What is Research? A systematic process of critical inquiry leading to valid propositions and conclusions that are communicated to interested others.
Why Research? What are the Benefits? To learn something, to gain a wider perspective on an issue, to develop new ideas, for personal & professional development.
During this project, the students will select a subtopic that they will investigate and present their research on in the final week of the course. Each student will select a subtopic from a list of larger topics that relate directly to the online student. The goal in part 1 is to begin to narrow down the subtopic the student wishes to focus on and research.
In this stage of the Inquiry Project, you are going to be developing questions that you will further explore related to the subtopic that you selected. These questions will help guide your research as you work toward the final presentation through a PowerPoint slideshow and short essay. Ultimately you will share what you have discovered about this topic and how it relates to the online student.
For this part of the assignment, you will write 5 questions that will guide your research. These questions can be about significant aspects of the subtopic, what the varying viewpoints may be, insights about who is impacted and how, clarifying information, or others. These should be questions you want to discover to better explain the subtopic and the relationship to the online student.
Select and summarize three relevant, appropriate, and credible resources that represent various points of view of the subtopic. You must include at least one peer-reviewed journal article. Cite these sources using the MLA Style Guide.
Inquiry Project Final Essay
Your goal through the essay is to share the important patterns in the research, differences or similarities you found in your research about the subtopic, what views exist on this subject, the answers to your questions and how this impacts the online student.
Inquiry Project PowerPoint
The goal with this part of the assignment is to visually supplement your essay. You will create a slideshow using PowerPoint to supplement the content and help further explain the research. You want to focus on areas that would benefit from having the information shared visually in addition to text, such as charts, graphs, statistical representations, word clouds, etc. You can be a bit creative in how you present your information and supplement your essay.
