charles harris 02653030

 charles harris

Last Tuesday the guest speaker was  Dr. Dana Williams. The main ideal of her lecture was to inform us of the many different ways of researching. The reason we were doing this is to prepare us for our upcoming research  project.  Her topic was called research and methodology inscription as a liberating practice. She gave us the basis of researching anything finding the objectives she split these into two different groups the primary objectives and the related objectives. When you do this you are ready to research because you know what your looking for an can apply it to whatever specific field. Next we are suppose to state the problem and talk about the current state of your topic or status quo. This is to gain the readers or audiences attention and tell the how that certain field is today. Next steps are methodology and framework. Have your research structured in and way that it can be followed with ease but is very organized at the same way. Im glad I was able to hear this lecture it got me informed on how to research it really showed me that I have a lot of work to do if I want to ace this research project with my group. Are ideals fit perfectly with my groups research topic. She showed me that research is more than finding quotes from the internet or other sources but a way to organize ideals and sources to create something that anyone can understand because you used to proper steps to make it that way.

Demetrius Gibson

This weeks’ speaker for freshman seminar was Dr. Dana Williams. She opened her power point with Research and Methodology: Inscription as a Liberating Practice. Dr. Williams expressed that one of the goals for freshman seminar was to pursue a lifetime of independent discovery including the appreciation of the importance of research. She mentioned two objectives she should learn from the seminar, primary and related. The primary objective is to identify the principle components of research and to relate these components to the group project. The related objective is to show the relationship of the previous lectures to the group project and to review the previous weeks’ lectures to reaffirm this relationship. Lastly the purpose is to advance knowledge, solve a problem and inquire. Research is a key component in college and in the world around us. We use research to answer the questions we have that can only be answered by physically figuring out why it occurs. In this freshman seminar lecture I began to grasps the issues I have had with research. Towards the end of Dr. Williams lecture she presented an academic excellence and independent discovery cycle of awareness, memory, and vision. Awareness was defined as memory or knowledge that has been institutionalized, memory was defined as historical memory, and vision was defined as imagined or unimagined possibilities.

Arick D. Scott's Reflection

     During last week’s lecture, Dr. Dana Williams took the time to restate the purpose of the class and discuss the research project’s guidelines. Dr. Williams described the course as being a simple class in which we would all have the opportunity of hearing a lecture from a different individual every week. The only source of grades for this class is attendance, weekly blogs about the lectures, and the final research project presentation. At first, I wasn’t really sure of the research project’s requirements. Actually, I wasn’t really sure what the research project would focus on or what would be the topic of research. Dr. Williams started to explain the project by breaking the research process into steps that would make it easier for every group member to understand. The first step was the statement of the problem/challenge. In this step, the group says exactly what the purpose or focus of their research is. The second step is the current state of research. This step requires the groups to conduct a full lit review of their topic. This way, the groups will create a more direct research approach and so that the research wouldn’t be as broad. The third step is methodology, the study’s design. The fourth step is framework, which is the project’s structure. The fifth step is development of the thesis. This step represents the body/the essay of the research. Finally, the last step is the conclusion, where new insights or discoveries are stated. Group presentations begin November 1, 2010.