What you'll learn:
- You will be able to make the most of your time and apply your reading and writing skills to develop a research idea and research questions
- Recognize what a "good" research idea is
- Understand how to plan your reading, where to look and how to read effectively
- Learn a writing strategy (free writing) that will help you with your research idea (and dissertation writing)
- Learn to plan your dissertation
There are many resources on "How to conduct research" or"How to write a dissertation/thesis/journal article", as well as on specific methods of data collection and analysis or the structure of dissertations, doctoral theses and academic articles. But in my academic tutoring experience, Iobserved that manystudents are often concerned with yet another aspect of conducting their first research study- how to develop a good research topic?No wonder, having a good research idea is, after all, a prerequisite for conducting agoodresearch study.
I developed this course specifically to share my experiences of tackling this, Seemingly simple, task. Iknow what it's like to have a tight deadline and wonder "how on Earth am Isupposed to come up with something good?" Ihad to write my own Master's dissertation in 4 months while caring for 2 children and working full-time. Imanaged to write a strong PhDproposal in just 2 daysand to complete my PhDdegree in just over 3 years. Iknow how to manage time effectively, and how to make the best of it when it's limited. Now Iwant to teach you the same.
The example questions which Ianswer in this course are as follows:
- What is a "good" research idea and how to develop it?
-Whatto read?How do you know what topics you should start with?What kind of materials to focus on?Which sections of published work should you pay particular attention to?
-Whereto look?Where can you find the literature that is relevant?
-Howto read?What reading techniques should you use?
-How to organise your reading sources?How to make sure that you are on top of your reading and don't loose these valuable sources and quotations?
- When should you start writing?
- What to write and when?
- What is free writing and how is it going to help you?
- Is Thinking just a waste of time, or is it just as important an activity as reading and writing?
- How to come up with research questions?
- What types of research questions are there?
- What is a "good" research question?
- How to incorporate your idea and research questions into the Literature Review chapter?
What IDONOTcover in this course is the exact structure of a dissertation. Ifocus mainly on how to read, how to write and how to think (!)to effectively manage your time and gradually develop a good research idea. The course does conclude with a short discussion of a literature reviewbut its main purpose is to demonstrate the place of your research idea and questions in it, not to go into detail of the structure of this chapter.
