Research Skills

• Require students to do more than just insert a quotation or go into another’s bibliography and reference sources. Demonstrate how to do an abstract, a paraphrase, and a summary.
• Break assignments down into easily identifiable components that address the research process consecutively. Research questions and research logs are the building blocks of good research.
• Teach students to write a literature review. A literature review is central to generating conclusions, original findings, critical insights, and creative products. Emphasize collecting contextual information across disciplines .
• For a user-friendly guide to teaching research questions and logs as well as literature reviews, see Resources for Researchers .