Concept Mapping: How to Start Your Term Paper Research

>> How do we start our
research for a term paper?

One way is to map out our
ideas and identify some

of our key concepts to develop
our research question.

Let's try an example now,
considering the topic,

how do college students succeed
and specifically get good grades?

Let's brainstorm about
some of the factors that

might affect students success at college.

One of the things we need is money,

and there's several things that
impact on how much money we

have: jobs, loans, bursaries.

Another factor that impacts on our
success at college is our outside life.

Some of the aspects of outside
life are, family and friends.

Another idea to consider is our health.

There are several factors that can
impact on our health: exercise,

sleep, and our nutrition.

Other contributors to succeeding
at college are places for help.

Where can I go for help?

There are several of those.

Libraries, writing or learning centers
are some of the places for help.

Another important consideration
is our study habits.

Time management is one
important consideration here.

Now, we've mapped out
some of the main factors

affecting succeeding at college
and in particular good grades.

Through the process of
creating a concept map,

we can see there are many factors
that affect college students success.

There are many research
topics that we could develop.

Let's pick one example and look at health,

and in particular sleep and how it
impacts on college students success.

Now, we can take the idea we developed in

the concept map and create
a research statement.

Let's write the research statement as,

I want to find information on
whether there is a connection

between sleep and the grades
obtained by college students.

Let's look at it closer.

The major ideas in a sentence are

the building blocks we will
use to research our topic.

Sleep, grades, college students.

Each of these words identifies
a concept we will search.

Let's now take these
concepts and brainstorm

about some synonyms or words
that mean the same thing.

The first concept, sleep
or sleep deprivation.

We want to build that with grades.

We could also try the word success,

truncate it to find the
word success or successes.

Why don't we also try the
phrase academic performance,

which also refers to student success.

We'll build that with an AND,

college students or students.

We can now take the search
statement and bring it to

the database and try
researching for this topic.

This gives you some
ideas on how you can use

concept mapping to start
your term paper research.