Receiving the Assignment

Naomi received the assignment description for the Topic Proposal paper in class on Monday. It was the first part of a four-part research paper assignment.

For the first part, she had to choose a topic and develop a research question, then write up a topic proposal to hand in to her professor.

Where was she supposed to come up with a topic for five weeks worth of research? She knew that in order to be successful in the project overall she had to choose a topic she found interesting, since she’d be working with it for a while. But what was she interested in? Certainly nothing research-y. 

She decided to ask a friend who had taken Comp II the previous year. Her friend said that she had done an “Interest Inventory,” and it was surprisingly helpful.

The Interest Inventory

Naomi started by writing down some categories. She created a table with four categories.

Interest inventory categories

Then she made lists under each category. Not thinking hard about it, just jotting down whatever came to mind. She is trying to get ideas that she can build on later in order to create “inventory” of what interests her for this paper.

Next, Naomi looked at each of her entries and considered what it might be like to write something about that topic.

Here’s how some of her thinking went. Click on the group to see Naomi’s reflections by hovering your cursor over each category. Then click to read more of her notes. Again, keep in mind at this point in her process, she has created ideas that she may or may not use in her paper.

Based on her considerations, Naomi crossed out some topics and put a checkmark next to others that she found most interesting.

Mind Map

Naomi had always found that spatial organization of ideas worked better for her than linear. She liked to see how different ideas related to each other. So to brainstorm ideas, she decided to create a mindmap. She used a free online service called miro.com and entered the topics that seemed most promising in her initial interest inventory. Then for each topic, she began brainstorming questions and subtopics.

Using web-based software to create a mind map. (In this case, miro.com)

When she had filled in all of her topics and brainstormed some subtopics. Naomi discovered an interesting cluster of topics around the questions of parenting, nutrition, and food systems:

Maybe this would be a good place to focus her efforts!

Developing a Research Question

Naomi learned in class that the “research question” is the most important part of the topic proposal assignment. Ultimately, the thesis statement of her completed research project would basically be an answer to her research question. She knew it was important to develop a concise research question to help her from going on tangents in the later stages of her project. Having built a mind map and a topic planning outline, Naomi already had a lot of material to work with. To develop the research question itself, she had to boil everything down to a single question that would capture everything she wanted to research and write about.

Since Naomi had four fairly broad topics, she could probably come up with several research questions. Before deciding on just one, she came up with a list of “regular” questions based on her main topics and tried to convert each one of them to a research question.

Writing the Topic Proposal

With just a few days to go before the Topic Proposal assignment was due, Naomi had to consolidate all of her ideas into a 2-3 page proposal for her research project. Confident about her research question, Naomi decided to take another look at the assignment sheet for the Topic Proposal.

Click here to see Naomi’s Topic Proposal.