INF1240 Research Blog

It's strange that this is my last post for this class. The blog turned out to be a handy way to connect with you all and develop my research ideas. Interestingly, of the research articles I read for my research proposal, a few studies noted that when students were required to make mandatory postings for class, the quality of their postings improved over time. It looks like that was the case for many of us.    I thought this week's lecture on funding and disseminating research was a great way to tie things off. One of the practical concerns with research is inevitably funding. And the promise of successful knowledge dissemination is intrinsically tied to funding. This week's lectures reminded me of an article by the BBC (Gallagher, 2020) explaining how the Oxford vaccine was able to develop Covid-19 vaccines so quickly – the researchers were able to overcome funding issues that typically hold up research. So... Funding is critical!   I admit funding was one of the ...

 Wow, how is this the final week of blog posts everyone? Well, while I get over my surprise, I thought I would use this post to reflect on the course overall and what I learned during these 12 (or is it 13) weeks.  When I first entered this course, I had the goal to learn more about qualitative research methods and overall, broaden my scope of research beyond quantitive, molecular studies. I felt that through our classes on research design, I was able to achieve this goal by gaining more insights into qualitative, mixed methods studies as well as case studies. Additionally, one of the most revealing things I learned in class was this week when reading Knight's description of the different types of writers. I really enjoy doing personality tests, so not only was it fun to realize that I am an architect, but it was also an excellent opportunity for me to reflect on my overall approach to writing and research.  Overall this course allowed me to broaden my knowledge of resear...

 Hi Everyone, I enjoyed reading the section in Knight in this week's readings describing the different writing styles was interesting. Knight says that people use each type of writing, but I think that I fall mostly into the watercolourist category. In my writing I prefer to think of general ideas and then dive into researching and writing. I typically do not make detailed outlines. Because I do not usually make detailed outlines, I find that it is useful to talk to someone about my ideas out loud, even if they do not know a lot about the topic. I find that this helps organize my thoughts and the structure of the paper. I also like to write good paragraphs that show certain points but not necessarily in a specific order that I rearrange after the word limit for a paper is reached. I have found that as assignments have become longer throughout school, this strategy helps get words onto the page even if they are not flowing coherent thoughts when they are written. What type of writer...

 This week I spent the majority of my time working on the research proposal, which now after it's submission, I've taken the opportunity to reflect on the entire process.  Initially, when I review the assignment outline, I was a bit shocked by the 4000-5000 word limit. As someone who comes from a background in science, where TAs would cross out entire pages when marking due to them being 'overly wordy', I am much more accustom to aiming to write the least amount possible, while still getting my point across. However, as I wrote the assignment, I actually found the higher word limit quite liberating, because I could go into extensive detail about all aspects of the research methods and design. This allowed me to walk away from this assignment with a very thorough understanding of my research design and with the confidence that it could translate into an actual study. 

I finally finished writing up the final assignment and am in the final stages of editing it. A minimum 4000-word limit was quite a challenge as I have never written that much for a paper. My undergraduate years mostly consisted of writing pages of math for economics problem sets, so this was a new challenge! There were a few things I noted while I was writing. First, I had read many papers this term, but I did not reference all the articles I read because some of them were irrelevant to my proposal. That being said, I would not have been able to write up the proposal without reading around the topic. Second, my writing has improved over this term. I had been out of school for quite a long time living in a non-English speaking country for a few years, so writing, nonetheless writing in English, has taken some time getting used to. Third, if possible, if I do end up writing a thesis, I would like to take advantage of the writing support resources at the University of Toronto. I could n...

 Hi everyone,  In preparation for the upcoming research proposal, I've been closely analyzing my current methods and reflecting on possible improvements. One improvement was provided by a TA, who suggest that I conduct my research in the form of a longitudinal study, with a study period beginning during the pandemic and ending after the pandemic and social distances measures have ceased. I think this is an incredibly good suggestion, as this type of study would reduce recall bias, as participants would no longer need to remember what kind of social interactions were occurring pre-pandemic.  As always, any additional thoughts, comments or questions are welcome!  Kaitlin