When I teach research I tend to approach it both conceptually and practically, thinking through the latter as a way to anchor the former (since, as we’ve seen, students typically haven’t been introduced to the reasoning–the *philosophy*, if that isn’t too grandiose–behind research as a human endeavor, and instead treat it as yet another series of academic box-ticking exercises). I find that analogies with basic but universally meaningful activities work well. I’ll invoke, for example, conversation: “Imagine that you’ve just arrived at a party. The room is crowded, and you can’t say for sure how long people have been there, or whom you’re likely to meet. Everyone’s already formed their little conversational groups, with their drinks held in front of them and their elbows out, attention directed away from you. Your job is to find a conversation that interests you, gracefully enter it, and make a contribution that will somehow, however slightly, change its direction. When you leave later that evening, the party will continue indefinitely, but that single conversation will have been forever altered–just a bit–by your unique contribution.”

I find that this works well even at the outset of a course in explaining low-stakes assignments such as discussion posts, and that it then lends itself to reuse as we build toward longer, research-paper-style projects. Students all naturally understand what makes for a good conversation. They know that someone who simply parroted what another speaker had said or who expressed blanket disagreement without offering justification wouldn’t be considered a “good” conversational partner; they know that nuance and originality (not to mention some attention to rhetoric) are expected. When we move from concepts to specific assignments I like to break capital-R Research into at least four subsidiary “moments,” or cognitive moves. The first involves identifying a gap (we talk in 1101 about “curiosity” in this respect): where are the holes in our existing knowledge? Where’s the edge of the map? This is where intuition and even a sense of play can be important: I ask students to think about what they’re noticing, and why; to be sensitive to wrinkles and points of friction; to attend to hunches. The second step involves framing a specific, neatly bounded research question, to which I always attach at least three qualifications. A good question must be precise, practicable, and provocative. Our third step is the “methodology” discussion: where are you going next, what are you going to do, and how are you going to do it? Lastly, and once a nice big messy pile of information has been gathered, we ask ourselves about the best form (genre) in which to present our “new” knowledge. I explain that the classic undergraduate research paper is a very good genre (a very good form for its purposes), that its popularity is justified, but that it isn’t by any stretch the *only* way to present new knowledge.

At its best, this addresses the two principal shortcomings I’ve spotted in research-oriented courses: 1) students aren’t conceptualizing research in productive ways (or at all; this is the “why are we doing this and what’s the point” question); and, 2) students are hobbled by passivity (it’s been trained into them) and need to be prodded to take small, concrete steps consistently until they discover their own motivations.