, Genres, etc.), and instructors will likely want to use these resources and design activities in conjunction with other learning objectives. Further, this module assumes that instructors have chosen their own primary readings (academic journal articles, examples of student research papers, editorials) as examples to which the strategies outlined in these resources may be applied.

Learning Objectives

This module is designed to address the following learning objectives:

1. Select a topic for research
2. Assess the needs of the audience
3. Create a working thesis
4. Identify types of research
5. Analyze and evaluate sources
6. Use library databases
7. Avoid plagiarism
8. Paraphrase, summarize and quote from source material
9. Understand documentation types and styles
10. Create a working outline
11. Draft a research paper
12. Seek feedback through peer collaboration
13. Use the revision process to create a formal research-based written document