Discourse Communities

The Knowledge Cycle

Idea Development/Research Design

• Idea
  1. Discussion (Is this a viable topic that you find interesting, and is it

     Writing a college paper is like riding a unicycle.  Of course it's scary the first few times. Your peer review groups are there to help you achieve balance.

     clarified and made narrow enough to be doable given the knowledge base you have?)
  2. Funding (Can you afford this in terms of the time, energy, and ability you can bring to bear).
• [research carried out]
• Preliminary results/findings are shared within peer group (For you, that's the Discussion Board and Peer Review.)
  • You develop and share your paper/presentation ideas, various drafts, and later the finished product with others.
  • You further develop your ideas in print, on your blog, by discussing them with your professor, colleagues, family and friends.
  • Your Peer Review group reads and comments on your rough drafts.
  • You revise, and revise, and eventually get the piece to a place where you are ready to share it with a formal audience.
• Results/findings are reported formally
  • Reports
    • Publicly funded researchers must report their findings, usually at a conference and/or as an article in a publication.
    • You turn in your paper or give a presentation. Your professor responds with suggestions for improvement.
  • Peer Review (Once the article has come out, other scholars review it, responding in group discussion, at conferences, and in print.)
    • For you, that function becomes the Blackboard peer review cycle.
    • I might suggest that the paper is good enough to be taken forward to the undergraduate research conference.
    • You might decide to follow that research path forward, writing your thesis or dissertation on it, even publish it.
    • Take joy in excellence. In addition, of course, you get a grade. A professional gets promoted. Those outward signs of the approbation of others are necessary because we are not always the best judges of the quality and importance of our work. The worst feeling for a researcher is to publish and never hear anything, even disagreement, from peers.
• Results/findings are generalized
  • Within and across disciplines in talks, papers and books. Professors can be substantively judged by the amount of times their work appears in other scholar's bibliographies.
  • For the interested lay person results/findings are popularized
    • In print and electronic news
    • On TV programs and the web
    • In magazines and books.
• Research Findings are Placed: General vs. Specialized Indexes
  • Library Indexes. How do you find things? Do you go to an index at the library or electronically on their website? Many people use such resources every day. What's your favorite? If you're like me, it depends on what you need. I tend to use Academic Search Complete for general searches, and the MLA Bibliography for more specialized literary searches (if the material qualifies as modern). When I'm working on linquistics, I often find myself on Medline.
  • Google vs. Google Scholar. But how about online. There are a number of good services out there. I tend to search with Google. But, did you know that there's a special search engine for those of us who are working with academic materials? It's called Google Scholar, and there are some very specific steps you need to take if you are to use it effectively. Here are a series of Jing Tutorials designed to aid you in setting things up properly.
    
    • Using Google Scholar
    • Using Google Scholar 2
    • Using Google Scholar 3

  Please remember: When working with books, articles, websites, WHETHER DIRECTLY QUOTING OR PUTTING THE IDEAS IN YOUR OWN WORDS, you must cite your sources in BOTH parenthetical citation AND the Work Cited section. Only directly quote very, very small hunks of a few words (or lines of poetry, etc.). Putting quotation marks around large hunks of text keeps you fairly safe from academic dishonesty charges, but I then would need to give someone else credit for writing the paper, not you. So, the authors of some articles or books get and A and you (who wrote little or nothing) get an F.

  Similarly, do not believe that just changing or moving around a word or two avoids plagiarism. Sorry, no luck and no cigar! Why? You're clearly copying all the OTHER words in the sentence as well as trying to pass that author's work and thinking of as your own. When in doubt about how to cite sources, go to either Writing A Paper For Me or the English Department's site on Academic Integrity.

   

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Dr. Bonnie Duncan
bduncan@millersville.edu
1-717-871-2080
English Department
Millersville University
Millersville, PA 17551

Other Contacts:
Millersville Information Technology Help Desk:
1-717-871-2371, 1-800-509-9605

Blackboard Help Desk:
Help Desk # for B'board
1-866-334-9174