Rhonda Does Research: research plan

Showing posts with label research plan. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Coming up with a research schedule

I'm not really sure how to schedule my research, but right now I plan to spend an hour a day searching until I have enough for the annotated bibliography and the definitions essay. I will probably go to the library tomorrow after class, assuming I get the okay on my proposal. So, that's as much as I can say about that right now.

I'm still thinking pretty hard about my movie (oops- got to get used to using "film" when I'm working on this project). Avengers: Age of Ultron has several scenes I'm thinking of using. I'm definitely going to use the scene near the end with Clint and Wanda, where he lays out what it means to be an Avenger, and I'm looking at Tony and Bruce deciding to use the staff for Ultron, but I also need Cap chewing Tony out for not sharing info. I think. That's as far as I've gotten on my primary research to date.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

What can you say about a Research Schedule?

Time Management
(Photo credit: Intersection Consulting)

And the answer is: not much. I've been spending a couple of hours a week thinking about this project and making notes about the film, but I'm not sure if I can actually pin down how much time I need for everything involved. I need to have my bibliography and the final revision of my Review of Scholarly Literature done on March 12, which is not that far off now, so it's time to step it up.

I'm now (as of this minute) planning on giving at least an hour a day, every day, until the two projects are done, and if I do more than an hour, I will NOT deduct that time from the next hour. I will also probably have to adjust that daily hour upwards in order to get it all done, but I think an hour is a good starting point. Here's my to-do list, in chronological order:

Find at least six articles that use shame theory to analyze something comparable to a film.
Find two more books on the theory (I already have one) AND reviews of the books from scholarly journals.
Create the MLA citations.
Start reading the articles (at least two a week), writing the annotations as I go.
Decide on which articles to use for the lit review, then write summaries (remember, they have to define the terms I'll be using).
Examine the books to see what I can get from them, prepare annotations (and summaries as above for the two I'm using for my lit review).

That's what I absolutely have to do, but I'd also like to do a starter analysis of the three scenes I want to use in the research paper, since that's my primary research and I won't know for sure how much and what kind of stuff I need from my secondary sources until the analysis is done.

And, I just decided that I'm not counting the time it takes to write my blog posts as part of my scheduled hour. Now all I have to do is stick to the plan

Friday, February 15, 2013

Research Plan- Hero Archetypes

The Power of Interlibrary Loan (Photo credit: Newton Free Library)

I turned in my research proposal on Wednesday, and I think it was okay. Now I'm supposed to be coming up with a research plan (through 3/27), and I need to get going, because the annotated working bibliography is due on 3/13. What I've done so far is kind of random: searching the web for usable (i.e. scholarly) sites, a stab at finding journal articles, and a quick book search. Even though The Fellowship of the Ring is not a superhero story, I thought that I had found a good book for the project in Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, by Jeffrey J. Kripal, because of the way it was described, so I ordered it on interlibrary loan, but it's not very helpful as far as I can see (it's interesting, though, and I had to keep myself from just reading it anyway). I'm going to get more organized, starting now.
Here's my plan:
Week 4 (this week): Search for book reviews in Academic Search Premier (Dr. Toffee showed us in class that you can click on book review in the document type menu and it'll sort them out for you). I'll have to skim the reviews for now, and then I'll get at least three of the books from the library or ILL.
Week 5 (2/18): Assuming I get the books right away, I'll read their introductions and check the index and table of contents for stuff specifically about heroes and hero archetypes. And, I'll do the MLA works cited entries and annotations to start my bib.
Week 6 (2/25): Articles! Have to find them, then read them, and that may take me through week 7 (3/4). I want to do the entries and annotations as I go so that all I have to do in order to turn in the bib on 3/13 is double check the MLA rules.
The literature review draft is due on 3/19, so I also intend to pull out the sources for that as I'm compiling the bib. By that time, I should have a good idea (I hope!) of whatever else I'll need to write the argument essay, which I will then try to locate, and that takes me up to 3/27 (week 9).