Selecting and refining the topic

1. Brainstorming
   You can generate ideas and get inspiration from everything around you and by, more specifically, following relevant news channels, blogs and podcasts, for example.
2. Identifying key concepts
   Narrow down the ideas or concepts you want to work with; find the subject that most interests you and promises to be most fruitful, then think about search terms and refine these and/or add terms to limit and focus search results.
3. Formulating search terms
   To research your chosen topic systematically, you need to identify key words that are specific enough to be useful. Subject terms can be natural keywords related to your chosen topic that help you find books, articles, and reliable online information about your subject. If you use words that are too general, you may be overwhelmed with sources so think carefully about what you are looking for at this stage.
   If you are not sure where to begin, you can find subject terms by starting with a list of everyday words that describe your topic. Searching for these words in a thesaurus will give you more precise, scientific terms. You can also compile the subject terms into a concept map to get a more comprehensive understanding of the topic.
4. Choosing your approach
   Decide on how you want to approach the chosen topic in your work. For example, in a written piece you can argue for and against or move from examples to conclusions. For a photographic project you will need to think about what you intend to convey to the viewer about your subject.

Assignment suggestion:

In class choose a broad subject for research (e.g. ‘vitamin D’) and then use the processes described above to identify narrower topics for further study (e.g. ‘how vitamin D was discovered’). Which aspects of this broad topic have been extensively investigated already? What evidence is available that could support your project?

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