taking research to new heights

Engineering Abstracts

Medicine Abstracts

Find a group of 3-4 people who are interested in the same abstract.  Each group will collaborate and present the following criteria on a powerpoint to share with the class:
Title and authors of the abstracted article
Students in group activity
Background:  Why was the research done?  Why is it relevant?  What do we need to understand to comprehend the results?
Results/Findings/Conclusions of the Research: Summarize where the abstracted research ended (Note: for the engineering abstracts, if results are not included, summarize the expected results or plan.)
Your Group Research Plan: take this research and extend it to follow your own ideas

• Create a principal research question that can be answered in parts by the three research sub-problem questions below.  Note, it is often easiest to do this last.
• Create three new research sub-problem questions to extend the research.
• For each sub-problem question, write a declarative and testable hypothesis.
• For each hypothesis, write a brief plan for collecting data to support or not support each hypothesis.

In a small way, this is the process you will use to develop your research project.  First, you read relevant, reputable literature to learn what is known, what has been done, and what you need to know to start a new research project.  Then you think of a broad research question and the more manageable, smaller research questions that can answer it (you can do this in either order.)  Each sub-problem must have a hypothesis and a data plan.  These four parts constitute a research concept map.