Goal 2.3 is the ability for students to be able to evaluate and interpret data in scientific literature and other sources. Here at Longwood University, students have access to numerous online scientific journals where we can find articles for background research on papers. In my sophomore seminar and senior seminar classes we had to write literature reviews. This is solely a research paper with no experiment to perform or data to collect or analyze.
My first artifact is a literature review I wrote was for sophomore seminar and it explored the efficiency of chemotherapy and the medicine, Tamoxifen, in elderly patients with breast cancer. The literature review for this class was more extensive than the second literature review (second artifact) for my senior seminar class. The first literature review was a lot more organized than the second one because it has a title page, page numbers, running header, and subsections. I also had the whole semester to prepare it unlike the second literature review where I only had a few weeks.
My second artifact was a less extensive literature review to help us prepare an introduction for our research proposal. It not very organized in my opinion and I had changed my research proposal topic halfway through it, so in my opinion it wasn’t my best work. However, I have the research proposal that I am working on to make up for it. I believe literature reviews are very important for background research and are a great tool for people working on an extensive research project. Compared to freshman year, I have gained many valuable research tools and tips that help me find good quality background information for papers. I am more comfortable navigating my way around websites in order to find specifically what I am looking for. The ability to find research and put it into your own words for paper is a valuable tool for every student to have no matter their major and/or interests.