Page 61 - Computer Basics - Research

Research

By Jolene Evans, Kennedy Banda, Justin Siame, & Kris Bjorgen

Why a Course on 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 various topics 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.

Research is defined as a careful consideration of a study regarding a particular concern or a problem. 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 pursuing 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 the 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 the highest importance to determining your success as a
student at AIU.

Our Goal in teaching you Research…

If you ____________ a man a fish, you feed him for ____ __________________.

If you _____________ him how to fish, you feed him for ____ __________________.
“To ____________________ with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your
_____________________________. It means to know where you're going so that you better understand where
you are now so that the steps you take are always in the _______________________
______________________________.”
– Stephen R. Covey -The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Tool Chest for Success at AIU:
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