(Image generated by Copilot)

You are the professor. You are the one who sets and states your expectations for student research projects. And you likely have a vision for that ideal (or close to ideal) completed student project, one that could fill you with joy. The downside is that you rarely have your dream come true in real life.

For now, forget your disappointments. What is important is to achieve your own vision for the quality of the submissions you receive from your students. 

Can you express that vision in words?

Open to full screen. Navigate with the arrows at the bottom.

https://prezi.com/view/qi0EWi1ZlzASUm9F94sr/

Slides for session one: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hwum-1LOsU2srvHOMtMmoR1OpBGpx5v4UG6c2VbvvJU/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

The first barrier to achieving your vision of the ideal research project is the way students often have to wrestle with limited information and unclear terminology in faculty assignments. Sorry, but we must address this fact: Students, consistently, find their professors' assignments to be baffling or incomplete, and studies have shown that many assignments are indeed confusing and less than helpful. 

Project Information Literacy evaluated multiple faculty assignments and concluded: "Simple fact? Most students lack a seminal understanding about what conducting research means as a form of intellectual inquiry and discovery and the large majority of handouts we analyzed did not provide much context that would help." (Project Information Literacy. (2010). Assigning Inquiry: How handouts for research assignments guide today's college students, p. 26.  https://projectinfolit.org/publications/research-handouts-study/.

Let's look at a few possible clear goals that could match your expectations for elements of a great research project. These are based on the narrative underlying the research process. They are only suggestions, to be adapted to your discipline, but we have found them to be central. Students need to show:

1. A grasp of the purpose and rationale for research in your discipline - If research is inquiry and problem-solving, you need to provide an explanation and examples to demonstrate this.

"We contend that students need to understand the whys of the research processes before they can even begin to practice them and gain traction with their information problem skills from one class to the next. If students consider instructors’ written guidelines as being helpful to them now, the value of handouts is only likely to increase with the addition of situational context that also frames the whys of the research process." (Project Information Literacy. (2010). Assigning Inquiry: How handouts for research assignments guide today's college students, p. 27.  https://projectinfolit.org/publications/research-handouts-study/.)

2. Research Design - Providing a workable problem-based research question or thesis.

• Consider asking students to express this in a single sentence
• Expect that students will default to questions requiring information-gathering rather than problem-solving. This error will need correction and instruction. Instead of, "What is the state of homelessness today?" [information gathering], ask, "To what extent is the 'housing first' movement a practical solution to urban homelessness?" [demands analysis beyond information gathering].
• Provide guidance to enable students to understand how to do design that is congruent with the requirements of your discipline.

The following presentation can be used to help students grasp the nature of a problem-based research question:

https://prezi.com/view/yBwgkY19s3TsDk9RjRo8/

3. A preliminary Outline - While a basic initial outline around the research question is not often seen as a priority in student research, writers of ideal projects generally determine a guiding structure quite early in the research process. The following presentation offers insights to turn a research question into a viable preliminary outline. This basic outline may change over time, but it serves as a roadmap to guide the process of finding relevant resources/data:

https://prezi.com/view/MialHdBOsBkOcAwPMRbN/

4. Careful selection of best databases for resource searching. You should offer guidance on what tools you want your students to use. Some possible parameters:

• Library OneSearch (https://www.twu.ca/academics/library) or subject-specific databases (https://libguides.twu.ca/articles).
• Ask yourself: To what extent and in what ways should a student search with Google, Google Scholar or Wikipedia? Avoid saying, "Don't use the Internet", since many legitimate academic search tools and resources come to us via the Internet. Instead, explain what you want them to use and why.

5. Use of best search terminology and advanced database search features to find the best resources. Here a reference librarian can offer guidance to your students. The library provides numerous tutorials to using databases:

                      Library OneSearch: https://libguides.twu.ca/LibraryOneSearch

                     Other Database Tutorials: https://libguides.twu.ca/library_research/all_video_tutorials

To determine how well your students are engaging viable skills, your assignment needs to ask them to state their search terminology and explain what database features (subject headings, date limiters, etc.) they used. The following tutorial shows how students can develop initial search terminology from a research question, thus matching search results with the goal of the research project:

https://prezi.com/view/cfXArRA5a1rEAYQJnhYk/

• While relevant to the research question, resources expose a variety of points of view or approaches that address the question rather than just the topic behind it;
• At the same time, found resources deal as centrally as possible with the research question, avoiding surveys or peripheral aspects.

https://prezi.com/view/it5qucCUYXQC67RvuThc/

10. Avoidance of plagiarism. Students need to understand what plagiarism is and avoid ever being accused of it. See a perspective in this presentation:

https://prezi.com/view/QXdY8NhJ3DrInbLQcxd6/

For a perspective on use of Generative AI and plagiarism, see: https://libguides.twu.ca/ResearchSkills/AI#s-lg-box-16839259

11. Great citation format: The library has resources students can use to understand and apply each major bibliographic style: https://libguides.twu.ca/citation_style_guides 

Add your own goals. Research in your discipline may require a certain structure, a certain way of doing literature reviews, specialized ways of gathering and presenting data, and so on. Set your own goals. Just be sure they are clear, with no jargon like "critical thinking" or "good argumentation." Be sure students understand what you mean by "scholarly" resources.