Conducting effective ethnographies, case studies, interviews, library database research or Internet research
Introduction
You will be learning how to conduct effective ethnographies, case studies, interviews, library database research or Internet research. This will help in building your research skills for future assignments you may come by during your college career. Research is a key factor when writing a paper. In writing you are held accountable for what you write, and doing to proper research to ensure that what you are stating is true, you must research it first.
To start here are some definitions that will help you in understanding the concepts a little better. Ethnographies are the study and systematic recording of human cultures. In other words, ethnography is keeping track of how a society lives. Cast studies are a detailed analysis of a person or group, especially as a model of medical, psychiatric, psychological, or social phenomena.
How to Instructions
1.Choose a topic you want to research and study
It is most interesting to do something you are interested in. perhaps there is a charity you are involved in, or a sporting team you play on. Maybe you hike often on the weekends or go skiing. A topic you feel strongly either for or against, perhaps the DU smoking ban.
2. Learn how to use the library databases.
When using the Penrose database, it is best to make sure the words you choose to search with are a variety that are not all super general. There are multiple search boxes you can input words or phrases that pertain to your topic. If you were doing research on ‘Going Green’ you may want to type in eco friendly living, sustainable environments, and the cost of greener living. This is to make sure you don’t have over 1000 articles to look through, and to close in on the topic you are researching.
3. Interviewing/ Surveying
When conducting research through library databases and the Internet, it is also good to have input about your topic from different individuals. Depending in the direction you are going in perhaps you want to know how many people at your school are interested in greener living. The best way to go about this is to send out a survey of about 5 or 6 multiple choice questions to about 100 or more people. Then after seeing your results, choose 3 or more people to interview. Make sure you conduct questions beforehand for this will make the interview a more effective factor in your research.
4. Putting it all together
After you have conducted your interviews and done your necessary research, when writing a research paper that includes case studies you must cite all your sources allowing the audience an additional source to go to if they have any questions. Make sure to include your survey results and link or compare your interview answers to the results you found. (It is not needed but highly recommend to quote your interview subjects.)
How I conducted an effective ethnography, case study, interviews and research
When studying the effects of facebook on relationships, I found different statistics on facebook users and the site. I decided to interview people who lived around me about how facebook has helped or hindered their relationships. After my interviews, I continued to research how often facebook is used and how many people have met complete strangers on the site and formed friendships. I formulated my paper around how facebook has effected peoples relationships and found from research and interviews that people saw it as a tool that improved relationships not depersonalized them.
Your Assignment
You are to choose a topic of interest to you and research it. You will need two different sources at least a long with the necessary interviews or surveys conducted to help you better understand others view on what you choose to research. You can present your findings in multiple creative ways, weather through writing, slide show, poster boards or film. However you feel will be most effective in presenting your research.
How to invent an argument by analyzing an artifact
Introduction and Definition
In this lesson you will be learning how to invent an argument by analyzing and artifact. An Artifact is defined an action event, or object perceived as a unified whole. It has widely shared meaning and manifests group identifications.
In order to properly analyze an artifact, you need to break it down into the different parts that make that artifact a whole so as to discover its true nature or inner relationships.
How to Instructions
1. Choose an artifact: choosing an artifact is extremely important. It can be a speech, concert, sporting event, or theatrical performance. I recommend to stay within the DU community being that there are so many different events that take place on campus happening with out us knowing. If you go to your web central there is a calendar of events happening on campus for the next month. For the example artifact we are going to look at Baseball.
2. Observe/Participate
Go to a baseball game or watch one on TV. Even participate in playing in one. Taking action in all these events so you can see what it is like for both the player of the sport and its audience.
3. Analyze/Deconstruct
Take what you learned from participating and watch a baseball game and deconstruct it. Think of all the different elements of the game. The equipment, the uniforms or lack of uniforms, the feeling you got while playing, or watching. How the crowd acted when something happened. Who certain people was cheering for. Try and find the meaning of why this even was occurring, and why it is a reoccurring one.
4. Create an argument
The sport of baseball has been around for centauries. But what brought people to play this sport of nine men standing in various places on a field waiting for someone to hit a ball being thrown at them with a bat, all so they can run catch and throw it, and why has is become so popular since its beginning? These are all questions you need to ask yourself when analyzing your artifact. You want to make sure understand the artifacts meaning as a whole and to the individual spectators.
How I invented an argument by analyzing an artifact
For my artifact I chose the First Friday Denver Art walk on Santa Fe Drive in downtown Denver. I arrived at the art walk at 6pm, when it started because I was not sure about what to expect. Prior to going I learned that the art walk was started my 17 original galleries and theaters on Santa Fe Drive in order to promote their galleries and raise awareness about art education. I went from gallery to gallery, spoke with the people walking around observed the different people and artistic creations that surrounded me.
I took notes on what I saw while I was there and went home and deconstructed the entire experience. I took into consideration the different people I saw, the interesting works of art that were on display and the ambiance of each individual gallery, some very modern and cold, others dimly lit with a warm homey feeling, some even giving off a chilling vibe that you are not sure of the meaning, all with art to match. It was important to understand the beginning of the Art walk, from how and why it started and the fact that it has become such a widely popular event since it’s beginning.
Your Assignment
You will be observing an artifact of your choice that takes place on the DU campus. You will need to keep notes on what you choose to observe and what you did to fully understand the reasoning for the artifact, or what you think is the reasoning for its existence. Following the instructions above You will write a 2-3 page paper explaining your analysis and deconstruction of your artifact along with presenting your argument and reasoning for this to be why your artifact is in existence and why an audience partakes.
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