INLS200 Retrieving & Analyzing Information

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22 Jun 2007 - First draft of research question

Task

Research question

You will develop a research question to investigate during this session. Imagine that you are taking another course that you are enjoying, in SILS or in your major. Imagine that you are assigned to write a term paper in that course on a topic relevant to the class. This imaginary, and hopefully pleasant, context is what you will use to select the research question you will work on for this project. If you need some topics ideas, take a glance at the areas in Information Science topics page for some topic suggestions.

If you actually do have a term paper to write in another course that you are currently taking, you may use that assignment as the basis for this research project. You will be expected to write a substantially different paper for the final portion of this project than what you will be writing for that other course.

If you need a visual guide to what a research question might look like, here are some examples to use:

A description of how to format your paper
An example of a research question formatted according to the instructions above
An MSWord template you may use if you choose. You don't have to use the fonts in this format, but do remain constant in your use of fonts
- all objects formatted as Heading 1, for example, should use the same font
- all objects formatted as Body Text, for example, should use the same font

Use the same format for both the first and second drafts of your research question.

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Condition

There are 2 deliverables for this assignment:

Two drafts of your research question will be due, one on Monday, 25 Jun and the second on Friday, 29 Jun.

Your first question description should include:
- the course number and name of the (imaginary) course,
- a brief description of that course (if this is a real course, include the catalog description of the course; if imaginary, write your own description), and
- a one-paragraph description of the question you wish to investigate.

We may discuss the research questions in class. After class, I may comment to you individually on the suitability of your question for the purposes of this assignment.

Your second question description should include your revised question, and a brief write-up of how and your reasons why the question has changed.
- A journal of the development of your research question over the course of the semester will be due with your complete project documentation at the end of the semester.
- Your question may well evolve during the course of your working on the session-long assignment. For example, sub-questions may develop as you learn more about your topic, or the question itself may change as your interests change during the process of information retrieval.
- As you continue to turn in portions of this assignment, you should also be creating a journal of the development of your question: you will submit this journal as a part of your final project.
- Every change to your question should be documented, with a brief description of the reason(s) for the revision.
- You may ask the professor to review revisions at any time. The final version of the question will be the basis for the final report of the assignment.
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Standard

The standards which will be used for grading this task are listed on the downloadable gradesheet.
But we also have one administrative standard which will be constant throughout the course.
- use a common file name structure for all documents you turn in as an email attachment or as a file I can download from your web space
- the structure takes advantage of how operating systems want to index things
  - LastName.FirstName(s).YYYYMMDD.TaskNN.descriptor.(file extension)
- an example might be
  - Bergquist.RonEd.20070625.Task01.FirstDraft.doc

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