The first steps you need to take while planning a research project should be to clearly establish your research question and plan how you are going to collect the data. We worked to complete the first part of this step this week. We worked as a class to bring up a number of questions and topics that we were interested in researching. Beginning with very specific ideas, we moved through steps to group these under broader "umbrellas." Eventually we decided to make our overarching topic student life. Because there was such a large group consisting of many different people, it was difficult to decide on one single topic. There was some clashing of opinions but in the end we were able to establish our research question which I think will result in some interesting data. I have learnt that the research process involves compromising and cooperation. Teamwork is an important part of the process and I believe this will hold true throughout the rest of the course.
