Note: This is the second of a seven-part series exploring possible integration of AI into the research process.
Resource: Students may use this Step 2 Planning Template to help guide their work. Revise as needed for your classroom.
The goal of the second step is for students to better understand their research topic, so they can develop a meaningful and targeted research plan.
Gain a General Understanding of the Topic
Goals
1. See the big picture.
Students will know if they’ve done this when they can give a summary of the topic or issue to a friend or their teacher. Students are only able to write about a topic as well as they can think about it, and the first step to that is understanding the big picture.
2. Identify key words.
Once students understand the broader scope of their topic, they can begin to zoom in a bit. They should pay attention to key words they see, especially those that are repeated and show up multiple times, including names, publication titles, subtopics, controversies, and dates.
Identifying these will help students begin to better understand the various parts of their topic, and it also provides them with direction for their upcoming research.
Part of this task includes identifying synonyms for their topic. How do experts on this subject refer to the topic? For instance, they might discover that global warming is also referred to as climate change, or they may realize that the scientific name for sleepwalking, somnambulism, will give them better researched results because that’s the term the experts are using. If they use the wrong term, they could miss out on the best resources.
3. Outline the topic.
This builds on identifying key words and gives it a more formal structure. The more focused students’ efforts are during this phase, the easier it will be to generate a full outline later in the process.
As they read broadly, students should ask themselves, “What are the key subtopics related to my larger topic? How have others broken down the larger idea into smaller pieces?”
This process includes noticing how a topic might be broken down or outlined. Each of these subtopics could potentially become a target of their research efforts and later a section in their final paper or product.
Sometimes, students may decide that their entire research project should be narrowed down and focus on just one of the more limited subtopics they’ve identified. It’s very common to begin too broadly with a topic, and this step is one place where they can begin to develop more focus.
Strategies
With those goals in mind, let’s look at some strategies that students can use to achieve them.
1. Conduct a general web search.
This can be as simple as students typing their broad topic into a web browser and hitting the Enter key. That’s the easy part. The work begins when they review the results.
Rather than clicking into each item on the list of results, they should browse the titles and look for recurring terms that are likely important. They should jot those terms down and again look for synonyms. Throughout these efforts, they should be considering what other terms people are using to refer to this topic.
As students look deeper, they’ll want to keep an eye out for names of significant people, important places, key dates, and related terms, as these may all become targets for future research down the road.
If they see a resource that seems like it will provide a good, broad overview of the topic, it’s okay to click into it and skim for more key words, but they should resist going too deeply into any specific resource yet. The idea at this point in the process is to gain an understanding of the big picture.
2. Look up the topic in an encyclopedia.
Encyclopedias are meant to provide general overviews of topics, so they are perfect for this step. Nearly any encyclopedia will work. Recent editions of print encyclopedias can work, but these are becoming harder to find and tend to become quickly outdated.
Online versions, on the other hand, are constantly updated, and fortunately, there are many online encyclopedias available for free. Some of the more popular ones include Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com, and World Book Online.
If your school has access to an encyclopedia subscription, that may be even better, as the content will generally be more thoroughly vetted.
One online encyclopedia that might be dismissed is Wikipedia. There was a time when Wikipedia was frowned upon as being inaccurate and unreliable, but those concerns have gradually dissipated over time. A famous Nature study on science entries found an average of three errors per article for Britannica and four for Wikipedia, showing comparable baseline accuracy for major topics.
While these are important details to note, most of these details are minimally important at this stage in the research process. The goal is not to build up detailed notes of factual details, and encyclopedias are rarely used for cited work in the research process. Rather, they’re intended to help users get an understanding of the big picture, which is perfect for this research stage.
When reviewing the encyclopedia entries, students should pay attention to several clues to build up their knowledge:
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- Highlighted words
- Section headings
- Hyperlinked content
- Internal outlines
- “See also” references
- Works cited lists
These elements in an encyclopedia entry can help students understand how a topic may be broken down, while also leading them toward additional resources to review.
3. Ask AI.
It’s generally best to have students begin with the web search and encyclopedia references before turning to AI. This challenges them to process the information for themselves before allowing AI to aid with complex synthesis work.
Once students have spent time wrestling with the topic, AI can be a helpful assistant. Here are a few options for leveraging the power of AI:
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- Reference AI overviews.
As students are doing their web searches, they will almost certainly discover the AI generated overviews at the top of their search results. If they do, they could skim the summary and again pull out key words and subtopics.
Of course, caution students that these summaries may include inaccurate information, or hallucinations. Hopefully, because they’ve already done some research, they’ll recognize incorrect information in the AI summaries because of that familiarity. If they’re not sure whether something is accurate, they should look to confirm that information with another more credible source.
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- Prompt a chatbot.
Students can take what they have learned so far and turn to a chatbot for further processing. Here are a couple of prompts that you might have them use:
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- “I’m trying to gain a general understanding of my research topic, which is [insert topic]. I’m also trying to identify subtopics to pursue for further research. I’ve taken these notes so far: [paste in notes]. Review my notes and provide a list of topics or key terms I may have missed.”
- “I’m researching the topic of [insert topic]. Provide a simple overview of this topic, and then provide an outline of how it may be broken down.”
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You’ll need to decide when and if students should turn to a chatbot for help. However, because students will probably do this on their own outside of class, it can be beneficial to guide the process under your watchful eyes during class time.
Preliminary Research Outline
Once students have gathered general knowledge and key terms about their research topic, they should be ready to move on to this next step in giving their understanding some structure and developing a preliminary research outline. For this part of the process, students will reference the notes they’ve gathered.
Thesis statement or research questions
The outline should begin with a preliminary thesis statement or research question that will specifically guide the students’ research and give them a clear purpose.
The teacher will likely tell students which to complete and explain how each differs from the other. For instance, you might explain that a research question guides an inquiry when students are still investigating, while a preliminary thesis expresses a tentative claim that they can expect to refine as more is learned.
It’s important to emphasize that a preliminary thesis is not a conclusion students must defend regardless of what the evidence reveals. Research may confirm it, complicate it, or cause the student to revise it entirely. It is intended to provide a beginning focus that can evolve as the process goes on and as the students learn more about their topic.
Preliminary outline
Once students have a thesis or research question, they should outline the key aspects of their main topic, identifying subtopics that they plan to further research in order to support their thesis statement or research question.
As they do this, students should review the key terms and subtopics that they’ve jotted down. Rather than using them all in their preliminary outline, they should consider which ones are most important, which ones might be combined for more focus, and which ones should be left out because they’re not closely aligned with their research purpose.
Ideally, simple topics listed in the outline will be expanded into guiding research questions. For example, a student might simply write down the words: causes, effects, and solutions.
Those headings are a good start, but they’re vague. Students can strengthen their preliminary outline by turning them into information-seeking questions. For instance, causes, effects, and solutions might become:
- What factors are contributing to the problem?
- Who is most affected and in what ways?
- What solutions have been attempted?
- What evidence exists about their effectiveness?
- These questions turn the outline into a much stronger research guide.
Ultimately, the preliminary outline will become a checklist of research to be completed. It can also keep students’ efforts focused and help them avoid drifting off on unrelated tangents.
Integrating AI
AI can also play a role at this point in the process. While students may very well be able to develop their thesis or research question and outline on their own from the notes they’ve taken, AI can be a helpful feedback partner.
The key is to use it effectively. For instance, students could upload their notes and ask AI to generate the thesis or research question and outline for them, but this approach would rob them of the cognitive challenge of processing the work. It’s important to allow students to struggle with the information and organization themselves initially.
Once students have engaged in a little productive struggle, AI can be a helpful tool for reviewing their work. This may be especially beneficial when teachers wish to provide personalized feedback for every student but lack the time to get around the room to each one personally. While not a replacement for the teacher, AI can be a classroom aid for specific feedback activities until the teacher has time to personally check in with each student.
Here’s one example of an AI prompt that might be used:
- “I’m conducting a research project about [topic]. Here is my preliminary research question or thesis statement: [insert]. Here is my outline: [insert]. Review the plan without rewriting it for me. Identify the following:
- Sections that do not clearly connect to my research purpose
- Important questions or perspectives I may have overlooked
- Sections that overlap or could be combined
- Sections that are still too broad
- Types of sources that might help with each section
- Ask me questions that will help me revise the plan myself.”
That final instruction preserves student decision-making and positions AI as a coach instead an answer generator.
Here’s another potential prompt:
- “Here is my preliminary research outline: [insert outline]. Help me turn each broad topic into one or more focused guiding research questions. For each topic:
- Suggest questions that require investigation rather than a simple factual answer.
- Keep the questions clearly connected to my overall research topic: [insert topic or main research question].
- Point out any topics that are too broad, overlap with another section, or do not seem relevant.
- Provide two or three possible questions for me to consider, but do not choose or rewrite my outline for me.
- Afterward, ask me one question that will help me decide which guiding questions are most useful.”
The wording in this prompt helps prevent AI from producing shallow questions and keeps the student responsible for making the final choices.
Again, it’s important to note that both the thesis or research question and the outline are preliminary. They can, and likely will, evolve as students continue through the research process. As they learn more, students will have better insights into their topic and where they need to head next. Still, this initial draft will help give them direction as they remain engaged in the research process.
AVID Connections
This resource connects with the following components of the AVID College and Career Readiness Framework:
- Instruction
- Rigorous Academic Preparedness
- Opportunity Knowledge
- Student Agency
- Insist on Rigor
- Break Down Barriers
- Align the Work
Extend Your Learning
- Conducting Preliminary Research (University of New Mexico)
- ChatGPT (OpenAI)
- Claude (Anthropic)
- Gemini (Google)
- Copilot (Microsoft)
- Gemini Notebook (Google)