Evans 1
Laurie Evans
Dr. Sherry Southard
English 7730 ( Project 2a)
October 16, 2007
Mistakes, Oversights and Principles
In retrospect, the search activity exercise was one of the most challenging and thought provoking activities that I have undertaken in an academic setting. While the assignment appeared benign and somewhat intuitive from the outset, the project developed into a perplexing and confounding endeavor which forced me to consider both my previous research experience and my knowledge of communication process. Further, the nature of results from this search required me to think from an instructor’s point of view in order to make sense of inconclusive findings of the literature search process. My reflective pondering related to the search activity indicates several erroneous decisions on my part and ideas for alternate ways to approach future searches related to technical and professional communication. The ultimate take-away from this assignment is an acknowledgement that the learning process is often wrought with paradox and self-discovery which is rarely apparent until activities are considered through critical reflection.
Topic Narrowing
The process of narrowing the theme “international communication” to a single topic was a seemingly simple activity; however, the consequences of selecting a topic related to military cultural education posed challenges related to the fact that the topic is of an emergent nature and accessibility of information is limited because it is necessarily guarded by the United States government (Southard, email). Instead of seeking to limit our topic in a way that was interesting and stimulating to our group, we would have improved our decision-making process if we had focused more attention on the potential for finding secondary, existing literature related to the chosen topic. Even so, I am concerned that undue attention to the accessibility of materials in the early narrowing stage undermines the purpose of research. Often research is necessitated by questions raised by the lack of materials; therefore, intentionally choosing a topic with the potential to generate a plethora of returns seems unethical to me. In my mind this practice is akin to stacking a deck of cards prior to a game of Bridge or posing a question about a topic that is clearly not debatable in my mind.
Finally, realization that the purpose of this assignment was to develop skill in narrowing topics, not to pose interesting and unique research ideas, occurred well into the search process. For the purpose of this assignment, I should have focused squarely on the specifics of the instructions rather than on my need to work with an interesting topic. In hindsight, I focused too much on creating a believable scenario and not enough on how to narrow “international communication” to a topic of manageable size and specificity. The scenario writing task successfully illustrated the importance of framing a research question in practical terms of application even though I was distracted by the creative process of developing a plausible situation. This step seems to be especially important for research in the social sciences where the need for research and scholarship is guided by usability and practicality of acquired knowledge.
Search Process
The actual process of searching for literature related to the topic of cultural education in the military was not overly difficult; however, the lack of substantial scholarly treatments of this topic caused me to question my ability to use the virtual search tools through Joyner Library. One aspect of my job involves participating in grant writing activities in the College of Nursing at East Carolina University. In this capacity, I use several medical database search engines to conduct searches on diseases, scopes of practice and nursing pedagogy. Much to my dismay, the databases associated with social sciences are not as intuitive or descriptive as those used in medical research (Ovid, MedLine and CINHAL).
After numerous attempts to locate scholarly information related to cultural training in the military, I contacted librarians at Joyner Library and Laupus Library to discern if I was using the appropriate tools for my search and if there was an academic search engine with the strength and complexity of Ovid. The answer to this question was that Ovid empowers researchers with significantly greater ability to expand and narrow searches than social science databases and search engine counterparts (EBSCO Host, Proquest Research Library and Web of Science). This discovery forced me to renegotiate my search methods in order to use tools necessary to yield literature returns in the fields of communication and education. The mechanics of my search were admissible and formulaic even though the results were not up to par in terms of quality needed for academic citation.
Results
Searching for secondary literature that described cultural training in the military consistently returned sources associated with popular culture media sources, rather than citations for materials to support academic treatment of the subject and evaluations of the practice. In addition to questioning my search abilities, I began questioning my familiarity with the communicative processes related to this topic because of my reluctance to acknowledge the inappropriateness of this topic for a search of secondary literature. The quantity of poor search results for this topic directly relates to an inordinate number of keywords proposed for this search as each dead end signified the need for additional search terms. Early indication of the lack of topic depth should have queued dialog with the professor about the admissibility of this topic in a secondary literature search rather than the accumulation of additional keywords.
Another concerning aspect of the reflection of these search results is my tendency to discount inferior sources based on authors’ credentials and type of publication without giving due attention to content for the sake of conducting a recursive search. Without prior experience conducting literature searches, I would not have recognized the mediocrity of the search results, and probably, would have completed the activity seamlessly. Nonetheless, in my mind, the consequence of using this type of blind, task-oriented approach is worse than admitting a mistake in the topic narrowing process. Notwithstanding, at the time of the search activity, criteria for evaluating search results had not yet entered the purview of this course and likely did not permeate the consciousness of the majority of my classmates.
Pedagogy
Reflection on this assignment is incomplete without acknowledging the pedagogical significance of this assignment related to my goal of becoming an instructor. One of the most effective strategies in my approach to educational challenges is to put myself in the position of the instructor to engender an understanding of the purpose and goals of readings and assignments. Good instructors design activities to instill certain competencies to guide students in the acquisition of knowledge through self-discovery, trial and error, and other means. This assignment unfolded as a series of deliberate, incremental steps to build the student’s proficiency in the secondary literature search process.
Even though my search was atypical and deviated from the norm with regard to viability and ease of completion, the experience revealed inconsistencies and pragmatic questions that are common in secondary research. My assimilative thought process suggests these results were not only anticipated by the instructor, but may have been desired in a limited way to illustrate the complexities of identification, narrowing and searching for literature. Sometimes the most profound learning takes place when one learns “what not to do” instead of “what to do.”
Finally, this exercise illustrated the importance of empowering students to lead their individual gathering information project. Self-discovery exercises present students with the framework for an activity, but allow students latitude in determining how projects unfold. This method creates student buy-in and accountability and has strong potential to enhance the quality of ensuing work. In this project, the success or failure of the search process was the result of decisions that I made in topic narrowing; therefore, I have increased responsibility for the outcome of the search. The concept that all searches are not viable is best learned first-hand because pre-designed, dead-end projects simply do not have potential to impact students with the same intensity of self-directed failures.
Conclusion
Mistakes, assumptions and oversight aside, the end result of this project is that, while I am frustrated with the ramifications of the decisions employed in this activity, I am comfortable with the reasons why these errors were made because they resulted in scholarly and critical thinking. Additionally, I am satisfied with my decision to follow my conviction about narrowing topics to avoid ethical implications of deliberately choosing a well-documented subject. The obstacles discovered in the search phase of this assignment allowed me to reassess my ability to search for secondary literature and required me to abandon my medically-based comfort zone in order to think in terms of social science disciplines. Research in social sciences is largely based on qualitative conclusions that do not always yield concrete search results. Applicable to future searches, this knowledge prepares me to understand the need to infer relationships and connectivity within scholarly work from various disciplines in order to conduct successful searches. The art of the literature search begins with choosing the right topic, and the successful search results in recursive findings that lead to credible sources.