Introduction to Geographic Research
GEOG 200B, Winter 09, 4 credits
Instructor: Dr. Martin Raubal, raubal@geog.ucsb.edu
Office (hours): Wednesday 3-4:30pm, EH 5713
Phone: 893-4839
Class meets: Tuesday 5-8pm, EH 5824
Course description:
The goal of this course is to teach methods how to do research and communicate research results. When you start writing a thesis, paper, or report it is often difficult to organize your thoughts and bring them to paper. This course gives you the possibility to exercise important aspects when doing research, such as doing a literature search, writing and referencing, and presenting. It further gives an overview of the types of research in the GEO-domain, the research life cycle, and how to get your research funded. This is a learning-by-doing seminar, therefore students have to do different tasks regarding their own research topics, such as writing an abstract, reviewing, and giving a presentation. The results will then be discussed in class.
Topics:
- Types of research and research life cycle
- Logic of science
- Literature search
- How to write (structure) a thesis / paper
- Thesis / paper types
- Structure of a thesis / article
- Writing styles
- Writing an abstract / introduction / review
- Presenting
- Getting funded
Tasks:
- Finding journals relevant to your topic
- Literature search
- Analyze structure of abstracts (from journals)
- Write an abstract (150 words of your thesis)
- Discuss abstracts
- Write a review
- Make one to two presentations (with group discussion afterwards)
Required reading: Literature for the course is supplied online by the instructor (course website: http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~raubal/Courses/geog200b/index.htm). Weekly readings are listed below. Please come to class prepared to discuss the readings, which are listed for that day.
Grades: Grades will be determined by your assignments (60%) and your general class participation (40%). Class participation is mandatory.
Weekly schedule and readings
Week 1, 6 January 2009: Introduction (lecture slides)
- Course objectives
- Research & scientific work
- What is your field and work?
- Geographic traditions
- Graduate student handbook
- CSISS Classics: http://www.csiss.org/classics/
Week 2, 13 January 2009: Research process (lecture slides)
- CSISS Classics - discussion
- Types of research
- Research process phases
- How NOT to get a thesis!
- Examples of different types of papers (read until next week and analyze the steps done):
Week 3, 20 January 2009: Literature search, titles & abstracts (lecture slides)
- Discuss different types of papers
- Literature search and why it is important
- Task 1: write your own abstract
- Task 2: read 5 abstracts from journals / conference proceedings and analyze their structure on sentence-by-sentence basis
- Task 3: find relevant journals for your area of research
Week 4, 27 January 2009: Analyzing abstracts, thesis structure (lecture slides)
- Discussion and analysis of your abstracts; journal search
- One-pager / thesis proposal
- What’s in a thesis?
- What does your advisor evaluate?
- Tasks of a referee
- Task 1: Write a one-pager
- Task 2: Read Kuhn (1970) & Popper (2002)
- Useful links:
Week 5, 3 February 2009: Reviewing, Logic of Science (lecture slides)
- Discuss one-pagers
- Reviewing
- Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
- Task: Review 2 one-pagers of colleagues
- J. Agnew, The Impact Factor, AAG Newsletter, January 2009
Week 6, 10 February 2009: Presenting (lecture slides)
Week 7, 17 February 2009: Presenting
Week 8, 24 February 2009: Presenting, Logic of Science
- 3 min. presentations: discussion & improvements
- Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery
- Task: send links for funding opportunities
Week 9, 3 March 2009: Writing (lecture slides)
- Writing process
- Writing style
- Citation styles
- Writing an introduction
- Task: analyze introductions paragraph-by-paragraph
- Writing a CV
- Positive & negative interpretations
Week 10, 10 March 2009: Funding and Wrap-up
Further references:
- W. Strunk and E. White (1979) The Elements of Style. MacMillan, New York.
- Chalmers (1982) What is this thing called Science? University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia.
- T. Kuhn (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
- K. Popper (2002) The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Routledge, London, U.K.
- G. Martin (2005) All Possible Worlds - A History of Geographical Ideas. 4th edition. Oxford University Press.
- D. Montello and P. Sutton (2006) An Introduction to Scientific Research Methods in Geography. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.
- P. Gould and F. Pitts, Eds. (2002) Geographical Voices - Fourteen Autobiographical Essays. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York.
Links: