Monday, March 31, 2008
Research Papers!!!
I think broad topics are one of the reasons why students have a hard time with research papers. So many times in a rush to get it done, we leave our topics to broad. They become overwhelmed with the amount of information they are reading and can not decipher what needs to be in there and what is to be left out. This was very obvious to me when I produced my paper for the PACE program. I had way to much information. I could have narrowed it down to one simple topic. Just one simple idea. Hope it helps.
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I had my anatomy students do a research project on drugs and how they affect the brain. Rather than give them "free range" over the topic they picked, I went ahead the day before and picked 7 possible drugs for them to research and put their scientific names into 7 sealed envelopes. The next day when I introduced the project, I divided them into groups and let the groups choose one envelope that had the drug they were researching in it. They opened up the envelope and had no idea which drug it was (because I used the scientific names), but they soon figured it out when they searched for it. By doing it this way, it did give the students some choice (which envelope they chose) while not giving them so much choice that they didn't know what to do. It wound up working really well and no one complained about what they had to research.
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