Reflection:
Traditional academic articles are used to gather information and data to understand a topic and discuss the information in a specific manner. My English 101 course required us to perform a small individual research project that included real-life data collection, information synthesis, and descriptive analysis of the research in our academic article. The task seemed daunting as the assignment was huge, but after I created many lists to organize the project, it felt much more manageable.
The first step to tackling this assignment was to adopt a research question. I figured it would be best to pick something I was passionate about learning to make the experiment and information gathering easiest. When I chose my topic of American Sign Language education, it was clear what topics I needed to research to obtain appropriate background information. By researching the topic, I was able to identify a gap in research that alluded to what my original survey should cover. I used several published academic articles to describe the current environment around ASL education and synthesized them into their respective categories in my article with appropriate citations. This information was necessary to complete the background understanding of my research topic and prove the need for further investigation. This part of the assignment helped me fulfill Information Literacy Level Four. The collection of information and perspectives from numerous academic sources to provide such rooted detail also allowed me to complete Information Synthesis Levels Two and Three. In the final stages of the assignment, I was required to analyze the data from my experiment to complete a concluding section of my paper. I had to reflect on the information I collected and use my new knowledge to draw conclusions about the significance of my experiment. This process forced me to understand the importance of each step research requires and therefore completed my understanding of Information Synthesis Level Four.
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