bedguide10e

Planning Collaborative Research

Research groups, in class or at work, require cooperative effort but can produce deeper and more creative outcomes than one individual could achieve. If your project is collaborative, you will need to make agreements with others and meet your commitments. Your team might consolidate all its work or share the research but produce separate papers or presentations. With your instructor’s approval, divide up the tasks so that all members are responsible for their own portions. Then agree on your due dates and group meetings.

SAMPLE SCHEDULE FOR A GROUP PROJECT

Week One: Meet to get acquainted and to select someone to act as an organizer, e-mailing or texting to make sure things progress as planned. Individually explore options for a project topic.
Week Two: Meet again to select a topic, narrow it, and develop a research question that your instructor approves.
Week Three: Meet to assign tasks and report progress. Individually survey resources, contribute entries and annotations to a collaborative working bibliography, and gather material for the group’s research archive. (Check for campus or library access to citation management tools.)
Weeks Four and Five: Continue to find, read, evaluate, and record notes.
Week Six: Meet to evaluate the sources and information gathered; decide how to address what is missing or weak. Draft a working thesis and outline for presenting what everyone has learned.
Week Seven: Individually draft assigned sections. Swap drafts, read them over, and respond with suggestions.
Week Eight: Work together to consolidate the revised draft and agree on final changes. Appoint one member to prepare a polished copy and one or two others to act as final editors and proofreaders.