Foundations of Research: Building a literature review

The goal of this course is to introduce you to many of the skills that are required to generate, contextualize, and justify research. The final product of the course will be a literature review and tractable research question about a topic of your choice. One of the most important pieces of conducting research is to generate an interesting and important research question that is grounded in what we already know, contextualized by previous research, and justified by what gaps yet remain in our knowledge. Researchers craft and share this motivation in a literature review, contextualizes, justifies, and motivates the research question. Drafting a literature review is a critical and large part of the process, because working through writing of ideas is often how the ideas are shaped and refined, in large part because writing is thinking. In class we will cover a variety of concepts and skills that are useful in any discipline in terms of searching for the right kind of background information and data, evaluating types and quality of sources, reading and summarizing literature, constructing a logical and persuasive written argument, reference management, and data management and visualization. This course serves all students in the interdisciplinary environmental space, because the content and skills of this course apply to the literature review process across the range of humanities, social science, and natural science disciplines. We will touch on disciplinary conventions where they differ, but most of the content and skills are common and apply to all disciplines. Some students will go on to pursue a senior thesis research project while others may not, but all students will be able to transfer the skills you learn here into other course and capstone work, professional school and professional work going forward. Through reading, individual homework activities, and group discussion and class activities, you will learn and practice skills. Over the course of the semester,
Course Attributes: EN S; AS SSC; FA SSC; AR SSC; BU Hum; AS WI I

Foundations of Research: Building a literature review

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES 4995

Section 01