Understanding Research Assignments

Before you begin researching and writing, you should spend some time understanding your assignment and preparing your process and workflows. To make the most productive use of your time, you'll need to know what you're trying to accomplish and have a consistent process for gathering information, reading, and note-taking.

关于Research Assignments

Most of your courses will require you to complete a research assignment of one kind or another. In general, the goal of a research assignment is to get you to gather information about a certain topic, analyze that information, and report what you’ve learned as part of a class presentation or research paper/essay.

Types of Research Assignments

您可以找到有关不同类型的研究和写作作业的有用信息在线写作实验室.

关于您的作业要注意的重要事情

与其他任务的关系: Some professors will design their assignments to flow together. You may find that each assignment requires you to do a little bit more work towards writing a big final paper.

主题的选择：您可能会获得可能的研究主题列表，或者可能会要求您选择感兴趣的主题。无论哪种情况，最好与您的教授聊天并在决定之前进行一些初步研究。

来源的数字和类型: Often, professors will ask that you use a minimum number of sources in your paper. Information sources can be almost anything, but you may be required to use only, or mostly, academic/peer-reviewed sources.

Citation/Referencing Style: There are many different styles for referencing your sources. The most commonly used styles are APA, MLA, Chicago, and CSE. Make sure you know which you are expected to use, and take a moment to learn the basics of the style.

Length: You will usually be asked to write a paper of specified length. Be sure to start early and give yourself enough time to do the appropriate amount of research and writing.

库访问

完成作业将需要访问图书馆的集合。这些是您无法在互联网上自由找到的专业资源。您可以通过我们的网站访问图书馆的在线收藏（数据库）。如果您是校园外，则需要使用WebAdvisor用户名和密码进行身份验证。

避免窃

The following definition of plagiarism can be found in the University of WinnipegAcademic Misconduct Policy:

“窃是一种学术不诚实的一种形式，学生在其中出版或未出版的他人或其他人的书（书面，数字或其他），或者是自己的先前工作，全部或部分地是他们自己的原始作品。”

期望每个学生都遵循学术诚信规则的工作，因此避免窃是大学的一项基本技能。需要明确的是，通常会期望您使用他人的想法来支持您的论文中的观点，但是每个想法不是您自己的想法的来源，都需要以合适的格式引用。

There are two ways that plagiarism can happen: intentionally and unintentionally. We’ll talk about each here.

Intentional Plagiarism

With the abundance of information available online, it’s incredibly easy to take credit for something you didn’t write, if that’s your intention. However, simply copying information from a website or blog and pasting it into your paper without crediting the source is considered plagiarism. Add this to the act of getting someone (or paying them) to write your paper for you, which is clearly unethical, and you have an idea of how intentional plagiarism happens.

但是，尽管如此，它也很容易检测到。如果您窃，您的教授只需要进行几个简单的Google搜索即可或使用pla窃检测软件来弄清楚它。另外，您的教授经常制作他们的作业，以了解课程中如何发展为研究人员和作家。如果您没有生产原创作品，即使您没有被抓住，您也不会有效地证明自己的发展，并且成绩可能会受到影响。

无意的窃

Plagiarism can also happen by accident. This usually results from sloppy note-taking or by writing your paper in a rush. Even if you accidentally use another person’s idea without credit, you are still plagiarizing them. Also, most students don’t realize it’s possible to plagiarize yourself, by using your own published ideas without citation.

Basically, any idea that comes from a source (books, articles, websites, videos, previous papers, etc.) needs to be cited.

There can be serious penalties for plagiarism (again, see theAcademic Misconduct Policy). It isn’t worth it to try, and taking the time to properly cite and reference your sources isn’t too difficult once you get in the habit.

避免窃的技巧

Don’t procrastinate.
Create a reference for all your sources, in the format outlined by your prof.
Take detailed notes as your read each source, noting the page numbers for each idea.
Paraphrase major points and indicate if an idea is a direct quote.
在您的论文中，正确引用了您的来源的所有想法。
Create a bibliography or works cited, including references for all your sources.

Organizing Your Readings

如果您不井井有条，撰写研究论文可能会很困难和令人沮丧。这里有一些建议，以使您的阅读，笔记和书目井井有条，以便以后不会遇到麻烦。

Create a separate folder on your computer for each research project you’re working on.
将所有全文文章（PDF）放在此文件夹中。
创建一个完整的参考书目条目的your sources (including books and other non-digital sources) and save the file to this folder.
在阅读资源时，请在书目条目下做笔记。请务必在适当的情况下注意页码。

当需要将这些想法放在论文的初稿中时，很容易看出哪些想法来自哪些来源。这将使写作变得更加容易，同时也可以帮助您了解消息来源如何同意或不同意您的话题，并确保您避免意外地窃取任何来源。

Many students and researchers like to use a citation management tool to help keep their sources organized, and to create citations and references. If you're interested in this, you may want to have a look at有关使用Zotero的此信息, which is one example of a citation manager.