To Do

The first step of research is to identify a question you hope to answer in your essay. Brainstorm some potential research questions, and select the one that most appeals to you to use for this project.

Then, answer the following questions.

1. What is your search term, based on your research question?
2. When you Google that search term, how many results do you get?  This number will appear underneath the search box.
3. What observations do you note about the results that appear on the first page of Google results?  You should have 10 links that aren’t sponsored ads on the first page.  Do any website names seem familiar to you in this list?  Write a sentence or two that says what you may know about the search results, before you open any of the links.
4. What do you learn from the first few results?  Click on at least 3 of the results on the first page.  Write a short paragraph about each, that describes what the page is, how relevant it is to your search topic, and whether it provides any information that you would consider useful in your personal life.
5. When you use the same search term in Google Scholar, what changes?  Click on at least 3 results in Google Scholar.  Write a short paragraph about each that describes what the page is, how relevant it is to your search topic, and whether it provides any information that you would consider useful in your personal life.
6. Summarize this activity.  In a short paragraph, would you say that this search term gave you the results you were looking for?  If you were to do another search after this one, what would you change?  Why?