Reflective essay
1. Introduction
Research design is a course that helps us to develop understanding of the generic research design process, relative matters needing attention and specific skills of how to progress a well-designed research project. During my undergraduate studying life, I never conducted a research by myself; lecturers gave us all the materials including general backgrounds, specific procedures in detail, and even the potential problems caused by each step and corresponding solutions. Thus, I don’t have any experience of how to design a research, how to search literatures efficiently, what are research ethics and codes, and how to present the outcomes to the audience. Now, after approximately four months’ learning and practicing in Research Design, I have already wrote several kinds of paper such as research report, critical review and essay, and gave one presentation. After having chosen a topic, it is essential to search for sufficient evidence to support your opinion, write a logical paper and then present to the public4, thus those relative skills are quite necessary for me. This course is highly fascinating and rewarding, and I learned a lot. However, there are still many shortages of my learning style and skills. Consequently, this essay gives reflection about the studying experiences focusing on three aspects: search for literature, avoid plagiarism and make presentations.
2. Search for literature
The first step towards a good literature review is an effective and comprehensive literature search. In my opinion, searching for literature means to find the useful information that related to the topic or the problem that required to be solved. An effective literature search will reduce the time spent looking for information, minimize the possibility of missing important information, and help clarify the scope of research topic2. With the development of Internet, now it is very convenient to search all the information online. There are multiple helpful websites, for example Google, Google scholar, the university library and database. Firstly, chose one topic, narrow it down to a specific topic and collect the key words. Secondly, type the key words and search. The most difficult procedure is to choose which literatures are actually what you need. Read through the abstract and content and download what we need. Finally, if I have some specific detail problems, I will use that problem as key words and search again. In general, efficient and sufficient searching for literature can not only help develop the current research project but also guide the future foreground research direction which is especially helpful for us – research student.
3. Avoid plagiarism
3.1 Negative impacts
Avoiding plagiarism is not that valued when I studied in China. Because we do not have so much homework and assignments, what we have are just the final exams. As a result avoiding plagiarism only means do not cheat during the exam to me at that time. However, after having had the class of ‘ Plagiarism’, I noticed that avoiding plagiarism is a serious issue in academic studying. Avoiding plagiarism means being honest to your own assignments and respecting the origin sources that you get information from. It also includes do not copy other students’ work or bring cheating sheet during exams.
There are some potential consequences if someone plagiarizes at university. The consequences can be different based on different cases. All plagiarism is regarded as unacceptable. Depending on how serious the cheating is, most professors or lecturers would reduce grade or give fail to the student’s assignment. In some extreme cases, students can be expelled from school and have their names and plagiarism history recorded in the university1. If some students practice the use of referencing, citations, quotations or acknowledgement inappropriately for formative assessment inappropriately, the assessor may deal with this
