This page is designed to provide further insight into the research variants of the Honors Contract and Capstone. However, if you are electing to do a studio project or project with material components, I can recommend that you peruse the Library's FabLab and Studios resources at the links below to see how the Libraries can make your project even better.
FabLab Website: https://libraries.uta.edu/services/fablab
Studios Website: https://libraries.uta.edu/services/studios
When drafting a proposal for your Honors contract, you want to be sure that you are setting yourself up for success. Especially if you are new to research, you will want to take extra steps to guarantee the viability of your research topic.
First, familiarize yourself with research fundamentals, especially database navigation and operators (See here: LINK). These skills will be essential to completing the research task at a collegiate level, so mastering the skills now will pay off in the long run.
Then do the following:
1. Turn your research topic into a research question. It helps to ask a complex question ("Why" or "How" can guarantee complexity) to give yourself room to develop the question, or to build in a comparative study. See the following examples for strong research questions:
2. Develop key words to apply to database searching. You should consider important words from your questions, synonyms of those words, and words or phrases that are relevant but unstated in your question. You can also turn to Google or Wikipedia and quickly skim to locate important terminology and synonyms for your terms. The following key word lists correspond to the insulin question.
3. Put these key words into a database such as UTA Summons to evaluate the results. You can use the rubric linked in the document below to help judge the viability of your proposed research question.
If you aren't sure where to begin at all, you can use the document below to help navigate topic selection in a concise, tangible way.
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