Knee Deep in Research

The Fun Continues

Another week is now behind me and things are going along nicely.  I'm still running a little over a week ahead and I'm looking to expand that a bit in the coming days.  Module 6 has been a blast and I should be wrapped up with the second learning activity in the next few days.  Lots of things learned this week so read on to hear more about it.

The Week in Review

The majority of my time this week was spent finishing up the first learning activity for Module 6.  It was a really interesting and fun learning activity that required a little extra-biblical research to complete which gave me the perfect opportunity to put Logos Bible Software to use.

I needed a little help with my endnotes and bibliography which my GTA was more than happy to provide.  She gave me just enough information to figure it out along with some key pointers from Kate Turabian's book as mentioned in Wednesday's post Slowly but Surely.  After that, I had everything I needed to post the assignment.  My GTA was really quick in giving me feedback which I appreciate.  That also sets me up nicely to complete the second learning activity.

I've started doing a little introductory research on the second assignment but I'm not quite ready to buckle down and hammer it out.  I've been doing more preparation and thinking about the assignment rather than just jumping in.  I'm pretty sure I have all the information I need, now I just need to decide what angle I want to pursue to complete this assignment.  Then I'll be able to begin my discussions with my peers.

So instead of immediately working on the second learning activity, I went ahead and dipped into Module 7 to knock off one of the reading assignments.  I guess I inadvertently read too much during my Module 6 reading, so I ended up reading a chapter for the third time.  It was an interesting read so I didn't mind at all.  Now I'm going to shift back to Module 6 and wrap up my research work before going any further.

What Did I Learn?

Research is fun.  Yeah, it was nice to step back and take a little time gaining insight on the historical background of the text we are studying.  Not only is it interesting for me, but it really helps set the context for interpreting the passage as a whole.  Gaining insight into the historical background really helps avoid erroneous conclusions during the interpretation of a text.

Lessons Learned and Best Practices

This is the second week in a row where I developed a major best practice or lesson learned.  This week's insight pertains to how I go about doing my research.

I learned it's best to build your notes and bibliography in parallel with your research.  Logos also makes this very easy with their bibliography tool.  While it's not very difficult to go back to fill in your notes and bibliography at the end, it's terribly time-consuming.  I probably could have saved the better part of two hours if I organized my citations a little better from the start.

For the next learning activity, I'm building my notes and bibliography while I'm doing my research.  This way, I can just drag and drop the references into my work on the fly.  To do this, I'll simply copy the note and bibliography entry into my Xmind file regarding the sources I am citing.  I reckon this will save me a lot of time from having to search all over again for my resources.  

BE101 Statistics

Here's how things look through 8 weeks.  It's interesting to me at this point how the assignment weights are lining up with the time investments.  Even though I'll end up spending a lot of time on Module 3, I'm very comfortable with my time commitment to date.