 Welcome everybody to the how to write a research question library workshop today. We're going to be going over research questions versus thesis statements, how to create a research strategy and how to use your question to the best of your advantage. My name is Carissa Powell. I use she her pronouns. I'm the student success librarian and I work with a lot of first year composition students. You can email me about anything library related. My email is Carissa at utk.edu. My name is Amber Sewell. I also use she her pronouns. I'm the teaching and learning librarian which includes being the liaison to first year programs so fys when a one transition to a one that kind of thing. My email address is also up here please feel free to ask any questions you've got. It is a school one at utk.edu. So, again, a little bit of what we're doing today is we're going to spend some time going over what is a research question versus what is a thesis statement, and how to use both of those to the best of your ability when you're starting a research project. So, again, for anyone who hasn't seen putting the padlet link in chat, and thank you so much for folks who have commented looking through some of the struggles I see struggles with that tension between narrowing down too much versus like too broad like that fine balance between the two. See someone thinking about how to pick a good topic, which would lead to a good research question like maybe that just that topic selection is a sticky place. Someone talking about that in depth exploration that isn't too overwhelming. That's very real. We're talking about a lot of these, and I appreciate everyone who shared some of their research struggles definitely if we don't answer a specific thing you were hoping to get out of this workshop will be here for 30 minutes afterwards to answer anything more in depth. You guys have some really cool topics you're looking into so please feel free to stay and chat with us after. So to get started I thought it would be helpful to talk about what is a research question and for me the best way to explain what it is is to put it opposite thesis statement. So I don't know about you guys. But when I was taught how to write a paper I was told you write a thesis statement so essentially you pick a point that you're going to argue in your paper. So out and find sources that agreed with it and then like one or two opposing ones but that was how you started your research process you picked a thesis statement like evil dragons are red and good dragons are blue. If I'm taking our myths and monsters class is this is the thesis statement and I would go out and I would try to find sources that explicitly agreed with me, and then a couple that disagreed so I could prove why I was right. This could be problematic for a couple of reasons. And one is kind of like I mentioned that pressure that you have to find somebody who agrees with exactly what you say. This is a common problem that I run into helping students when they're talking about a thesis statement is I need a source this is exactly what I said. How do I find it and this can lead to two things either you tried to research something you're interested in, but you can't find any sources that agree with you and so you get really frustrated you feel like maybe you shouldn't be writing a research paper about this if nobody else is saying it, which isn't fun, or you decide to avoid that all together and think well I'm just going to pick an easy topic. Like, I know, tons of people are saying why Disney princesses are bad for little girls, I know I can find sources. My teacher says they've heard this story read this paper 50 times but you know what, it's going to be less stressful. And then the research process isn't isn't fun. I firmly believe that research is way easier when you're interested in what you're reading. Going into a research project with a thesis statement can be really confining, because you feel like you're working within these narrow parameters. And this is where the research question really makes a big difference, I think, instead of going into a research paper looking for your sources, saying I just need somebody that says this, and then somebody who disagrees. If I put that in my paper, you go in asking a question that you don't know the answer to necessarily. So if I'm looking at the same assignment, and I still want to research dragons because dragons are awesome. Maybe I'm going to ask what are the physical attributes given to dragons, based on the moral alignment, aka whether they're good or bad. I still address, you know, our good dragons, often blue and bad dragons are like red or black, but there's a lot more options out there to I might find out that there's an aspect of dragon hood that I'd never considered before so I'm exploring new sources because I don't know the question. I've got toothless down here because another like physical difference that I've noticed in dragons is like good dragons get round eyes or in toothless's case, they're squarish. But bad dragons have slitted peoples like when toothless is being intimidating his eyes go a little narrow. Okay, there are a lot of possible answers to a research question, which means you're going to have a lot more sources. And it can seem daunting, especially because you might run into a couple of people said they're worried about the scope of their questions so I might start with this research question realize this is way too much I need to like narrow in on somewhere specific but at least this way I'm going to get tons of more sources, and this is actually a more natural process. When we're researching how do students learn best or how do we find a vaccine for coven, we don't know the answers and so we're having to go through and find existing sources out there to make a new argument or to make a new finding. So this is what a research question does for writing your paper. So in terms of thinking about additionally why you might want to do a research question over a thesis statement. One of the benefits is that it really rodens the type of things you're looking for, whether that's the type of source or particular source. I really visualized it as these two pictures of kind of on the left, you have a thesis statement where it's a very specific thing you're trying to prove. And on the right, you have this wide open field, you are looking for the answer to the question, and the answer could be anything. So it really kind of broadens what you'll be looking for. And it kind of gives you a little bit more space to do some searching. I also think it's easier to sometimes get frustrated. If you're doing a thesis statement and you're trying to find one specific thing and sometimes that thing has not been published yet and sometimes that one thing is also not true. So a question will lead you kind of on an adventure. So one of the other advantages is that it kind of just takes you where you're going to go and so if you allow the research question to be the guiding force of a research project or a process or a paper. So you might feel like this, hopefully there's probably also going to be a lot of other feeling of frustration, and other things but hopefully this is how you might feel when you turn your paper and the last advantage that we wanted to share today there's lots of advantages but the three we're sharing is that it can also be easier to incorporate that research into your writing process. The other place where we see a lot of frustration from students is maybe they've written their whole paper, they're trying to find one specific quote to incorporate into their paper. Whereas if you kind of flip that research model around if you allow the research question to grot to guide your read your writing process, it can be a little easier to find quotes as you go along and incorporate those instead of the reverse where you're trying to find a quote at the very last minute. So now hopefully we've kind of convinced you to give research questions a try. And so what does that process look like when you decided that's how you want to approach your next assignment. Next is brainstorming, which is just like a vague way to say you're trying to come up with ideas for your research. And this looks different for everybody. I would sit down with the assignment and see if anything immediately came to mind I was excited about or maybe look over examples. So I would probably be like writing random phrases and words that were related to each other on the whiteboard until I came up with something and I'm like, yeah, I feel good like I'm ready to kind of dive in and see what's out there. And so naturally from the brainstorming I'm going to have come up with some keywords. So how do you use those to build your research questions so what are the things that you're most interested in what are most key to your research. And next week, we'll talk about it a little bit more but we'll go into how to then use those keywords. So, one of the things that you can do once you've come up with your research question again we're just doing an overview this. This takes a lot of time. Amber and I wanted to share some reflective questions that we use as we're about to embark on searching in a database all of this is done before you might even jump into one search or a database. So the first reflective question to think about is what types of sources, are you looking for. So some folks here might be looking for primary sources for an archival assignment. Maybe you're looking for a secondary source. And within each of those categories, you can do even more brainstorming. So I know someone here, it sounds like that they're working on a topic of the legitimacy of social media as an outlet for disenfranchised voices which I'm really intrigued by. So maybe you know that you're going to look for a peer review journal article for that legitimacy aspect that you're looking for, whereas, maybe someone else is looking for it sounds like someone's doing the ethics of gene editing. And so basically use your topics kind of brainstorm what you might want to find. We also want you to think through what are you expecting to find like maybe you do your first search and discover that disenfranchised voices is not leading you to the results you want to see. And maybe you do a little bit more brainstorming about other keywords, which again like Amber said, will be going over more in depth at another workshop. And the other question we would welcome you to think through is, what will be most helpful. So maybe you know, going into your search that you're really wanting XYZ. And if you're not seeing that to take some time to kind of think through some other keywords some other synonyms. And I think I'm not sure if this is the last question or not, it might be kind of think through what might be a barrier so as you find yourself, maybe hitting a wall like maybe reflecting on what that might be before you get there. I know a couple of folks have already mentioned some potential barriers and their struggles. I was talking about wanting to find something they're interested in someone mentioned finding a topic that is engaging and so maybe thinking through some of the barriers of what makes something unengaging like how can I make sure that this will be engaging. So these are just a few things to think through. And this is something that I personally try to do before I start on a research project. This can be really simple as opening a physical notebook opening a Google Doc and kind of just brain dumping before you get into a database. So as much as we would love the idea that research is like fun and easy. It isn't always. Even if the topic is fun, you might still hit a roadblock. And so we have a couple of resources for you if you do start doing research and then you just get stuck. And we have a link here to a workshop we did last semester called what do you do when you do research right how to get unstuck. And so you can go watch that and it's got a lot of really good strategies for how to re approach a research question how to change where you're looking for sources. And of course you can always come to us. So Chris and I gave you our emails at the beginning of the presentation but we also have research assistance that's offered at the library. You can chat in with us it is on almost every page of the library's website even within the databases. And so you'll see that little box you can type your question in there and a real personal answer and help you out. And you can also email in with us. And if it's something where you really feel like you just need to sit down and talk with somebody to work out the problem we do have zoom research consultations. So you can book an appointment was a librarian where you can sit down and really kind of get into the nitty gritty of how to get unstuck. So that is about to conclude the formal portion of today's workshop we would love to hear from you at tiny dot utk dot edu forward slash research question. If you are here meeting proof of attendance. This is also the survey you will fill out to get that proof of attendance. But we'd also love to hear what stuck out to you things that are still confusing. And we would also love for you to join us next week on how to navigate subject specific databases and we'll be going over keywords as well. So if that is of interest to you please join us next week you can register on the library's website. All right, thank you so much for joining us we're going to go ahead and end the recording and then we would love to hear questions. Things you're struggling with things that are sticking points, anything like that you can hop on and chat.