Page 80 - Computer Basics- Student Textbook

Study Section 11: Basic Research Principles

Contributors: Jolene Evans, Kennedy Banda, Justin Siame, & Dr. Kris Bjorgen

11.1 Connect

Now that you have learned a bit about computers and how to use the internet, we want to shift gears
on how these tools can be used to help you be able to do scholarly research on any topic of interest.
Research entails helping you find information about a topic from various sources, digesting and
organizing the information, then coming to various conclusions based on sound investigation. It also
involves the presentation of your findings to others who may be interested.

In your college courses, your professors will be asking you to present a paper on various topics. They will ask you to
consult with a minimum number of sources to find out what others know about the topic. Then they will ask you to
synthesis the information into a report which you will present to the professor. Writing a research paper is a step
by step process and we want to learn these steps to be able to create an excellent result. That’s where we are
going…

11.2 Objectives

1. The student should be able to explain the importance of research and how it is used in the college
setting.

2. The student should be able to learn to read for comprehension and be able to state the various levels
of reading.

11.3 Why learn how to do research?

You are a student at Ambassador International University. You are in college! Part of what you will
learn in college is to be able to develop your thoughts on a various topic and put them down in
writing for others to understand. But since you don’t know everything there is to know about
everything, you may have to do some “research” to find out what others have said or think about a
topic. Research is a quest for information so that you can expand your knowledge of God’s
creation. Learning to do research is going to help you organize your thoughts. Actually, that is
exactly what a preacher does every week in developing a sermon. He must do research into the depths of God’s
Word to be able to properly feed his people spiritual food.

There are several kinds of research, but the two we are most familiar with are scientific research (experimental)
and informational research (various ideas about a topic). Of course, the goal of research is to find the truth about a
matter. The problem we face as researchers is that we enter the process with a bias. That means we may already
have an opinion about a topic and quite often that opinion prevents us from perusing the whole truth about a
topic.

For the rest of this course we want to learn all the steps in accomplishing a non-biased study into a topic,
discovering information that will help us find truth. Then we need to learn how to organize this information so that
we can present it to others in written format. You will be creating many research papers in the next few years at
college and what we are about to learn is of highest importance to determining your success as a student at AIU.

79