Assignment Prompt: Research Story
Overview
For this assignment, you are going to compose a narrative of your research experience. You will draw a conclusion from your experience and communicate to your audience why what you said was important. That is, what is the importance of the research journey for you or for others? Focus on a take away from your research journey and focus on the events that led you to draw this conclusion.
Expectations
This assignment allows you to reflect upon and narrate the experience and the value of the research process. It is open form, and as such, the expectations for how to approach the topic itself is largely dependent on your own personal experience. The thesis, or conclusion, you have made about the research process can be featured as a sentence in the introduction or it can be delayed until the last paragraph where you discuss the larger implications of your experience.
Requirements
Length: a minimum of 750 words
Document Formatting: MLA formatting: Heading (name, assignment name, course name, date), original title, header (page numbers), line-spacing (double-spaced), 1”margins, and 12-point font size, Times New Roman or sans-serif font. Underlined thesis statement.
Include a subheading for each section of this story: (1) Introduction (2) Research Process (3) Journey
Genre/Style: Reflection, exploratory, and narrative. This is a genre of writing that is hybrid and borrows from several genres listed above. Tone can be informal or formal with a focus on being reflective, introspective, and thoughtful. There should be an introduction to the background of what led you to the project, a body that maps your experiences, and a discussion that suggests the importance of the journey to you and others. You may use “I” or a first-person pronoun.
Sources: No sources are required; however, if part of your narration reflects upon how one piece of research changed your initial opinion, that source should be mentioned in text and cited properly at the end of the assignment. MLA formatting is required if any source is introduced.
Your paper should have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
You may find it easy to start with giving some background on why you chose your research question, moving to the experience you had, and ending with a discussion of the importance of your experience for yourself and others. Consider following the template below:
Your Research Story will be divided into three sections—each with a noted heading.
- The Introduction(one or two paragraphs):
This is where you introduce your reader to the context of your inquiry. Begin with a “hook” to invest your readers in your story. In this section, you will discuss what led you to the topic, any experience or background you feel your readers need to understand your journey, which research question guided your inquiry, and possibly a conclusion you have drawn from the research process. That conclusion (thesis) can be explicitly stated in the introduction or delayed until the final discussion section.
- The Research Process (the body of the essay consisting of multiple paragraphs, one paragraph per episode or event):
This is where you take the audience on a narrative journey sharing with them “the story” of your research process. You may choose to follow how you tried to answer your research question, or how your initial opinion was challenged after coming into contact with a source, or how you struggled to navigate digital information. The focus is up to you However, there should be a focus. We don’t need to know everything. Choose something you feel is important and select the experiences that led to that illumination. Consider narrating the twists and turns of your journey and aligning the narrative events with the conclusion you have drawn from the research process. Be descriptive, exploratory, and detailed.
- The Discussion (one to two paragraphs):
This section asks you to process and analyze the experience you had while researching. The discussion is the place to make the conclusion you have drawn about your research journey crystal clear. If you didn’t mention that statement in the introduction, it must be mentioned here. The discussion allows you to share with your audience what you learned (or didn’t learn) from conducting the research or what was important about having a particular experience while researching. You could also discuss the relevance of your paper to yourself or to an audience.
