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Post 5: Research Design

 Hi everyone! The process of designing a sound research study was interesting because I wasn't able to conduct any pilot tests of my research due to the nature of this particular assignment. I felt that I was able to anticipate some things, but the process still seemed slightly different than it would be if I were actually conducting research. I did feel more as though I was addressing the audience and potential researchers that might actually conduct the study someday, so it felt extremely important to leave clear instructions, which is good practice anyway. In general, it was a very interesting experience. I think that writing about a research study also helped me learn about the technical side of being a professional and technical writing major. The specifics of the study I designed were very different from the analysis that I normally write about.
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Post 4: Revision

 Hey everyone! I feel pretty confident about where I need to change my paper and in what ways. In my initial writing of it, I had used some vague terms that I thought I had clarified directly afterward but that I can see now were not especially well-formulated. This should be a simple enough fix, especially given that all instances of such were pointed out in the feedback I got from Dr. Bacabac. I also want to go through and make sure my synthesis was clear enough, though frankly I'm not very concerned about that. I also have adjusted my research gap slightly so I plan to rewrite the conclusion a little bit. I have already started these revisions and they've been going well so far. The whole process has been pretty great and made me really happy with my choice for the subject of my paper.
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Post 3: Research Gap

 The literature review I wrote focused on the uses of citations. This expanded out into how they can be misused and how they can impact the career of an academic or a field of study. A gap that I found was in the study of how improper use of citations can affect the engagement an article receives. There was some discussion of how self-citation leads to increased engagement, but it wasn't a large focus, it was more of a side consequence of the research done. Engagement with an article is pretty important, so I think it merits further analysis. Through my literature review, I've already established the misuse of citations, so the criteria for that is ready, and after that I would just need to tally up rate of engagement.
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Post 2: Sources

 I still feel as though I'm floundering a bit, but I think I've started to solidify my topic. I'm considering writing about how improper citation use affects engagement with an article. Improper citation use in this case means any mistakes with the formatting, but also excessive use of self-citing. I am planning to track engagement with an article by looking at the number of times it is cited in other articles (aside from the author themselves). I want to see if there is any significant correlation. Some sources I've found about citations thus far are as follows: Bugeja, Michael, et al. “Online Citations in History Journals: Current Practice and Views from Journal Editors.” American Journalism , vol. 25, no. 4, Oct. 2008, pp. 83–100. EBSCOhost , https://doi.org/10.1080/08821127.2008.10678137. De Maeyer, Juliette. “Citation Needed.” Journalism Practice , vol. 8, no. 5, Jan. 2014, pp. 532–41. EBSCOhost , research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=61cb5a24-ef4e-3ff8-a09a-1b...
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Post 1: Ideas

 Hi everyone! I don't feel as though I have any particularly solid ideas yet to use for research about technical communication. I'm interested in punctuation, so if I can narrow that down into something more specific it would probably be the most motivating topic for me. I think that studying specific punctuation marks and their frequency of use for stylization versus for clarity in grammatical structure would be fun. Though, it also seems as though it would require very broad categories of texts in terms of data points. I also had a thought about citation styles and how their use emphasizes and reinforces different priorities within their fields of use. Honestly I sort of feel like I'm way off base with both of my ideas so I'm hoping that next class will be particularly illuminating for me.
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