During my freshman year of college, I took a course titled “Introduction to Honors” (HONR 201) where I learned about the Honors Program and the three competencies that Honors students must fulfill by the time they graduate. For a section of the class, we focused on Research, one of the most misunderstood and intimidating competencies in the academic world. Its stigma has resulted from students’ unfamiliarity with the research process and how it applies to disciplines outside of the science field. Through a series of readings, writing assignments, and classroom discussions, we learned that research requires two main skills: 1) information literacy and 2) information synthesis. We, also, learned that research can be conducted by anyone on anything as long as it serves its purpose: to provide facts and information from an investigation of sources and materials that leads to new conclusions about a certain subject.

 

Taking this class allowed me to fulfill Levels 1 & 2 of the Information Literacy section in the Research competency, because it taught me how to access information effectively, efficiently, and critically. Through the readings of scholarly works such as The Craft of Change(Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G Colob, Joseph Williams, and William T. Fitzegerald) and “21st Century Learning and Information Literacy” (Patricia Senn Breivik), I learned that this process begins by knowing your topic, the purpose of your research, and who your intended audience is. Once these are in place, you need a system that allows you to gather this information and make it into a cohesive thesis, statement, or hypothesis. This class, also, taught me how to access and use information ethically, which involves using valid, credible sources, updated information, and citing these to avoid plagiarism. Although you will be reiterating many ideas from other people when working on your own research project, the main goal is to add your own educated input into the base of knowledge, not just summarizing other people’s thoughts. 

 

Although at the time, the knowledge and understanding I had of research was only theoretical, I put it into practice the following years as I worked on research essays and projects for my undergraduate college classes. I also applied it when working on my creative research project during my senior year of college where I created and performed a Senior Recital as part of the graduation requirements for the Bachelor of Science degree in Music Education.  

 

The following essay was written at the end of the Research section in my Introduction to Honors class. In it, I expand on my discussion about Information Literacy and Information Synthesis.