Show 'n' tell

Hey, howdy!

Conversations with a few of you folks over the last couple of days, both on this blog, and over e-mail, have made me think a lot about pulling off a good research project.

For those of you who haven't been reading all of the comments lately, someone responded to my post from yesterday, anonymously encouraging me to light a fire under y'all's behinds and get you going on those research projects. In reply to this, I wrote another comment giving some tips on how to get a good start on these projects, and how to sustain them well as the semester progresses.

And then, while writing back and forth with another member of our class about undergraduate research, I got to thinking: hey, since when am I the sole font of knowledge in this classroom? Many of you have already done (and perhaps are doing) undergraduate research, and I'm sure you have lots of good ideas about how to start off a good research project, how to go about keeping track of your sources, how to record your ideas and later write about them...and so on.

I'm not claiming that my hints won't help, I'm sure they will. But I'm sure that many of you have lots of other hints you could share with your peers in this class, to make the ride a bit smoother.

So, I'm kindly asking all of you who've had some experience in research before: what's helped you out? Do you have any secrets to impart? Ideas you'd like to share, particularly, at this time, regarding how to get started? I'd greatly appreciate if you'd chime in by responding to this post, even if you do so anonymously.

Thanks, all! And I'll see you in class tomorrow.