Page 261 - Foundations of Learning, 4th Edition (Revised)

Top Ten Tips for Researching, Documenting,
and Writing a College Assignment

1 Go into your research with a specific question or working thesis. What are the key words in your
topic?

2 Know what kind of sources and information the assignment requires: books, articles in professional
journals, interviews, or reports with statistics?

3 Get familiar with your college’s library home page. What resources can you access through this
home page?

4 If the list of resources seems a bit daunting, talk with a college librarian about resources such as
subscription databases and evaluative Internet resource sites that your college has access to. These
sources will save you time by filtering out useful from useless sources.

5 Have a strategy for assessing the sources you find. If you want to find the average cost of organic
produce in the United States, do you want to read newspaper articles from England or Brazil? Would
there be a purpose in looking at an organic farm’s web site?

6 Have a strategy for capturing the information you find. What is the printing cost at your college?
Can you print out a certain number of pages for free, or is there is a charge for each page?

7 Since you may not want to print out every source, get in the habit of taking good notes. You must
have the who, what, where, and when information to use each source in your assignment. You will
also need to decide if you want to quote the exact words in a source or paraphrase them by putting
the author’s ideas in your own words. Either way, you must give credit to the author of the source.

8 Periodically check your sources against your original question or working thesis. Are you staying
on track or getting lost in interesting dead ends? This will help you assess the sources against your
why: Why is a certain source useful?

9 Draft your written assignment, paying special attention to correct documentation whenever you
use an outside source.

10 After you’ve revised your written assignment, double check your in-text citations against your
Works Cited or References list.

Thanks to Virginia Bryan, a librarian at Madison Area Technical College, for her feedback on this list.

Primary and Secondary Sources

As you will see in Activity 10.2, the group research plan, some students will be conducting interviews
and surveys as their research. This kind of research is called primary research. Primary research is either
research you conduct yourself, or a document that has not been analyzed by someone else. An example of
a primary source might include a letter sent by a grandparent during World War II. Or, as you will see in
Lindsey’s research in Activity 10.2, it can be an interview or a survey. Looking at your grandfather’s letter
from France is not the same as reading an article written by a historian on soldiers’ correspondence during
WW II. The article written by a historian would be an example of secondary research. Secondary research
would include books and articles written by experts in their fields. It would be their collection, analysis, and

Chapter 10 — Finding and Working with Sources 255