PHASE 4: PLAN YOUR SEARCH
Have I created a schedule and given myself due dates to help pace my research?
In Phase 1, you created a preliminary general schedule with suggested amounts of time that you would spend on each phase of the research process. You also looked at your calendar and identified possible conflicts. Now it is time to revisit your schedule and make a firm schedule. Create personal deadlines that will help you keep you motivated, will help you stay organized, and will help you keep from waiting until the last minute to complete your assignment. Make sure your deadlines are reasonable and make sure you stick with them!
Have I decided upon an appropriate method for keeping track of the information I want to use in my assignment? These could include, notebooks, index cards, word processing programs, sticky notes, visual aids, etc.
Before you begin your actual research, you need to find a note-taking strategy that works for you. There are a number of strategies that you could use to stay organized. There is no right or wrong strategy. Just use the strategy that works for you. For ideas, see the attached pages entitled, Organizing Notes by Question, Organizing Notes by Source,, Organizing Notes by Computer, and Organizing Notes by Note Card in this section. Of course, I would also recommend you use the Cornell Method.
Have I prioritized my questions from the most important questions I want answered to the least?
In Phase 3, you brainstormed and created questions you would like answered in your research. Before you begin your research, prioritize your questions from most important to the least important. Questions that are directly related to your thesis are good places to start. Questions that pertain to your overall assignment topic are also more important. Questions related to a supporting concepts or that are very specific are usually going to be down the list of priorities. Sometimes large, over-arching questions will answer some of your lower-priority questions and save you time. Again, questions that are closely tied to your thesis and your overall assignment topic should be at the top of your priority list.
Have I created a list of key words to help me locate information and sources in search engines?
Now, we need to focus on preparing for our research that will take place using the worldwide web. Of course, many of you will be using search engines to locate sources for your assignment. The web is a wonderful tool to find sources, but you need to be very careful when using the web. It is very easy to find sources that are not credible or have very little to do with your topic. If your search words and phrases are not specific to your topic, you can find yourself buried in a number of web sites that have very little to do with your topic and you would have wasted hours looking through sites that produced little to no information. You’ll feel like a fly that has worked its way into the middle of a spider web and now you are trapped. You’ll need to start over, you would have wasted precious time, and your schedule will need to be reworked. Of course, your stress level will probably also go up as well.
In this section, find the Plan Your Search: Creating Keyword Lists and Creating Keywords pages. This page will help you come up with key words as you search the web for meaningful sources. Other helpful pages in this section will be the Subject and Keyword Searching page, the Four Hot Tips for Searching page, How to Narrow Your Topic and Broadening Your Topic pages. After reviewing these pages, come up with a list to begin your research.