Ivy Research

photo credit: merriehaskell

The hardest part of a research project is not the research itself—after all, anyone can go to the library and pick out a bunch of relevant books. The real challenge begins when it’s time to make sense of the information. You’ve got a pile of books, journals, photocopied pages, maybe a few vague hurriedly written note cards—but how do you turn all that into a decent, presentable and organized research paper?

You don’t have to be a human database to properly organize your research. In fact, it’s probably not in your nature: creative thinkers tend to absorb huge chunks of information in a random order, rather than in small bits of organized, highly compartmentalized blocks. Here’s how you can overcome this flaw and write a research paper that’ll impress your teachers.

Research liberally. The first part of your research should be about gathering, gathering and more gathering. Get all the information you can from any source possible. You won’t be able to use them all, but it’s better to disregard irrelevant information than to run back to the library for the missing pieces.  This is the “vacuum cleaner” phase of your research–suck up all pieces of info that might be relevant to your paper.

Work in piles.  A liberal research approach will leave you with a huge mountain of information. What you need to do is break down this mountain into smaller mounds that are more manageable. Go through each bit of information and put them in related piles. There can be as many piles as you want—you’ll go through them later and organize them into a few relevant categories.

Use source and note cards. When you’ve figured out which of the data should stay or go, it’s time to organize them into cards. Source cards contain information on each of your sources, and are linked to the note cards containing relevant information from the source.

Write a working outline. As you gather and narrow down information, you should start to see your paper taking shape. Create a working outline based on the subtopics that come up in your research. You can revise and redo the outline as often as needed. You may find yourself thinking of creative ideas at this point, but hold them back for now—what you need is a clear, straight view of your topic so you can arrange relevant ideas together. Do this by hand and draw diagrams as necessary.

Write a final outline. Don’t hesitate to make drastic changes as you go along—it’s not uncommon for your final outline to look nothing like your original. Your professor may have to approve it before you can start writing, so be sure to consult them first. Use a word processor this time, so that your outline will be presentable for consultations.

Clearly delegate tasks. When you’re working with a group, make sure everyone knows their part so that everything is covered with no duplicates. One common mistake is assigning a different person for each section (introduction, methodology, etc). This will most likely create a disjointed patchwork of ideas that makes no sense. Instead, delegate tasks by topic—have one group work on history, another on theory, and so on.