write ten short summary
Although this is likely to be the least enjoyable assignment you'll complete this semester, it will make your life easier in the long run. If nothing else, by the end of tis endeavor, you should have a list of research articles that answer the question "What does the scientific community already know about [Do games affect students' academic performance?]."
OBJECTIVES
Familiarize yourself with the process of using academic databases to find peer-reviewed research
Practice reading and summarizing published research articles
Apply a consistent bibliographic style to your writing (i.e., get in the habit of citing your sources in a way that makes sense to whoever happens to be reading your work
Get all of your ducks in a row before you start writing your literature review
INSTRUCTIONS
Conduct a literature search on the topic you chose last week. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about your topic, please let me know.
2. Identify 10 peer-reviewed journal articles pertaining to your topic and create a reference list (like the ones you would see at the end of a research article) using a standard bibliographic style such as APA, MLA, or Chicago.
3. Of the 10 articles you identified in Step 2, choose 5 to read carefully. Then create an annotated bibliography (summary) of those five articles. An annotated bibliography provides full citation information for the article as well as short summaries for each source. These summaries should contain the information you're most likely to include in your forthcoming literature review. Such information could include:
A brief description of the authors' objectives. In other words, what was the research question? What were they trying to prove? Did they set out to test any specific hypotheses?
A brief description of the methods the authors used. This description should cover:
The characteristics of the data (i.e., how they were collected, sample size, etc.)
The methods used by the authors. Is this a quantitative study? A qualitative study? A case study? Some combination of the three?
A description of the key variables and how they were defined/measured
A short summary of what the authors concluded. Were the hypotheses stated at the outset supported or refuted?
A note to your future self in which you explain why you chose this article and how it might fit into your literature review. You might think that you'll remember why you liked a given article, but you almost certainly won't.
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RESOURCES, TIPS, AND TRICKS
To put it bluntly, there is a shocking amount of information out there about the "best" way to search the various databases in which peer-reviewed articles are found. I've included some University-specific resources below, and I'll update this list in the event that I find anything earth-shattering.
This is a fun little walkthrough (Links to an external site.) of Google Scholar, which is one of my favorite places to start my research.