reflections

RD 115

Information Literacy Project/Research Work

Final Phase

Final Phase

Due 6/3/2019 at the end of class

You have made it to the final stage of your research on a topic of your academic interest. You now are ready to look back at all the research, evaluations, and critical thinking that you have done based upon your research question, and assess your own understanding of the research process and what you learned about your question.

For your final portfolio, you need to assemble the following things in the following order:

1. A Final Reflection Paper (see below).

2. Your Annotated Bibliography + articles + Website Evaluation Checklists (if used) + Survival Word lists (if completed).

3. Your revised Valid and Credible Sources list. If you had formatting errors in your first version, please correct them for the final project. Include the original graded Valid and Credible Sources assignment. I will re-grade the revision. I will NOT re-grade the revision without the original, however.

Your final reflection paper will be around 2 – 3 pages long. It must be typed and double-spaced, revised and proofread, and spell-checked. You should demonstrate some of your best writing in this piece, which will do the following (you may organize your reflection as a narrative, or you may simply use the Roman numeral list below to organize content):

I. Begin with a clear, brief introduction of your researchable question and how/why you picked it, as well as the thought processes you went through while revising it into a strong and answerable RQ (researchable question). (1 paragraph)

II. Discuss the various challenges you encountered while doing your research, from narrowing your RQ and finding sources to learning how to evaluate or summarize those sources. If applicable, you might want to talk about the successful or not-so-successful student habits you employed along the way. What else got in the way? Discuss at least one example. (1 or more paragraphs).

III. Describe what you have learned in terms of the research process and where you would focus your energies were you to encounter a similar task in the future. What resources (and types of resources) were particularly useful to you? What steps would you spend more or less time on if you did it again? Use clear examples from your own work this term. (1 or more paragraphs)

IV. Using clear examples from your work this term, what did you learn about credibility of resources? How will this help you in future reading and research? (1 or more paragraphs)

V. Give a final evaluation of what you have learned, both about the research process and about your topic. Also, how useful was this assignment for you? How could it be made more helpful in preparing you to do college-level research? (1 or more paragraphs).