These lively and stimulating ideas for use in and out of class reinforce active learning. The activities apply to individual or group projects.

1. As a first step in writing an Introduction, prepare article summaries for 10 relevant articles. Summaries should include the following:

(a) The correct bibliographic citation (you could use RefWorks but see also the section in Chapter 11 on APA formatting).

(b) A sentence describing the topic being investigated.

(c) A brief paragraph summarizing the theory or conceptual reasoning that underlies the research. What population and methods did the authors use? What did the authors demonstrate? What are the important conclusions and implications?

(d) A sentence describing the findings that are important for your research project.

What do the results add to your own approach to your project?

2. As a second step in writing the Introduction, prepare a written integration of these 10 articles.

(a) Try to shape your Introduction like a funnel, starting wide and narrowing as you approach your hypotheses (or where your hypotheses will be by the time you submit your IRB proposal!).

(b) Try to create paragraphs organized around themes; do not simply “stack” the article summaries.

(c) Re-read the articles you are using to get some idea of how other people write literature reviews. Consider their organizational strategies (Foundation articles? Theory? Methodological approaches? Confounding variables? Anomalous findings?)

(d) Consider how other researchers explain the manner in which they are building on the previous literature, that is, taking things further and in new directions.