How has your process for doing academic research changed since the beginning of the semester? Be specific. Give examples.
This semester in the Social and Research class my horizons for research were expanded to a degree I didn’t even thunk it was possible. For example, before I considered the fact that I knew about google scholar and used it to a minimum that it was enough for my researches.Now, I have learned that the articles on there are just the beginning and not only that but you need need multiple articles to back up the new research you are trying to publish. I also learned how to use google sheets to develop graphs along side with Rstudio cloud.
Describe your process for evaluating and selecting sources for your research assignments. How did you decide which sources to use and which not to use? Did you add or change sources for your final assignment after turning in your annotated bibliography? If so, please explain why.
After you find the articles you would like to use for your research on google scholar, which is a reliable source to get articles from, the ones I ended up picking tie back exactly with my research question, and my professor Dr. JoEllen also though our class a trick, before choosing an article look at the number of times it has been cited in paper.On google scholar underneath every article there a number that indicates that and she said to try and keep the articles we used above 1,000 citations I believe. And of corse throughout the research process I changed the articles I decided to use just because sometimes they don’t quite fit the research anymore, so before I turned my bibliography in I added a couple more articles I previously didn’t find it.
What challenges did you encounter when doing research for your assignments in this class? What strategies did you use to overcome them? Be specific. Give examples.
During extensive research projects such as this one, a lot of what we were doing was very new to me, so it was a lot of learn as you go but because of how great my professor was she made the process way easier. Anytime I had any questions or concerns I could just ask her in class or email her to meet up to get them clarified, she was very open during the whole process which made our research process go by way smother.
Have your attitudes and perceptions (confidence level) about doing research changed over the course of the semester? Be specific. Give examples.
The confidence I now have to conduct my own researches is much higher than it used to be. Specially because english is my second language I used to second guess myself too much when researching, but now I feel like Dr. JoEllen gave me the tools I needed to be more confidant and even more successful with my research. For example I trust myself completely now to use good sheets correctly, and something that I had never done before such as Rstudio, I am very confident in using it.
Think about the research you’ve done this semester, and describe what you think it means to “Think Like a Researcher?”
To “Think like a researcher” to me means looking at things with no bias and always double checking your resources. But the main lesson I learned was research doesn’t happen over night, it takes time. SO don’t get frustrated when it’s taking a little longer than what you thought, to get a great project together the research will take a lot of time.