Meet Jenny. Jenny has a research project due in a few days. She picked a topic when her professor first assigned the project. She chose her favorite TV show, "Bridezillas". It seemed like a good idea, but now that she's doing her research, she's having a lot of trouble finding sources. She's freaking out. Jenny's problems started with her mental model of the research process, which she sees as a one-way street. Like many students, Jenny thinks that once a project is assigned, she should pick her topic right away. Then she can move on to finding sources and reading through them. And once she has all her sources, she can start writing her paper. But the research process is a lot messier than that. Picking your topic is intertwined with finding and reading sources, as well as writing and editing your paper. Picking your topic is research. When you first pick a research topic, it isn't set in stone. It's just an idea that you test with some exploratory research. If it looks good, you find and read some more sources. At this point, you might find that the published research leads you away from your original topic. That's okay. You can let the research you find guide you and tweak your topic a bit. And by the time you've gone through this cycle a few times, you may find that you have enough sources to start writing and editing your paper. Even then, as you're writing, you may find that you need to pull in additional pieces of information, and you may return to the research cycle. So let's wind back the clock for Jenny, bringing her back to the day her professor assigned this project and allowing her to do it again with this research model. Again, Jenny picks a topic...
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Video instructions and help with filling out and completing Form 8815 Topic
