ABSTRACT
This chapter offers instructors a lesson plan to help guide students through the process of creating actionable research questions for the topics of their study. The lesson begins with a discussion of an article about effective teaching, asking students to separate larger topics or discussion questions from the more specific questions that underlie a research study. The chapter then takes students through a visual exercise designed to demonstrate the relationship between the research question (the leaves on a tree), the research topic (the tree trunk), and the various problems within the larger topic (tree branches). This visual representation differs from more traditional explanations by including space for multiple research questions, grouped by problem within the larger topic. Students then use this visual representation to further narrow their own topics and problems into actionable research questions. The lesson also includes a checklist of considerations to help refine their questions, with these questions submitted to the instructor for feedback and revisions.
