Flowchart: Turning Your Research Topic into a Research Question | Interrogating Your Topic

Yesterday, I uploaded the first in a series of posts which will feature flowcharts devoted to helping students develop their research skills.    That post worked students through the process of finding a research topic.  This second flowchart helps students begin to craft their research topic into a research question. The purpose of this flowchart is to help students begin to think about their topics from a number of different perspectives.  It asks them to pose a series of questions with the ultimate purpose of bringing them closer to identifying a research question.

At the end of this process, students will have 16 different questions about their research topic, which will help guide their initial forays into the secondary research literature.

The next flowchart in this series will work students through the dialectical process of reading and questioning the secondary literature in order to identify a research question relevant to their discipline.

This is the first version of this flowchart, and I welcome any input.  And, if you plan on using it in your course, I'd love to hear about it.