Step 6

SUPERVISE THE CONFETTI WAY OF WRITING A LITERATURE REVIEW

Show the students how to write a Literature Review using the custom-designed Confetti Way and the Steps 3-7 of the Research Scholar Script Form to determine the exact work plan over the next couple of weeks.

Two weeks of the six-week version of this scenario is a conservative estimate for the time required to complete all the review work (Steps 3-7). 

Once Step 3 is complete and the literature review drafts have been produced, convene the Research Scholars into discipline groups to discuss viable research questions, following the instructions in Step 4 of their Script Form.

Once the discipline groups complete the Step 4 discussions, convene a Multidisciplinary Panel Session, Step 5. In turns, the disciplines summarize their Literature Reviews and present the “emerging questions” identified in Step 4.

Step 5 of the Research Scholar Script Form is the most time-consuming of all the steps. It involves everything from finding relevant sources to writing about the literature in a referential way. The goal of the Multidisciplinary Panel Session is to generate a collection of questions that reflect diverse and wide-ranging disciplines.

  • You are expected to organize, convene and moderate it.
  • The session should take about 60 minutes to complete and include two parts: panel presentations and moderated discussion.
  • For the panel presentations, you invite a panellist from each of the disciplines to briefly present (~5 minutes) the literature and the research question(s) to their fellow scholars.
  • For the moderated discussion, open up the floor to a 30-minute interactive exchange of ideas about the questions formulated by the different discipline groups. To be considered: How well does the collection of questions reflect the many and varied ways of asking questions across the disciplines? Is the range of questions sufficiently diverse? Can similar questions be differentiated? Which ones?

Suggestions

  1. View and discuss the CONFETTI WAY OF WRITING THE LITERATURE REVIEW video during lab or class time. The video shows them how to write a literature review.
  2. Review your assignment instructions with them so they are clear on how their course work ties in with the Research Scholar Script Form.
  3. Give a library search instructional session on the following:
    • Searches for discipline-based research sources
    • Value of overview material for researching a topic (specialized encyclopedias)
    • Online searches
    • Differences between popular and scholarly sources

    You could arrange in advance to have all or part of the instructional session delivered by library staff, if available. This is highly recommended for teachers new to teaching or unfamiliar with the library’s resources.

  4. Show them examples of literature reviews and have them do some simple exercises on summarizing and citing sources.
  5. Manage their Research Scholar Script Formwork as follows:
    • At regular intervals, confer with each individual or discipline to see how far they have advanced with their Research Scholar Script Form. Ask them to have their work accessible at all times.
    • Provide a friendly reminder that even though they are operating in collaborative teams, much of the Research Scholar Script Form is individual work.
    • Troubleshoot problems they may be encountering. They encounter problems with finding and evaluating sources, summarizing, extracting relevant information, synthesizing, formatting and raising questions.
  6. Request to see written drafts of the Literature Review before launching into the Decision Circuit activity.