Week 22 - Finding, Managing and Using Research Resources

Week 22 - Finding, Managing and Using Research Resources

Carrying on from last week we are now looking at pulling together relevant research as part of our literature review and we have been provided a few tips and ideas to keep us going.

This week included pointers and tips about how to find, record, manage and analyse resources to help prepare and work on our literature review project. We have also been reminded about using a dedicated reference management software such as Mendeley, Zotero, EEWOWW, and Citeulike etc.

I've found Mendeley works quite well for me so have continued to use this one and have installed the Chrome extension too which allows for quickly adding a reference to my library.

We were asked to start by reading an annotated article by Jennifer Duncan-Howell. Extra annotations were added to provide an indication on how to analyse and evaluate literature, and how to extract the key information for the literature review:

• Reading the abstract to get an overview of the article and research question it addresses.
• Finding the key problems the research is trying to address
• Looking at themes and definitions
• Checking out some of the articles that were referenced
• Asking yourself if you agree or not about definitions and why etc.
• Questioning surveys, how they were conducted, who involved, how many etc.
• How does a finding relate to your research theme in a positive or negative manner?
• Questioning the interpretation of the findings.
• Finding relevant links to your research question.

We were also introduced to a Synthesis Matrix to help us organise our literature. I had a look the example that was shared and have come up with my own simple version of it as follows, which basically lists the sources across the top and then I can add details about the key ideas for each source down the columns so that I can complete the sections and then look at the big picture and complete the analysis and synthesis by comparing and contrasting themes, patterns and findings. This is the structure that I came up with and I think it will be quite helpful for me to organise my research and literature review:

Topics: Personalisation, Agency and Engagement
Research Question: What factors of personalised learning might impact learner agency and engagement?

	Source 1	Source 2	Source 3	Source 4
Definition of personalised Learning
Benefits of Personalised Learning
How personalised learning impacts Learner Agency
How Personalised learning impacts Engagement
Challenges of personalised learning
How to implement Personalised Learning