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NARROWING YOUR TOPIC FOCUS
After you have selected a topic from the lists in the final essay guidelines, it’s time to start doing research to narrow your topic down to something specific.
For your outside sources,I suggest selecting from newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, and books. Videos such as recorded lectures can be valid research essay sources, but it’s best to have a variety of types of sources, and the more scholarly and serious the better. Avoid using fictional films and books to illustrate real world research topics.
Here are some suggestions to help you narrow your focus:
- READ YOUR TOPIC SECTION IN RADICAL EVOLUTION
The topics are listed in the order in which they appear in the book. suggest you read those sections to see if there is a specific aspect of your topic mentioned you might like to research and write about. You will also need to use those sections for important contextual information about your topic.
You can also use these sections to extract search terms for your research.
It is also possible that you might be interested in doing a search about the individuals and sources mentioned in the section to see if you find anything interesting and useful.
Finally, see the index in the back of the book to see if your topic appears elsewhere.
- FIND AN “A-HA SOURCE”
An “a-ha source” is a source provides you with an understanding of your topic that leads to an “a-ha” moment that helps you move forward with your research. Perhaps you chose a topic that sounds interesting but is one that you don’t know much about. “A-ha sources” are those you find early in your research process that help you understand your topic.
An “a-ha source” can also show you how other researchers wrote about the topic you are interested in writing about. You might use this source as a “springboard” into your own research and help you find a way forward.
- EXPERIMENT WITH SEARCH TERMS
If you only type your topic into Google as it appears in the guideline lists, you will find very general and broad sources about it. If you experiment with your search terms, you will be able to find more specific sources.
For example, let’s say your topic is Virtual Reality. Try typing “virtual reality” into Google and take a look at the sources you find. Next, try adding another term to your search, such as “virtual reality and education” or “virtual reality and video games.”
Your search results will be more specific and while they will be more focused than the initial topic from the list, you will still find many different sub-topics to choose from. Once you choose that final focused topic, you can start a new Google search using it as your starting research point and then try expanding your search terms again from there.
For example, I Googled “virtual reality and education” and found this interesting source on the first page of results:
This Is The Beginning Of VR Education, and It Will Only Get Better:
https://www.roadtovr.com/world-of-comenius-virtual-reality-education-biology-lesson-leap-motion-oculus-rift-dk2/ (Links to an external site.)
World Of Comenius, “an educational infoverse:”
https://developer-archive.leapmotion.com/gallery/world-of-comenius (Links to an external site.)
Virtual Biology and Anatomy Lessons:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=virtual+biology+and+anatomy+lessons (Links to an external site.)
Virtual Bones and Organs:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=virtual+bones+and+organs (Links to an external site.)
The results of the above search took about five minutes to find and revealed numerous research paths to follow.
This is where research gets fun but also complicated, as one can get lost in looking at sources that look interesting but may not be directly related to what one is looking for or wants to write about.
The main point to take away from this part of the lecture, though, is a simple one: experiment with using different search terms to find more specific topics and sources.
- USE ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINE TERMS IN YOUR SEARCH TERMS
Every quarter I ask my face to face students the same question when we meet in a computer lab to work on research projects: “have you added ‘THE FUTURE OF’ to your topic from the list in your Google search yet?”
Perhaps it’s something that seems so obvious that it’s easy to miss, but usually more than half of every class did not do that for their preliminary research.
“The future of virtual reality” reveals these sources:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=the+future+of+virtual+reality (Links to an external site.)
“The future of virtual reality and education” reveals these sources:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=the+future+of+virtual+reality+and+education (Links to an external site.)
Please notice how each search term reveals different sources with a different sub-topics to be found within them.
What other search terms can we find in the guidelines?
–try adding “the future of” to your search…
–try adding “…and transcendence” to your search…(adding a theme word like this will sometimes reveal some interesting variations of sources.
–try adding some combination of “positive” or “negative” to your search term, such as “positive uses of virtual reality in education” or “negative effects of virtual reality in education…”
–try adding words from the writing strategies to your search terms, for example:
“the ethics of ________” or “ethical implications of __________” (your topic)
“______ and philosophy” or “philosophical perspectives of _______”
“future problems and __________” or “future solutions and __________”
or just: “__________ problems and solutions…”
- USE LIBRARY DATABASES TO FIND SCHOLARLY SOURCES
Try doing some research using one of the many databases you can access through the library web site. It is important to consult more than the general internet to find sources to use in your research essays. We will explore this in more detail next week, but for now, take a look at the list of library databases available for you to access and try doing a search about your topic:
https://libguides.seattlecentral.edu/az.phpLinks to an external site.
2. Lecture (Part 2): Using Library Databases
Here is some more information about using scholarly databases to find sources. You will need to have a couple scholarly sources in your final research essay, which will help to strengthen its authoritative academic tone.
Searching Library Databases
Searching a library database can look and feel a bit like using a search engine like Google, but there are some important differences. The following video from the Yavapai College Library concisely explains how using a library database to find articles differs from a web search engine.
What Are Databases and Why You Need Them (Links to an external site.)
Unlike Google, you can’t ask a database a question. Library databases require that you search by concept or keyword and connect these using the Boolean search operators AND, OR, and NOT. Before starting your research, plan to spend some time brainstorming keywords that describe your topic.
The best search terms are specific. Words that are too general or have many different meanings won’t bring back the articles you need. Specialized vocabulary in the discipline or subject area can also make for excellent search terms. You’ll probably come across this vocabulary as you read more about your topic. Encyclopedias are a great way to get ideas for keywords.
Remember that searching databases takes practice. Even librarians need to do multiple searches in a database in order to get the best list of search results.
There are many ways to generate keywords, or search terms. A good place to start is with your research topic or question, then to find key concepts and terms related to that topic. Watch this video to learn how to generate effective search terms and keywords for your topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIDhvW0HqBI (Links to an external site.)
Developing Research Keywords
You can follow these steps with your own research question in order to develop a list of keywords:
- Start with yourresearch topic or question(s).
- Nextidentify the key concepts within your topic or question. Concepts might include single words or phrases.
- Nowidentify related keywords for each key concept. These can be synonyms, broader terms or more specific terms to represent these concepts.
Combining Keywords
Learning how to combine your keywords is essential to getting relevant search results from a library database. We use words called boolean operators to combine search terms in a database. The three main Boolean operators are AND, OR, and NOT. Note in the examples below that you can usually find and change the Boolean operator in your search by using the pull down menu in a database. You can also type boolean operators yourself in the search bar.
AND
Use AND between your search terms to combine them and narrow your search. AND means that all search terms must be present in the search. AND can help you when you have too many results.
Note that the drop-down menu to the left of the search boxes contains the Boolean operator AND. This is usually the default.
Using “Quotation” Marks
Use quotation marks around words or phrases if you want them to appear word for word in your search results. Doing this ensures that the concept will be searched for as a whole and not picked apart word-for-word by the search engine.
For example, typing death penalty without quotation marks could potentially retrieve all results that mention death, all results that mention penalty, and all results that mention death penalty. This would potentially retrieve a huge number of search results not relevant to your topic. Searching for “death penalty”, however will retrieve only results that contain these words as-is.
Choosing A Database
You have access to a variety of resources through the Seattle Central College (SCC) library. To access library databases, start at the library home pageLinks to an external site.. From there, two good ways to find databases are:
- click Articles & DatabasesLinks to an external site.in the left menu.
- select a database from the A-Z list of databases below the Quick Find Box.
On the Articles & Databases page you’ll find recommended starting points and a list of databases by subject. Look in the subject list for subjects related to your topic. After reading through the list, select two databases you can explore.
Examine the databases
- Explore each database by doing a few practice searches in each. Use the searches you developed in the last exercise and compare the number and quality of the results you find. Are they relevant or not?
- Click the different search limiter options like full text and limit by date, add keywords, limit by source type, and others. Notice what happens to your search results when you use each limiter.
- Compare the two databases and notice how they are the same and how they are different. You might want to have both databases open at the same time while trying the same search terms and limiters in each.
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