Assignment – Research Story
What is a Research Story?
Research stories share an inquiry process you have conducted; in story form, it discusses how you went about researching a topic, and ultimately, what you learned by conducting the inquiry. The research story should be highly understandable to anyone reading about your experience, regardless if they have read your Research Essay.
What is meant by a research “story?”
In this assignment, you can see yourself as a scholar who embarked on a journey to learn, and ultimately, to prove something about your chosen topic. You certainly faced many challenges, with perhaps the most important one being convincing your audience that your claim is worth considering. Like any personal narrative, you can share this journey in first person, as you are the protagonist—the main hero. Telling the story of your research process and then reflecting on it should not only provide closure to your research experience, but also to enlighten any reader who wants to learn about your encounter with a research project.
Assignment – Research Story
In what format do I share my Research Story?
Your Research Story will be divided into three sections—each with a noted header: An introduction, the research process, and a discussion. Each section entails the following:
- The Introduction: Your introduction should begin with a “hook” to engage the reader in your initial research question and the topic you explored. The introduction will also establish the importance and relevance of the conducted research.
- The Research Process: This is where you take the audience on a narrative journey sharing with them “the story” of how your research began—all the twists, turns, ups, downs—and how it ended. Be descriptive, exploratory, and detailed.
- The Discussion: This section asks you to draw a conclusion about the research journey. The discussion allows you to share with your audience what you learned (or didn’t learn) from conducting the research. You might also discuss why the audience should care about something you have written—what you find relevant about the topic and the inquiry you conducted.
Assignment – Research Story
What should the tone of my Research Story be?
Unlike other academic essays, the Research Story’s tone can look, sound and feel like many things. Most importantly, tone can have an important effect on your audience’s experience with and interpretation of your voice and story. Consider the following types of tone:
- Inspiring
- Humorous
- Passionate
- Emotional
- Boastful
- Technical
- Conversational
- Academic
Who is my audience?
A research story is written for a general audience—not a community of experts on your chosen research topic. Thus, you may need to explain things a little more than you would to a group of individuals well-versed on your topic. First and foremost, do not assume that your audience has read your Research Essay. You’ll want to be extremely explicit as you introduce, illustrate, and discuss your research process.
Assignment Prompt: Research Story
For this assignment, you are going to compose a narrative of your research experience. You will draw a conclusion from your experience and communicate to your audience why what you said was important. That is, what is the importance of the research journey for you or for others? Focus on a take away from your research journey and focus on the events that led you to draw this conclusion.
Expectations
This assignment allows you to reflect upon and narrate the experience and the value of the research process. It is open form, and as such, the expectations for how to approach the topic itself is largely dependent on your own personal experience. The thesis, or conclusion, you have made about the research process can be featured as a sentence in the introduction or it can be delayed until the last paragraph where you discuss the larger implications of your experience.
Assignment – Research Story
Requirements
Length: a minimum of 750 words
Document Formatting: MLA formatting: Heading (name, assignment name, course name, date), original title, header (page numbers), line-spacing (double-spaced), 1”margins, and 12-point font size, Times New Roman or sans-serif font. Underlined thesis statement.
Include a subheading for each section of this story: (1) Introduction (2) Research Process (3) Journey
Genre/Style: Reflection, exploratory, and narrative. This is a genre of writing that is hybrid and borrows from several genres listed above. Tone can be informal or formal with a focus on being reflective, introspective, and thoughtful. There should be an introduction to the background of what led you to the project, a body that maps your experiences, and a discussion that suggests the importance of the journey to you and others. You may use “I” or a first-person pronoun.
Sources: No sources are required; however, if part of your narration reflects upon how one piece of research changed your initial opinion, that source should be mentioned in text and cited properly at the end of the assignment. MLA formatting is required if any source is introduced.
