Week 23, Writing our Literature Review

Further refining research question(s) and literature search

My question:

How might students' use of blogs improve writing skills?

Initial structure of your review

We have been discussing how to structure our review. The general idea seems to be as follows:

*Start with an introduction discussing what the topic is about, the scope of the review and research questions of the review. We need to ensure that we define or explain the key terminologies in the research question(s).

*Then we have decided to separate the review into 4 sections as follows:

1- Reflection / Audience/ Purpose / Engagement / Self directed (Bernard)

2 - Collaboration / Community (Nick)

3 - Weaknesses - consistent elements  (All) Sub parts relating to above parts straight after the strengths (in the area) so no sub-heading for weakness

4- Kaupapa element (Rosey)

Conclusion-summarise the key ideas discussed.

So we have chosen to look at the sections and focus on a different theme within the literature (as outlined above) that helps to answer the overarching research question.

For each theme in the review, we need to discuss the key ideas and findings. We need to ensure we make strong links to agreement and commonality between different studies. We have decided to put any areas of disagreement and to identify any gaps within the literature directly after the links, rather than have a section for gaps or problems with the research.

We have created a Google Doc to share our ideas on each journal article we have read and to summarise the key findings as well as weaknesses in the research.

I think we are discovering that collaborating on an essay is quite a difficult process, tying it together into a synthesised piece of writing will be a challenge.

Week 22: Refining Research Question

Further refining research question(s) and literature search

My question:

How might students' use of blogs improve writing skills?

For Assessment 1 - Literature Review, criteria 1 of the rubric, the scope of the topic is to look specifically at research based on primary schools, but I realise I might need to go further afield if there are no papers to cover this.

Points to consider this week when researching articles are:

• Are there clearly stated research questions?
• Does the article explain why the topic is important?
• Is the research design and methodology described? Does it seem appropriate for the area of study?
• What is the data analysis like? Are the results clearly explained?
• What are the conclusions? Are they a reasonable reflection of the data analysis?

What I need to include my review

• Summarise the findings from the publication.
• Highlight the weaknesses and strengths
• Analyse gaps in the research

I have decided not to include ‘Grey literature’ in my literature review, basing my review rather on journal articles from the Unitec Library.

This week I have started collecting material and reviewing it in part for my peers (as we are writing the assignment together). Next week we will get together and look at how we can co-construct the assignment- potentially a challenge- and work collaboratively, to ensure we are sharing our workload and also covering the material we need to write a clear and worthwhile review.