The pathway to the final product...
Developing a research paper does not just happen over night. It takes a lot of time, decision making, evaluating, and hard work. Here I have documented the general path I followed in developing my final research paper. Each section also has included the file of the document of interest.
Choosing a topic:
The first step to starting my research was finding a topic that interested me. It would be incredibly hard to write a research paper on something that did not intrigue me, and being a Biology major I knew I wanted to head in the direction of the sciences. Remembering a talk about antibiotic resistance we had in my bio 2 lab, I decided I would give that some research. This led me to establish certain questions regarding the topic such as "Why does antibiotic resistance happen?", "How can antibiotic resistance be combated?", and "What can people in the field of medicine do to work together in finding a solution?". Although my questions slightly changed, or new questions were added, these were the main ideas I was trying to grasp. With this I went forward with my research.
Finding supporting sources:
In finding sources to aid my research, my first step (after deciding a topic of course) was developing some key words to search. These included, but were not limited to, "antibiotic resistance", "antimicrobial resistance", "veterinarians antibiotic resistance", "food animals antibiotic resistance", etc. I searched the internet through Google and also made use of my school's library database to find scholarly articles. Below is a list of sources that I read and found to be helpful in my research.
Presenting the plan:
The dossier presents a good guide for where my research was headed. It is not a set in stone document, and not everything in it will necessarily make it to the final product, but it gives a great idea of what stage I am in regarding my research, and how I am going to use the sources I had already found. It is really the first document that goes into some detail about my topic, and really explains what it is and why I am doing the research. It also provides the updated research map, which is an idea of the direction my research is headed in. In addition to this, it also provides an annotated bibliography. The information I included in this forced my to lightly analyze the sources I picked, and it made me realize that not all my sources were as usable as I thought.
Analyzing a source:
The next step was choosing a source I planned on using in my final paper. Taking this source, I had to analyze it and decide, considering many aspects, if it was a usable source for my paper. At first I did not completely understand how this was done, but I eventually learned that even this assignment had its own claim from me also, whether it was an effective, credible article or not. Analyzing this source helped me when sifting through my other sources, because I followed the same steps in analyzing this one, just in less detail. It helped me determine what sources may not have been right for my paper, and if a source was right, how credible it really was.
Pitching the idea:
Once I had all the previous finished, and the route to my final product was looking a little more clear, it was time to pitch my research idea to the class. The whole idea behind this was to 1) get them familiar with my topic and 2) get them interested and excited enough to attend my TED talk on the subject after the final paper was written. (They will have to be there anyway considering the TED talk is during class time, but you get the idea!) I posted my PSA that I used as a visual during my talk in my blog, however the button below can take you directly there.
Finally, the final research paper:
After all the following was completed it was time to finish the final paper. Overall, it consisted of three drafts, the first one reviewed by my professor in a group setting and the second peer reviewed by classmates. The 3 drafts are posted below.
Polishing up the final products:
Research Dossier: For the research dossier one thing I had to fix were my sources when I listed them and their purpose in the first paragraph. I originally had each in italics and quotations, however it is italics for books and quotations for articles. I also did not categorize my sources properly. For example, having a hard time understanding what exactly the method sources were caused me to include sources in it that were not necessarily method sources. I had to go back, get a better understanding, and redistribute my sources.
Rhetorical Analysis: A big thing a struggled with in this was the header. Being an OpenOffice user (due to it being free), I had trouble with the header and a revision I had to make was including the page number for the pages. Another mistake I made was including information that did not necessarily connect back to my argument, which I deleted in order to create more space to expand on other things such as showing how the article's intro was effective. I also had to make the change to put the article in quotes and not italics since it is not a book, and my in text citations did not require the author's names in every one since I was talking about the same source.
Research Paper: The research paper came out much better than I expected it to, however it also still needed some revision. There were multiple grammar mistakes I made that I had to read through and fix. I also did not use enough active verbs and instead used words such as "they are" or "it is". I also used the phrase "On the other hand," too often and incorrectly. In high school I learned it was just another transition sentence to use in place of words such as "However,", but I now understand how to better use it. Thankfully these were all relatively small problems.
Rhetorical Analysis: A big thing a struggled with in this was the header. Being an OpenOffice user (due to it being free), I had trouble with the header and a revision I had to make was including the page number for the pages. Another mistake I made was including information that did not necessarily connect back to my argument, which I deleted in order to create more space to expand on other things such as showing how the article's intro was effective. I also had to make the change to put the article in quotes and not italics since it is not a book, and my in text citations did not require the author's names in every one since I was talking about the same source.
Research Paper: The research paper came out much better than I expected it to, however it also still needed some revision. There were multiple grammar mistakes I made that I had to read through and fix. I also did not use enough active verbs and instead used words such as "they are" or "it is". I also used the phrase "On the other hand," too often and incorrectly. In high school I learned it was just another transition sentence to use in place of words such as "However,", but I now understand how to better use it. Thankfully these were all relatively small problems.