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RULE PROPOSALS - Law Library - The New Jersey State Library - Law Njstatelib Form

them to say yes hey that's kind of what we're going to talk about today and there's no guarantee you know sometimes you have to go back to the drawing board several times that happens that's that's just kind of part of the the process being a grad student and whatnot but there are ways that you can kind of anticipate what's going to happen and anticipate and prepare and plan so that hopefully your committee will say yes I'm in love with your research topic okay so that's kind of how we're going to start today there is a template for the thesis and there's a template for the dissertation there is no template for the proposal there isn't one size fits all for your thesis or your dissertation proposal unfortunately or fortunately that is the case if you can get your hands on proposals from other grad students in your program just to see what they look like what are the expectations of most of the people most of the you know people in your department or your committee member your chair the other thing is if you don't have a model to follow you guys all know the the big journals in your field so I would just go back and look at an article because basically an article from your field is going to be the main skeleton you could work from okay however that those articles are constructed so let's take a Social Sciences or hard sciences article you may have an introduction that states the problem a little background if you're in social sciences maybe a longer background a longer literature review a methodology and you won't have the results or the discussion right so what you could do in your proposals you could have an introduction a little background lit review and then what you're going to say though is instead of saying I did or this research did do this everything's then flipped in the future tense I will I propose the problem I'm going to look at is this this is why that problem is important I will I will I will I will I will and you outline all of that you can go to the library website and you can find theses and dissertations in your program okay have you all have you all done that that is so cool do you know you can find them by your advisor as well if you go to the library website you go to the database library that tomatoe edu databases and put in ProQuest dissertations and theses full-text all right you get this window okay yeah once you click on it you get this window okay you put in a topic you could put in an author maybe what you would put in is maybe somebody you know who graduated before you if you wanted to look at their dissertation or thesis you put in your advisor and then you put in Texas A&M and it brings up all the dissertations or the theses that your advisor chaired okay what if they don't have any they may be a new professor or something like that you can put in a committee member it's it's nice just to get a ballpark figure of what the finished product would look like they want something that looks like it is academic it is a proposal that is not half-baked it's realistic we work with a lot of students who have a great idea for a topic but it's really important for your committee to know that you know the research that has been done before there's a physics professor that I work with quite a bit on campus he said he had a grad student who kept coming to him and saying to him I have this great idea and the professor says that my friend the professor says um not really that was done in like 1986 but he but it hasn't been done my way not really that was done in 98 right so what kind of credibility does that student have with his advisor at that point it go back and figure out what's been done so that they know that you're going to contribute to that body of knowledge and not just rehash something that somebody already did right so so it's kind of like so they're going to ask you your vices are going to ask you to go back and do your homework if you come up with an idea and say okay I have a new way of doing something I know it's going to work they'll probably say that's great that's a great idea now go back and show me how that idea came about okay where did that idea come from that happens then in doing that literature review or that study okay literature reviews I find trip students up more than anything else the methodology seems pretty easy even the results if you're doing a quantitative study you know go okay I'm going to survey this many students or I'm going to do this you know I'm going to do this many experiments I'm going to find out what this happens I'm going to you know run this statistical test I'm going to present these results pretty straightforward right but that introduction back or how much is enough you know that usually trips students up a little bit so figure that out look at sources that lead to other sources one of the things that I like to do is when I'm first exploring a topic I don't exactly know who the big scholars are in the field if it's a new topic to me does that make sense you just don't know so what I'll do is I'll look at a lot of literature but you can't put all of that literature in a literature review that oh my gosh you have to pick and choose because there's so many articles out there have you have you been kind of overwhelmed when you when you go to even Google Scholar you go to the Tambu databases they say you put in a topic and it says you know 12 million hits you go it's overwhelming one of the ways you can sift that down is saying okay who are the big players I'm really only going to refer to the big players in that field when I do that background okay who did this who did this who did this who led to the where I'm going to take off with my research and what I do is I go back to Google Scholar and I put like I'll be reading sources reading sources and I'm like I don't even know if I should include this I kind of cross-reference I go and put it into Google Scholar and it says cited by and there's a number that gives you a number of all the other journal articles that have reference that journal article this article has been cited by 700 other peer-reviewed articles hey you better take a look at it now it may be cited because it's that bad because scholars are just talking to each other right you know this may be the worst article ever written by this theorist or whatever and everybody's bashing this poor person but for good or for bad you're going to probably bring that up in your literature review okay what I work with grad students a lot of times their scope is I would like to I would like to have world peace solve world hunger find clean energy and be better looking that's what they're going to do in their dissertation oh my gosh you know what is attainable you know sometimes what you want to do is a life's work and not a thesis or a dissertation so think about scope is this something that you can do so one of the things you want to think about is can I get the data so if you're writing the proposal think before your professor asks you what kind of access do I have on the data now y'all in the hard sciences you probably work in a lab you probably already know what your topic is in fact a lot of a lot if you all even kind of write the proposal after you've done all the research you don't tell GSF anyway where they're you know so so the proposal process is very very not that big a deal for y'all okay I'm going to say though I think it's important to do the literature review up front even if you don't have to because you have a much better idea of how your research your research and your lab fits into the broader context that's just me even if your professor doesn't make you do it I think it's a good idea to do it can I get the data in the time frame allotted for my dissertation so maybe you will graduate we all want to graduate would you like to graduate sooner or later okay so think about that can I get that data in the time frame that I have for my research am i addressing one research problem or multiple to depart that's that world hunger thing and clean energy okay and can i articulate my research problem in a sentence or two this is really important because in your head everything makes sense in my head everything makes sense it's only when I start talking about it that I realize that I have some problems with my logic or my thinking okay because everything makes perfectly boy I tell you what I woke up in the morning I have an idea and I am brilliant you know and then what's your idea and I start talking about it I talk in circles and circles and circles and people start getting more and more confused okay that's something to think about as a matter of fact we're going to do an activity you the person next to you riding up the elevator friendly sort usually we don't talk on elevators but it happens to be a friendly sort turns to you and says oh you're a graduate student what's your research topic what are you working on what's your dissertation about and I want you to tell that person in a sin no more than two if you're really struggling three sentences were you guys talking to each other okay I would like for you to tell me what her research is about so when you can say that savanah when you say it in a couple of sentences you go to your chair and you go yep I'm going to blah blah blah blah blah and I'm going to do it this way blah blah and they say okay see you later okay write it up and see you later part of the process is thinking that through just because you're looking at you know minors under the ocean and all of that and the tools they use and that kind of stuff that doesn't mean that that came easily to you just because you can say it now and I want to make this point for those of you who are still in your heads about everything that's a natural part of the process if you're easy it wouldn't be grad school it you have ideas that are new ideas that are forming and forming and forming that's part of the process keep digging keep reading it will happen you will get there and you will be able to explain your research very very clearly but make sure that you just go through the whole process don't bypass it okay now let's talk about methodology your committee is going to want to know why you chose to look at the problem in the way you chose to look at the problem that's important because there are lots of ways to look at a problem there are lots of ways to look at a problem there's not one way to look at a problem okay so is it important then for you to say when you're reading these journal articles in your literature review you're not just reading them for content I'm you are reading for content you're looking at the results and so forth you're also looking at the methodology they use to get to that result because it will inform your decision-making a lot in the process now a lot of a lot of you only use quantitative methodologies what information is method capture what information presented is in this way is important to my study why is the information I use an article on hay bale feeders quite a bit when I work with animal science students it's very simple article in terms of like the study that they use they said ok forage loss the problem stated is forage loss is one of the most important like losses a farmer can have in terms of inputs outputs economically so how do they reduce loss for cattle forage in hay bale feeders so what I'm talking about is those round things you always see they put the big round bales in that and the cows eat it and that way it doesn't go to waste ok so what they were looking at is how much waste does the design of the feeder make a difference do aggressive cows get to it does the design allow for aggressive cows versus non aggressive cows right and what they did is there were studies that were done before but they would tweak them they tweak the methodology they said what this person did what this these guys did is great they really looked at forage loss and that was really good but nobody's looked at the design of the bale feeder in terms of the aggressive non aggressive cows getting enough forage so they also tested the cows to see how much forage they were getting in that see what I'm saying so they took a kind of a like ok this lots of people have looked at this forest loss but they tweaked it and made it like with a few different methods changed it and made it new ok so what you're looking at in your methodology is what is everybody else done to look at the problem and why isn't the problem solved yet qualitative methodologies basically is a discovery process you're kind of going along discovering it so you're guided by research questions the set of hypotheses ok how do people perceive their experiences in X okay I know that sounds a little fuzzy to those of you in engineering that's okay that's what that's what we do right how do people perceive what's the perception and what kind of theory am I looking at it through social capitalism or my own social capital or am I looking at it through feminism and we're looking at it through you know critical race Theory there are all kinds of ways to overlay that okay the thing is when you pick those you just need to know why you picked them because your committee is going to ask you that okay so how do you organize all this information in a way that your committee will understand there I'm giving you a couple of different templates here that you can go by and it kind of depends on what your research questions are and how you want to do this but one way if you have no guidance from your advisor and you have no clue this is a shot give it a shot one do a little introduction to review of the literature you don't need to necessarily go crazy if you haven't gotten a lot of advice from your advisor I wouldn't do a 40-page literature review do enough to where you think you can talk about it give it to your advisor let him or her kind of guide you say you know what I like the way you started on this but you need a whole lot of information on this this is not your proposal defense this is just the initial conversation right okay statement of the problem purpose of the study what the heck are you doing this for because they may ask you that too why what why why why okay and you don't want them to tell you oh yeah that was done in 1986 that was done in 1998 you want them to go yeah I buy that I totally married that proposal okay what like what is a research question what questions do you have what questions you're going to ask to get at that information and how best what kind of methodology am I going to use to answer those questions and then what what would it mean okay now you can't do the significance yet because you don't have the data it's your proposal but in your head in your head what might this do okay what could this do is it important okay all right that's a thought here's another template just do em read scientists know this one lab reports you know em read introduction you know including a little background review literature methods you don't have the results and you don't have the discussion okay but you have them maybe a hypothesis or something like that so you you want it you want to understand the problem why that problem is important to solve what's been done before to try to solve the problem why that problem hasn't been solved yet and what you're going to do to solve it so what are these scholars all about you think about your committee and you think about how you're going to talk to your committee on paper with your proposal you want them to say yes you want to them say yes I love your proposal I'm in love with your poll so I will marry your proposal okay how do you get them to take you seriously you have to show them that you can do that work in your proposal because that's going to lead to that conversation where they call you that or if it's in your master's degree it's a little kind of tighter it's a little smaller but your masters may lead to your PhD do you know I'm saying okay so what they want to see is that you have a solid knowledge of your topic and then when they send you out you can talk to anybody about your about the research you've done you when you go to a party maybe don't know everybody there you go into a party and you get there late okay and there are people talking in the living room you'll remember what that was like right there people talking later I'm not talking about an undergrad party either talking in the living room talking in the kitchen talking in their little groups of people talking right so if you go in late and you approach a group of people what do you do first what's the first thing that you introduce yourself hi hi hi hi hi but if there's a conversation already going what do you do yeah you do listening is the literature review you need to find out what the big dogs in your field are saying about that topic so what if you just come in and you're completely socially awkward I'm not I'm not looking at anybody in particular here but you come in and there's a conversation going on and you just interrupt the conversation and say well my ideas blah blah you say something completely dumb and inappropriate what happens and they look at you like you're really awkward okay that's what happens when you don't do your literature review and you just decide that that's your idea and you spout it out for your committee is that a good analogy so what you do is you go hit the books and you read everything there is to read about that topic and you figure out different approaches that people have taken to solve that problem and then once you've finished listening then you enter the conversation that's the time so if your committee says but what about so-and-so yeah I thought about so-and-so when I read that but the way that soso approach this problem doesn't factor in this whew now you're having a conversation with your chair aren't you that's the back and forth there okay all right so when you write that background which seems to trip people up in the proposal more than anything else when you write it you're just listening to what happens you're listening to the events you're finding out who the big players are because you know there's somebody that you know they can say so than crazy and everybody laughs oh that's great that's great you know that's a big dog in the field okay you know that's a big dog everybody's listening whoever he's listening to that's how you use that google scholar as well but then you find out what hasn't been done in your field aha you're going to fill that gap in the research you know everybody's looked at this problem they haven't solved it because they haven't looked at it this way if you know that and can articulate it that proposal almost writes itself I'm kind of teasing it doesn't but you know everybody has an outside member on their committee is that correct okay I write my audience is the outside member my audience in my head when I'm writing I'm not writing to my chair who is an expert in my particular topic I write to the outside member because if the outside member on your committee can understand your proposal then everybody in your committee can understand the proposal and that means explaining a lot of things that you want a shortcut everybody knows that using these acronyms and these things and blah blah if you're outside committee member doesn't understand it explain it so explain everything Theory's methyl methodologies key terms that your committee members you'll be surprised they may not be experts on the theory that you're using so explain it this two things one it informs committee members who aren't familiar with your research about what you're doing but there's even something more subversive it also tells your committee that you know what you're talking about as well this is I'm going to get in the nuts and bolts if you guys don't mind how to write it because there are a lot of people can have stuck in abstraction about how to do your proposal but I want to talk about some of the things that trip people up and help you with that if I can so really what you're doing in that background is you're saying what do other people say okay what do experts in the field say about X well a number of studies have suggested that what are commonplace opinions on X it is accepted practice too and that may be assumptive that is accepted practice too you have to be careful about that but what does everybody buy what does everybody believe what does every what is the standard practice what do people apply or assume what are both sides of the argument and those are the things that you can find in the literature and you want to indicate back to your committee okay what are people talking about what are t people talking about then you position yourself in that argument well this is what someone so it says and I agree with that but here okay even in life sciences and so forth you're going to put up the debate because you're going to find that gap in the research well so and so this study showed or this study demonstrated that laying hands at three days have X Salmonella but what wasn't done in that was taking the sample this way or whatever see what I'm saying so the next thing you do after you show what other people say is you put yourself or you place yourself in the context of all of the existing literature out there where do I fit in okay where does my you know what came before me where do I fit in what's lacking and what's out there how does my research fill the gap and why is it important because you want to answer the the big question what's the big question so what your committee is going to be nicer than that more polite but what they want to know is so what so what's the big deal if you do this research or not who cares so what you answer that question that's getting you closer how do they say it you can do summary this person said this this person agreed with this person but disagreed with this person this study showed this study showed this this study is similar in this way okay paraphrasing paraphrasing is really good when you're translating technical jargon into more laypersons terms it's really good for that or defining things paraphrase is not a great writing strategy it's not so you guys who love those PDFs and you'll highlight them all the time and you carry them around with you and then you start writing your paper from the PDFs usually that lends itself to kind of like chunky writing chunky study you know like oh you know like it's not in your voice maybe changed a few words or whatever but it's paraphrase paraphrase is elegant when you're actually just presenting a fact in science or translating it not translating it but making some kind of very complex idea simple okay most people don't use quotations unless you're in the humanities some social sciences do and actually in quotations in the humanities you're using the quotes as evidentiary support okay maybe history - all right so this is for prepare phrasing you repeat something in new words you don't just right-click and pick another word it's ready - a varied audience when you were really useful when you present specific results and then tech information okay direct quotation it's really used sparsely in most of your areas except for English okay or history or some of this but if you do use it make sure that you introduce a quote put the quote in and then explain the quote what I see a lot of times when people quote is they introduce the quote put the quote say look I'm really too lazy to explain this quote to you so I'm just going to move on to my next topic okay you got to come back and explain that quote and move on it's your burden you're a burden to explain the quote to the reader not anybody else's okay how you say something matters as much as what you say right if you want your adviser to say yes to your proposal how should you write what do you think they're looking for easily explain clear straightforward don't hide don't be settled one of the things I do go to my journal how do my journals how do how do academics right in my journal copy that style do they use passive voice oh they use active voice do they do this do they do that some of you guys will use active voice in the introduction and background and passive voice in the methods or vice-versa I can't answer that for you it's not a one-size-fits-all at all get organized you're about to amass a huge number of PDF files get organized how many of you guys use refworks or endnote if you don't get it it's great if you don't use one or the other refworks tends to be a little easier to learn how to use go to the library website library.weber.edu endnote a lot of people in the sciences use EndNote you can get that download that from the University as well either way ok whatever works for you is great but organize yourself Zotero I use the taro sometimes when I'm searching searching searching and I find something and I'll download the citation in Zotero it works in Firefox as a Firefox plugin it's not quite as hefty as refworks but it's real quick and dirty ok so what you don't want to do is waste time because if you have to how many of you guys have had to go back you you read an article then you had to go find it again and gosh where was that article you guys don't have time for that don't you want to graduate get organized just put everything so in a location where you're going to find it attach it you can go ahead then and if you want to use one of these tools to write your paper and insert the citations as you go you can do that I just used it for my reference pages I just kept it because I like to do the citations myself I just kept it and I said APA fifth edition' oh and it turned it into the APA it's magic I don't know how it works is fantastic and just stay organized know what style you're writing in and then remember Texas A&M University Writing Center even revelry comes to us for writing assistance even revelry so you should be able to also come see us at the Writing Center any time ok go have fun take care good luck thank you thank you so much