Topic outline

  • Course Introduction

    Collapse all Expand all

    • Time: 101 hours
    • CEUs: 10.1
    • Free Certificate
    The ability to research topics and incorporate information from your sources into your work is an important skill both in college and on the job. This course will reinforce the concepts you practiced in ENGL101 by introducing you to basic research concepts and techniques. It will also give you a chance to put these new concepts and techniques to work as you develop a final research paper. We will begin by looking at how to build research into an effective writing process. First, you will learn to think of researching not as a requirement for getting a good grade on a paper but as a valuable tool that can make your writing more powerful and convincing. You will learn how to build research into your writing process so that you can add persuasive power to your finished work. Through the rigorous practice of the fundamental techniques, you will come to see that, like writing itself, research is an act of discovery rather than a search for prefabricated ideas. The intent of this course is to teach you how to prepare research for any discipline or subject. We will carefully explore and practice general research techniques and processes that you should apply to many academic disciplines and in your job.

    In Unit 1, you will select a topic that intrigues you, conduct preliminary research to focus your topic, and develop a thesis statement and a set of questions to help guide the remainder of your research. In Unit 2, you will learn strategies for conducting your research and taking careful notes. We will look carefully at researching on the Internet, but we will also make a point of honing the skills necessary to research topics in a physical library. We will explore some of the techniques that scholars use to record and organize the information that they plan to include in their work, so you can make the most of your resources when you start to write. By the end of the unit, you will have completed detailed notes for your own research project. In Unit 3, you will learn how to evaluate and understand the sources you located in the previous units. You will learn why it is important to put significant effort into reading and evaluating Internet sources, and how to identify and what you need to consider when you use primary and secondary sources. You will also get plenty of practice in determining how and when to use sources to help make your point. By the end of this unit, you will start to understand how to determine whether any source is authoritative, accurate, and current. You will also have an annotated bibliography that will guide you through the writing process. In Unit 4, you will develop your argument and create a detailed outline for your research paper. We will take some time to reinforce and expand upon the rhetorical concepts we introduced in Composition I. Like the prerequisite course, this unit focuses on putting your research to work to strengthen your academic writing. We will study how to use the results of your research and analysis to bolster written arguments and support rhetorical strategies. Unit 5 focuses on how to use style standards and citation methodology correctly. This unit will help you clearly understand why it is important to document and cite your sources and do so consistently and correctly. We will closely examine the issue of plagiarism, noting the situations that can cause writers to misuse source materials, either consciously or accidentally. After completing this unit, you will write a complete draft of your research paper. Unit 6 prepares you for revising and polishing your paper. We will provide you with detailed editorial exercises focusing on specific elements of sentence and paragraph structure, grammar, and mechanics, which will help you achieve your goal of writing clear, grammatically sound expository and persuasive prose. We will use the Modern Language Association (MLA) standards for citation and formatting. Refer to this cheat sheet on MLA Style Resources for links to the most useful MLA sites on the internet.

  • Unit 1: Research and the Writing Process

    Researching and reporting the results of research are fundamental to academic work in almost every discipline and many professional contexts. While research in itself may seem like an enormous task when you are just starting a project, it is important to understand that effective research is a straightforward, step-by-step process. By practicing effective research techniques and becoming adept with the tools that are available to researchers, you will begin to see research as an invaluable part of an organized system of study that includes discovery, invention, critical thinking, and clear communication.

    While writing is sometimes viewed as a solitary undertaking, research requires active involvement in a larger community of scholars. You will have a chance to define yourself as a member of many communities, and you will begin to see your research as an important part of the conversations that take place among members of your communities. As you begin to see yourself as an active contributor in a community, you will start to understand how others' work can both enrich your own perceptions and improve your understanding of the topic about which you are writing.

    To help you get started as a contributing member of a community of scholars, we will first explore how your research can support the writing process you began developing in ENGL101. You will recall that the PWR Method is a process based on pre-writing, writing, editing, and proofreading, so it is probably no surprise to learn that effective research follows a similar process and is based on similar methods of preparation and analysis.

    By mastering the essentials of effective research, you can train yourself to think more carefully about your work at every stage of the writing process. For example, you probably know how much a good quote can emphasize an important point. Still, you may not be conscious of how helpful general background research can be in the very earliest phases of your writing, when you are just beginning to refine your topic and clarify your thesis and argument.

    As we continue to build your experience as a member of a research community, we will explore how effective research can help you appeal to specific audiences and more clearly define the purpose of your writing.

    Completing this unit should take you approximately 16 hours.