poster session (with Paul Campbell) detailing the use of a research question in information retrieval, given at the Kentucky Library Association/Kentucky Association of School Libraries Annual Joint Conference, Louisville, KY, September 2015

1. The question of research: Walking students from
broad topics to a quality inquiry question.
Paul Clayton Campbell, Ohio University Lancaster
Derek Malone, University of North Alabama
“Standing Up & Standing Out: Advocating and Innovating for Kentucky's Libraries" September 17-19, 2015
2015 Paul Clayton Campbell & Derek Malone
1. Broad topic:
Typically what students show up with. Use library
and internet recourses to help find a broad topic.
3. Qualities of Inquiry:
 Unbiased
 Researchable
 No simple answer
 Interesting
 Clear focus
4. Inquiry Question:
Combing a broad topic with a
subtopic students should be
able to craft an inquiry
2. Subtopics:
Tertiary sources help students
explore subtopics.
5. Keywords:
Have students extract main ideas
from question and find alterative
keywords.
Problem:
Librarians often ask students to have their research
question in hand before they show up for library in-
struction but, only some of them do. Secondly, the
students that do show up with something they often
only have a broad research topic and not a research
question.
Solution:
Analysis: Librarians found students had a gap in
knowledge in creating research questions. This gap
had a negative impact on library instruction out-
comes.
Design: Librarians outlined a lesson plan that in-
cluded a class activity to create a research question.
Develop: Librarians developed a class activity to
identify the main ideas of their research question
and build an useful keyword list.
Implement: Librarians were able effectively to im-
plement this into freshman English courses.
Evaluate: Empirical results showed students under-
stood the process of creating quality research ques-
tions and keyword lists.
Created Learning Object: