Professional & Technical Writing
Research Practicum
(OCTH 790)
Advice for
students and mentors
NOTE: Students bear sole
responsibility for meeting certain deadlines in this course; these deadlines
are stated on the OCTH 790 course
timetable. Should a situation arise that precludes meeting a deadline,
students must contact the OCTH 790 instructor and discuss options prior
to that deadline!
The
research project is a collaborative learning experience. Research is a team effort;
each group of students working together on a single project will share
responsibilities for completing that project and will produce a single research
paper to be submitted to their research mentor for evaluation. Following here
is an outline for a general approach to the project, and some guidance for
organizing the team effort and assuring an equitable division of labor. You
should also plan to consult the textbooks for this course and your research
project mentor for additional details related to writing the research paper.
The
research experience and communicating the research findings will be a dual
focus of this course, culminating with an oral presentation of the research
findings and the submission of a formal, written research report.
- Understanding
the Project: As soon as possible in the semester (ideally, before or
during the first week of classes), teams should schedule a meeting with
their mentor to discuss details of their project. At this meeting the
mentor will provide some background to the project, including information
on both the motivation for the study and the research methods. Once the
students understand this background, the mentor will assist them in
identifying the topics that would be relevant for the Introduction section
of the paper. Teams and mentors together will develop an outline for the
Introduction.
- The Project
Contract: Once students understand the scope of the project they
should be in a position to organize duties associated with the project. The
duties are listed in generic format on the project contract; duties can be
divided up any way the team sees fit. This contract represents the
agreements that have been made regarding each student's contribution to
the project. It does, however, require mentor approval as a way of
assuring an equitable division of labor; submit a completed contract to
your mentor. The contact is available as either a .pdf
file or as a Rich Text Format (.rtf) file
suitable for use with most text processing software.
- The Literature
Search: Each team member is required to contribute to the literature
search. Use the outline developed for the Introduction to assign topics to
team members for the search.
- Writing the
Introduction: There are three main sections to the Introduction: (1) introduce the problem, (2) review the literature, and (3) summarize purpose and
hypotheses. Exploring the literature related to the research topic will
help to prepare you for understanding research itself, and successfully
summarizing the purpose and hypothesis will require a good conceptual
understanding of the project.
- In order to assure a fair division of labor and a
good understanding of the project by each team member, each student must
contribute to some aspect of the three sections of the Introduction.
These sections are defined by the outline developed previously; use the
outline to identify student responsibilities for writing; incorporate the
outline into the project contract to record the assignment of
responsibilities.
- You should be aware that the content of your
group's Introduction may change over the course
of the term, as your project evolves. Be prepared to revise the
Introduction as your prepare your written report at the end of the term.
- You should be aware that a common problem in
Introductions is they often read as a long list of reports from the
literature. The purpose of the Introduction is to guide your reader
through the literature - not present an indexed list of all the
literature you've read! Cite only those reports that are pertinent to
your topic, and explain carefully why each report is
worth considering in relation to your questions.
- Writing the
Methods Section: Once the students understand the methods to be used,
they can write the relevant parts of this section, usually in three parts:
Participants, Instrumentation, and Procedure. Responsibility for
writing these sections should be assigned using the project contract.
- Data
Collection: Each student is required to contribute at least 10 hours
to the task of data collection.
- Writing the
Results Section: This section includes (1) a written description of the data analyses, and (2) figures and/or tables
summarizing the data.
- Writing the Discussion:
This section includes a evaluation and
interpretation of the data reported in the previous section. All team
members should contribute ideas for the discussion. This
section can be written by more than one student, but the
subsections should flow smoothly one to the next.
- Organizing the
References: APA style listing of literature cited in the paper.
- Appendix:
Listing of all raw data collected in the course of the project.
- Making the Research Presentation: A short (15-20 minutes,
depending on number of students and complexity of the project) summary of
the research project is given by the group at the end of the
semester. Tasks include both preparing and delivering spoken parts of the
presentation, and preparing visual aids. ALL students are expected to deliver some portion of the
spoken presentation.
You should be aware that not all research projects lend
themselves to the sequence of steps and component parts listed above. For
instance, observational or qualitative projects are not designed to test a
hypothesis, and this will alter your approach to conducting the research as
well as the structure and content of your writing. Part of the research mentor’s
role is to provide guidance to students as they navigate the research process,
whether the research is qualitative or quantitative. When in doubt, please
speak with the course instructor!
Comments? Send e-mail to Jeff
Radel
Back to the Top | Last Updated: 19
Dec 2011