Below are some suggestions for how and when to move through various stages of your projects:
Course Outline
Choosing a Topic (Week 1)
A topic area is a zone, a subject area.
Please reflect on these initial questions:
Your topic area should be settled quickly. To settle a topic area, you should carefully read and think about several topic areas, look into several potential puzzles (see below), and research several scholarly sources in each topic area you are considering, to assess the viability of your topic and the likelihood that your interest in it, or in some smaller part of it, will be sustainable for 14 weeks or more.
How will I choose a topic that is interesting to me, and maybe to others?
How will I choose a research project that will be meaningful and useful to me, and maybe to others?
How will I succeed in managing one large assignment throughout the length of this course?
Defining a Puzzle Within Your Topic Area(s) (Weeks 2-3)
An intellectual puzzle is a big, weighty, important issue or set of ideas that small research projects help us understand.
Why do people kill each other? What can be done about poverty? What is the nature of creativity? How can we define beauty? What will become of our educational system? Etc. These are examples of really big puzzles. Slightly smaller puzzles might be: Why does it seem like violence is increasing when, statistically, it is decreasing?, According to Marxist theory, poverty is inevitable in a capitalist system. Is this true?, Is Kants notion of the sublime helpful in defining an aesthetic standard?, etc. But to get to these puzzles, usually, you have to start investigating the larger puzzles.
Even small puzzles are not the same as research questions (see below) because they are far, far too broad. But they are smaller than topic areas like violence, poverty education. Your research questions will speak to a puzzle and help us think about them and, maybe, partly answer them.
Your research will not likely resolve or unravel a puzzle entirely, but it must speak to a puzzle, even if your paper is non-traditional research. If your research does not address any puzzle, if it does not help us (even a little) begin to understand something new and important about life, humanity, the world, the universe, etc., then you should ask yourself, who cares?
Please carefully consider these questions:
What is the intellectual puzzle I want to solve?
Why does it need solving? What new questions really need to be asked about this topic?
What has already been asked and what do experts already know about it? What can I figure out (in 14 weeks, without a billion-dollar laboratory, etc.)?
What exactly will I need to do, read, research, investigate in order to intelligently pursue my research puzzle and research question(s)?
Try to write at least 3 paragraphs describing your topic, with reference to the puzzle and possible research questions mentioned below.
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