Directions:
You need to submit an annotated bibliography with 5 annotated research (scholarly, scientific, academic) sources.
You need 5 research sources in proper MLA formatting (see example below) and a paragraph that you wrote that explains what the article is about, what the conclusions are, and how you might use it in your research.
Why? Research is learning how to learn independently and how to evaluate information accurately and critically; it is developing knowledge and the ability to think about complicated ideas (including your own) systematically; it is learning how to think and analyze better by learning about a topic deeply and by learning other pespectives on that topic; it is about developing analytical skills that develop sophisticated thinking habits. Pretty cool, right? It’s hard, just like writing is very hard if you do it correctly.
Then, you have to figure out how to put all of these ideas together clearly, argumentatively, and persuasively so that you have not only done the extremely hard work of developing your thoughts by thinking about something deeply, but then you have to know them and explain them so well that the reader will understand your ideas and be persuaded by them. If you do it right, it will be challenging.
What is Research and Why Do We Need It?
The first thing you need for a research paper is a topic. Then you need a question. A research question is just a question that you are personally interested in, like the ones you asked ChatGPT, which, as I’ve mentioned, was a great brainstorming exercise. To make it research, it needs to be relevant and interesting to others and to contemporary issues, and you need to have a perspective that has not been written before. So you need to look through what other people have written, and then you need to add some new insight or new perspective. Often it starts with close viewing (reading) and critical analysis, but then, like all research, you need to know what other researchers have said about your topic. A research paper must build on other research. Just like an engineer cannot work without information that other researchers have created, explored, and written about, a researcher in film cannot ignore the insights and information provided by experts.
Like research in engineering (or anything else) you cannot rely on information provided by blogs or newspapers. If you want to use a new machine or a chemical in a lab or a new electrical process, a journalist or a blogger is not going to help you. You need an expert. You need information that was written by professional researchers who you can trust, and whose data has been evaluated and checked by other experts. You need to know the information you have is up-to-date, completely accurate, and has been carefully checked and approved by experts (peer-reviewed). You want that data to be peer-reviewed, which means that it has been published in a “peer-reviewed” journal. All cutting edge, up-to-date, fact checked, accurate research is published in a peer reviewed journal. These are also called “scholarly” or “academic” or “scientific” journals. To do research, you need research.
Note:
1) Very often newspapers, magazines, and websites publish the results of new studies. We see this very often with health reporting, because these are things people want to know about. Newspapers say things like “according to a new study, doctors have discovered a link between X and Y” and so on. You cannot use the newspaper article, but there is always a link to the original research article. Just use that.
2) You can’t use Wikipedia, but wikipedia is basically a (often very scholarly) literature review. There are links to research articles for just about every fact provided on a wikipedia page. Just follow the links to articles. It’s a great resource.
For this assignment, you need 5 “scholarly sources.”
You’ll find them at:
The A&M Library Website: Library.tamu.edu (click “peer-review” on the side to make sure)
Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/)
QNL (https://www.qnl.qa/en)
What is an Annotated Bibliography?
You find scholarly sources and annotate them. What does that look like? See below.
1) You find a scholarly source you like.
2) You skim through it (you don’t need to read all of it, just skim through it and read the parts you like to get an idea).
3) You sift through the challenging words (the “jargon”) and you do your best to figure out what the writer is saying. This takes practice. You get stronger as you do this. You are exercising your brain, building your critical thinking muscles by doing a difficult and challenging task. You are struggling, crafting, writing and rewriting, thinking and rethinking, clarifying your ideas little by little. (Point I’m making: Don’t use ChatGPT!!) Do the difficult work as best you can. It’s supposed to difficult. That’s where the reward is. You finally craft a paragraph that says what you think this article does. One down. Four to go.
(The image for this is attached in the files screenshot)
Below is a video that you may find helpful.
Overview of Scholarly Sources and Annotated Bibliographies
