Building Your Research Plan
To put the pieces of what you’ve learned with LPOL together, we’re going to ask you to do two things. First, you’ll reflect on what you learned and wrote in Course 1. After you have revisited your Course 1 activities, it will be time to put together your research proposal. Throughout LPOL, you’ve been putting the building blocks of this proposal together, and now it’s time to see how it all comes together. This will be useful to prepare you not only for submitting a research project proposal but also to assess the curriculum and make sure it is providing the best support it can. Several activities throughout the curriculum were created to help you build toward your final deliverables. This lesson will signal back to those activities in your LPOL Workbook, and you will write down the final versions of your answers into Your Final LPOL Project Research Plan workbook. This is also an opportunity to see if anything has changed for you since you last completed an activity, revise your answers if needed, and see how you’ve grown.
Final Researcher Identity Statement
Let’s think back to Course 1 and the researcher identity statement you wrote. Now that you’ve completed the other courses in the curriculum, reflect on and answer the following questions on your own:
- Have you discovered anything new about yourself since you first wrote your statement?
- Have you discovered new areas of interest or let go of something that no longer serves you?
- What foundational literature, frameworks, and methodologies most interest you now?
- Has your central research question or interest changed in any way?
After you’ve answered these prompts, do you need to revise your 1.1.3: Researcher Identity Statement in your LPOL Workbook? Remember the formula Course 1, Lesson 1 provided:
- How has your background or lived experiences shaped the philosophy that will influence who you are as a researcher and how you’d like to pursue your research?
- Are there personal values or beliefs that influence what kind of research you’d like to pursue?
- Are there personal, social, educational, and professional experiences that have cultivated a particular research interest? How, and what are the research interests that are starting to take shape for you?
- What skills and prior knowledge do you have that you think will contribute to your research?
- Are there research directions you hope to pursue and how might you approach those future projects?
Navigate to the Researcher Identity Statement in Your Final LPOL Project Research Plan workbook and write down your final version.
Now, let’s put together the elements of your research proposal! The following deliverables were introduced to you throughout the curriculum. If you filled them out already, review them to see if anything has changed before creating the final draft of your documents in the template provided. Perhaps you’ve met new people to add to your Research Support Ecosystem, or maybe you’ve chosen a different methodology The theoretical framework that informs how a researcher approaches their work and what methods are used to collect data. to use in alignment with your research topic.
The Final Curriculum Deliverables
Activity
Submit your final version of the curriculum deliverables. This will be used to help put your entire research project together and assess the curriculum. These can be found in Your Final LPOL Project Research Plan workbook.
Fill in your Final LPOL Project Research Plan workbook to put all these pieces together. This template will pull from past activities you were asked to complete throughout the curriculum, specifically:
- Researcher Identity Statement (Course 1, Lesson 1)
- Research Agenda An iterative document or statement that provides a roadmap to your short and long term topics and ideas you’d like to research. (Course 1, Lesson 2)
- Research Support Ecosystem (Course 1, Lesson 3)
- Research Question & Proposed Methods (Course 3, Lesson 2)
- Literature Review The process of summarizing, synthesizing and/or critiquing literature around a specific topic/idea. This work can help a researcher understand what has happened before and also how past research intersects and or diverges from other research. A literature review can be a full-length manuscript or a subsection within a larger research article. (Course 4, Lesson 2)
- Data Management The ways a researcher collects, organizes, stores, and accesses data they collect for research. Creating a data management plan allows a researcher to know what data they will be collecting and how they will store and organize it during the research project. & Ethics Plan (Course 3, Lesson 3)
- Proposal Abstract The concise summary of a research article that provides a broad overview of the research being presented. (Course 4, Lesson 1)
- Project Schedule (Course 2, Lesson 2)
Look back at your past drafts of these activities in your LPOL Workbook and determine if they need more work — or, if you’re happy with what you have, copy your past answers into the final deliverables template.
These final deliverables are ultimately for you, the learner, to work from as you pursue your own research project. But if you’d like to provide us with your answers to help us to assess the curriculum, you may upload your Final LPOL Project Research Plan workbook at the bottom of this lesson page. You won’t be graded, and your answers will remain anonymous, confidential, and won’t be shared in any way.
The Research Proposal
You now have the building blocks you need to create a full research proposal! A research proposal can help you clarify and narrow what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how you’ll do it. This can be a very helpful step to identify what you really want your research to accomplish. This proposal may be what you submit to a publication if they ask for it during the query or submission process, include in a grant application to seek funding, or keep just for yourself. Writing a research proposal can provide a means for assessing whether:
- The research question or problem is viable (that is, answers or solutions are possible)
- The research is worth completing in terms of its contribution to the field of study and benefits to stakeholders and your identified audience
- You’ve understood the relevant key literature and identified the gap for your research; and
- You’ve chosen an appropriate methodological approach
When completing your proposal, review your proposed research, argue for its significance, and identify the scope. The resources in your bibliography will be used to show a critical understanding of the scholarly field around your proposed research and demonstrate the gap in the existing literature that your research will address. To justify your proposed research design, identify all tasks that must be done using a realistic timetable.
Now let’s take another look back at the 1.2.3: Goal Brainstorming activity in your LPOL Workbook from Course 1, Lesson 2 to see how these now inform you or how they may have changed. Knowing what you know now after finishing the curriculum, it’s time to make a plan for pursuing your own research project based on these goals. Remember, this plan is only a guide to help you get to where you want to go, not a strict set of rules that dictates how “good” of a researcher you are based on how closely you follow it. Your job responsibilities may change, the time you have to dedicate to your research will wax and wane, and you should treat yourself with kindness and flexibility along the way.
It helps to think about how your short-term goals will set you up to achieve your long-term goals. For example, if your long-term goal is to publish an article, what are the steps you’ll need to take in the short term to prepare you for writing your article? What literature will you need to acquaint yourself with, what additional skills or tools will you need to learn, and who do you know in your Research Support Ecosystem who can help you? How does it all align with your overall professional and personal goals? Most importantly, how are you feeling now that you see it all laid out in front of you? Remember to keep checking back in with yourself and your schedule to make sure you’re dedicating enough time to both your research and to taking care of you.
Next, you’ll have a chance to think a bit more on where you’d like to go from here and how you’d like to get there.
Building Your Research Plan
To put the pieces of what you’ve learned with LPOL together, we’re going to ask you to do two things. First, you’ll reflect on what you learned and wrote in Course 1. After you have revisited your Course 1 activities, it will be time to put together your research proposal. Throughout LPOL, you’ve been putting the building blocks of this proposal together, and now it’s time to see how it all comes together. This will be useful to prepare you not only for submitting a research project proposal but also to assess the curriculum and make sure it is providing the best support it can. Several activities throughout the curriculum were created to help you build toward your final deliverables. This lesson will signal back to those activities in your LPOL Workbook, and you will write down the final versions of your answers into Your Final LPOL Project Research Plan workbook. This is also an opportunity to see if anything has changed for you since you last completed an activity, revise your answers if needed, and see how you’ve grown.
Final Researcher Identity Statement
Let’s think back to Course 1 and the researcher identity statement you wrote. Now that you’ve completed the other courses in the curriculum, reflect on and answer the following questions on your own:
After you’ve answered these prompts, do you need to revise your 1.1.3: Researcher Identity Statement in your LPOL Workbook? Remember the formula Course 1, Lesson 1 provided:
Navigate to the Researcher Identity Statement in Your Final LPOL Project Research Plan workbook and write down your final version.
Now, let’s put together the elements of your research proposal! The following deliverables were introduced to you throughout the curriculum. If you filled them out already, review them to see if anything has changed before creating the final draft of your documents in the template provided. Perhaps you’ve met new people to add to your Research Support Ecosystem, or maybe you’ve chosen a different methodologyMethodology The theoretical framework that informs how a researcher approaches their work and what methods are used to collect data. to use in alignment with your research topic.
The Final Curriculum Deliverables
Activity
Submit your final version of the curriculum deliverables. This will be used to help put your entire research project together and assess the curriculum. These can be found in Your Final LPOL Project Research Plan workbook.
Fill in your Final LPOL Project Research Plan workbook to put all these pieces together. This template will pull from past activities you were asked to complete throughout the curriculum, specifically:
Look back at your past drafts of these activities in your LPOL Workbook and determine if they need more work — or, if you’re happy with what you have, copy your past answers into the final deliverables template.
These final deliverables are ultimately for you, the learner, to work from as you pursue your own research project. But if you’d like to provide us with your answers to help us to assess the curriculum, you may upload your Final LPOL Project Research Plan workbook at the bottom of this lesson page. You won’t be graded, and your answers will remain anonymous, confidential, and won’t be shared in any way.
The Research Proposal
You now have the building blocks you need to create a full research proposal! A research proposal can help you clarify and narrow what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how you’ll do it. This can be a very helpful step to identify what you really want your research to accomplish. This proposal may be what you submit to a publication if they ask for it during the query or submission process, include in a grant application to seek funding, or keep just for yourself. Writing a research proposal can provide a means for assessing whether:
When completing your proposal, review your proposed research, argue for its significance, and identify the scope. The resources in your bibliography will be used to show a critical understanding of the scholarly field around your proposed research and demonstrate the gap in the existing literature that your research will address. To justify your proposed research design, identify all tasks that must be done using a realistic timetable.
Now let’s take another look back at the 1.2.3: Goal Brainstorming activity in your LPOL Workbook from Course 1, Lesson 2 to see how these now inform you or how they may have changed. Knowing what you know now after finishing the curriculum, it’s time to make a plan for pursuing your own research project based on these goals. Remember, this plan is only a guide to help you get to where you want to go, not a strict set of rules that dictates how “good” of a researcher you are based on how closely you follow it. Your job responsibilities may change, the time you have to dedicate to your research will wax and wane, and you should treat yourself with kindness and flexibility along the way.
It helps to think about how your short-term goals will set you up to achieve your long-term goals. For example, if your long-term goal is to publish an article, what are the steps you’ll need to take in the short term to prepare you for writing your article? What literature will you need to acquaint yourself with, what additional skills or tools will you need to learn, and who do you know in your Research Support Ecosystem who can help you? How does it all align with your overall professional and personal goals? Most importantly, how are you feeling now that you see it all laid out in front of you? Remember to keep checking back in with yourself and your schedule to make sure you’re dedicating enough time to both your research and to taking care of you.
Next, you’ll have a chance to think a bit more on where you’d like to go from here and how you’d like to get there.