This page describes the objectives, activities, submission guidelines, and on-going work required for the Crafting Research Questions workshop.
This workshop focuses on the process of framing questions to guide research inquiries. During the workshop, you will draft and refine a research question for your Scholarly Project.
This workshop requires you to complete and submit summary report that details the results of your process of crafting a research question for the Scholarly Project. The workshop might serve to help you refine your focus for that project, or it may serve to kick-start your work.
Your summary report will provide narrative related to the following steps.
When you have completed the work of the workshop, post your summary report to SVSU Canvas on the Discussion forum for this workshop.
By now, I hope you have identified a research topic for the Scholarly Project. That said, I recognize that defining an angle, and refining your focus may prove challenging.
For this element of your summary report, identify the topic that will anchor your Scholarly Project, and briefly (50 words) explain the problem or issue that you see as your focal point for your investigation.
For this element of your summary report, offer a brief (100-200 words) distillation of the conversation relevant to your focal problem or issue. That is, how has it been investigated previously, by whom, and to what end?
In addition, identify some of the gaps in the conversation that you might address through your work. For this, you may be able to draw on the final segment from your Resource Analysis project.
The ultimate objective here is to refine a workable research question to define your investigation. All good research begins with a question. The key is to ask a question in such a way that you open a pathway to investigation, rather than predetermine an outcome. Consider the following question:
"Why do readers fail to locate the information they seek from X Corporation's web site?"
The question assumes that readers fail, and thus predetermines an outcome to the research process. A better question would ask something such as this:
"What strategies are employed by users of X Corporation's web site to locate Z information? How does this audience characterize its experience of such a search?"
In the alternative case, I frame questions that lead to investigation, rather than an outcome.
By beginning with a general topic, and narrowing toward a refined, feasible question, we clarify objectives, and open potential methods of investigation. That outcome is key, because we must be able to investigate the questions we ask. The Center for Innovation in Research and Teaching at Grand Canyon University offers some useful guidelines for writing an effective research question: [https://cirt.gcu.edu/research/developmentresources/tutorials/question].
For this element of your summary report, share the process of narrowing your focus to an appropriate research question. At least share the question you think of as narrow enough to frame an investigation, but not so narrow as to be ineffective. However, I would appreciate seeing the questions that you refined to get to that place. (Seeing your process in action will help me to understand what you are thinking, how you are thinking, and the directions that draw you throughout the process.)
Any feasible question can be examined through research methods. For this element of your summary report, offer a brief (100-200 words) explanation of a research process that might prove useful for investigating the problem you have identified.
This section describes the standards by which your work will be evaluated for this workshop. Attend carefully to these details. If you do so, you will earn full credit for the workshop.
There are 50 possible points for this workshop. I will award points according to this standard.
If you are here because of random chance, or because this content came up in a search, then poke about, and read if you see something useful or interesting. If you are a teacher in any context, and would like to use any of this content in your courses, feel free to do so. However, if you do so, please do two things: