THE RESEARCH QUEST

THE RESEARCH QUEST: Becoming Information Literate

Based on model developed by BCTLA and adopted by the Ministry of Education, January 2001

Focus

TO BEGIN A RESEARCH PROJECT, you need to FOCUS on the research task, your purpose for the research, and your audience. This is a planning stage and it is important that you take the time (1) to consider what you already know, what you need to find out, what your final product will look like and (2) to generate new ideas before you create the plan to reach your goals. Some focusing activities might be making outlines, listing ideas, brainstorming, creating webs, making mind maps, searching for subjects or topics on the web, e-mailing plans to project partners.

Find and Filter

Once you have focused on your topic and task, you need to consider (find and filter) the range of sources available to you. These may be print or electronic resources but could also be information from interviewing, observing, or emailing. After making some decisions about what kind of resources you need and begin to locate specific items. Then decide which of these will be useful. Electronic searches are important at this stage. Some finding and filtering activities include evaluating the resources for authority and accuracy, making notes and summaries, organizing information into graphic organizers, and recording the bibliographic information.

Work with Information

Next, you are at the draft stage. You need to work with the information until it is your own. This means that, rather than simply copying it out, you will interpret the data, synthesize and analyze the ideas you find, make connections between sources and ideas, ask more questions, and look for deep understanding. You will organize, reorganize, and reshape ideas to make sure that the new meaning or understanding you have created is well captured in words or graphic images that work effectively with your audience (usually, your classmates or your teacher). At this stage, you may create a document, cut and paste to reorganize, check for grammar and spelling, make charts, timelines, and graphs, look for patterns, check the facts. You need to understand your research well enough to present it or communicate effectively.

Communicate

Now, you will make the final decisions about effectively communicating what you have found in order to demonstrate how much you have done and learned. Some communicating tools are found in desktop publishing. You may want to use various document and format features, charts, graphs, imported images, drawing or web design tools, multimedia presentations, group rehearsals to prepare your final product..

Reflect

Reflection completes the research process. Consider whether your task was successful, whether the process was effective or there are changes that would improve future research tasks. To reflect, you may be asked to engage in class discussion, write a journal, produce a checklist, use a self-evaluation chart, gather feedback from readers or viewers as peer evaluation, and so on.