Skill Term: Planning a Research Project

Share Your Story

Talk about your own research process and experiences with students.  If you use a reference manager, show your students how you have set it up and how you use it.  Our own processes might seem obvious to us, but they are often surprising for students.

Break Up Deadlines

For big projects, make many smaller deadlines throughout the semester, so that at the end the students are pulling together work.  Short circuit procrastination.  Hold people to the deadlines or else they will be able to leave it all to the last minute anyway.

Reference Management Tools

For projects that will require keeping track of a lot of sources, reference management tools can be very helpful.  We recommend Zotero because it is a well-developed, free, open-source tool that students will continue to have access to even after graduation. Steps Introduce students to one or more of the bibliographic management tools available to […]