Week 01 Commentary
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Commentary
Read the course description on the syllabus. Without thinking about it too much, sit down with a piece of paper or a computer keyboard and key in/write anything about the description that piques your interest. Don’t worry about pretty or clear writing; just do a data dump. When you’re finished, read what you’ve written and see if additional thoughts start to take shape. You may be surprised at the clarity and substance of what you’ve written.
Or, take this approach. Within the broad context of the course description, what jumps out at you? What interests you? What are you curious about? If you could answer questions in relation to this topic, what might they be? Who or what would benefit if you answered these questions? Consider your previous experiential learning and coursework and how you might build on it. Consider the work and priorities of your military unit. Is there a topic/challenge/question that, if you addressed it, would enhance the work of your unit? Talk with your fellow students, or colleagues, family and friends about your ideas. Questions they ask will help you to shape and sharpen your thinking.
Review the OWL definition of a white paper (you will be writing a research paper), particularly the words: authoritative and informative, argue a specific position or propose a solution to a problem, advocate that a certain position is the best way to go or that a certain solution is best for a particular problem. Maybe these words will jog your thinking into a certain direction.
The Planning, Designing and Doing Action Research PDF by Jean McNiff presents a list of questions to ask to shape an action research project. This list concerns the entire project, not just identifying a topic and questions, but it will be useful for you to read the list because if you answer the questions McNiff asks you will have gone a long way in terms of identifying your topic and planning your research paper.
The Identifying Research Topics and Researchable Questions PDF in week 2 contains information about doing a literature search as well as databases that might be useful.
After doing all of this thinking, hopefully you will have identified a topic that you want to explore and at least roughed out questions that you want to answer.
Your next step is to identify learning outcomes for your research paper. This can be a tricky process. It helps to think about it this way: as a result of my paper, and as a result of answering my research questions, what do I want to know, be able to do, or recommend to others? The Bloom’s Verbs for Writing Outcomes and Rubrics document might be helpful for you to review at this time because it contains different levels of outcomes that relate to increasingly complex learning. The chart is not intended to be “scientific” and it may seem to you that there is overlap across the categories. Regardless, the chart is very useful to help you identify learning outcomes. Use the chart as a guide and remember, there is no “law” that says you must have an outcome for every level. Here is an example of outcomes at different levels:
Remember: Describe current tribal conflicts in Afghanistan.
Understand: Summarize the effect these conflicts have on military units and the civilian population.
Apply: Develop a list of potential actions to be taken to capitalize on opportunities and/or resolve challenges.
Analyze: Analyze opportunities and challenges for the US military within this context.
Evaluate: Assess potential outcomes for recommended actions.
Create: Draft a final list of recommendations for actions to be taken.