Writing 10-41: College Reading & Composition (Fall 2025)

By the end of this session, you will be able to:

• Narrow a research question to a manageable scope
• Create search strategies based on your research question.
• Navigate databases to retrieve useful information resources.
• Identify people and services for asking follow-up questions.

These skills will assist you with your research proposal and annotated bibliography. 

1. Research As a Process - Navigating the Course Guide
2. Troubleshooting your Research Question

• Discussion: It's hard to scope a research question to the right size. Does anyone have an example where it might be too broad? To narrow?
• Explore Step 1: Your Research Question page together.
• Watch Popular & Scholarly Sources video to learn about sources available to help answer a research question

3. Derive keywords from a research question

• Activity 1 - Fill out the first three columns of the Form: Name, Research Question, & Keywords.

4. Learn about searching using keywords and other strategies (Librarian DEMO)

• Citing sources in MLA
• "Get it at UC" for full-text pdfs
• Activity 2 - Finish filling out the form.

5. Selecting databases by Subject

• 20 mins. search time

6. How to get more help & Feedback