week 9 lab dis

Arianna,

This week, I have discovered the thing I found most challenging while working on an outline for my literature review is noting a clear path for where I want my argument to go (Galvan, 2015, p. 100). I have a general idea based upon the theories that I want to use, but I think organizing my thoughts and putting them on paper in a cohesive way has been most difficult.

A strategy that I feel will be most helpful for me is adding a column next to my topics, and adding references to the appropriate places (Galvan, 2015, p. 100). This will help me to map out my ideas and place references in the appropriate places within my outline. I also think that having an understanding of the theories that relate to my study will help me with the direction of my outline as well.

References

Galvan, J. L. (2015). Writing literature reviews: A guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences (6th ed). Glendale, CA: Pyrczak.

Melonie

After reading and analyzing numerous articles and identifying themes, the next step is to develop an outline for your literature review that combines and organizes all the main points and ideas of the articles analyzed (synthesize) (Galvan, 2015). Synthesizing the information from the articles allows you to use the previously written summaries and begin to identify how the information is related and addresses the gap in the literature in totality, instead of individual summaries, by providing a road map to the information that will be used to write the literature review (Galvan, 2015).

As I was working on my outline the first challenge I had was not trusting the work I had previously done over the last three weeks. Initially, I was re-reading articles but quickly realized that the information I was taking away from the articles was the same information I previously identified for the annotated bibliographies. I also found that two of my themes may have been a little too closely related, as articles seemed to fit under both themes with little distinction. Another challenge I had was writing long sentences and paragraphs in the outline.

To help with these challenges, I began to look at my outline like a roadmap and decided the story I wanted to tell and the gap I wanted the literature review to reveal (Galvan, 2015; Stadtlander, 2015). Once I was able to decide about the information I wanted to share from the articles read, I rephrased one of my themes to more clearly identify the synthesized information from the articles. This made it a lot clearer where articles should go, understanding that some articles may fit more than one theme. I then went back and read the sentences I wrote under each theme and summarized the sentences into short phrases. This process was a little difficult, as I kept reading the announcement to not write paragraphs or sentences. At first, it was difficult figuring out a way to shorten the sentences without losing the main points. It was helpful for me to re-read my annotated bibliography, which helped to shorten the sentences without losing the main idea behind the sentences.

References

Galvan, J. L. (2015). Writing literature reviews: A guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences (6th ed). Glendale, CA: Pyrczak

Stadtlander, L. M. (2015). Finding your way to a Ph.D.: Advice from the dissertation mentor. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.