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TUTORIAL 4: for Semester 2 Week 5 -  notes from the tutorial

1. The tutorial

How to do a Literature Review

In this week's tutorial you have the task of planning how to do a literature review on a topic related to human communication, (with a view of writing a literature review for your 2nd assignment). The example topic will be: Identify the communication phenomena associated with the autistic spectrum and theories that attempt to explain these phenomena.

In this tutorial you should focus on how you would go about finding relevant research literature for this topic, what methods would you use and what resources. You will brainstorm all possible approaches and make a plan of how you might integrate the results of these in a coherent review.

1.    First you need to think about all sources you can use to start a general literature search:

• What sources do you have at hand to do a detailed search?
• What will be your first step?
• In addition to searching on the internet, what other sources could you consult?

Suggestions: 

Look in the Library for: 

1. Textbooks on related topics, look at what they say to get an idea of the related topics
2. Journals that relate to that topic
3. Related Conference Proceedings and workshops
4. PhD and Masters dissertations (thesis)
   

Online look for all of the above, plus look for:        

5. Related organisations and societies
6. Courses people have taught
7. Online Tutorials
8. Google search on particular terms            

In all cases:

1. Look at the references cites and follow these up
2. See who is usually involved in this area and follow up specific researchers and research groups
3. Follow up specific papers and see who cites them

2.     Then think about what methods you can use to derive any relevant information from literature you find:

• Exactly how will you get the information you need from your resources?
• What will be good methods to apply to extract information you need to use for a literature review?

3.     Now focus on a specific topic for your literature review by keeping  above mentioned points in mind:

• Plan how you would use all the resources you found best related to your specific topic.
• Look at the methods you have and choose the ones which will help you to extract the most information from your sources for your specific topic.

Consider:

1. Google search: What terms do you search on
2. What sections of the library would you look at?
3. What textbooks?
4. Which journals?
5. Which conference Proceedings and workshops?
6. Which specific researchers and research groups?
7. Which specific papers?
8. Which organisations and societies?
9. What kind of courses?
10. What sorts of topics for PhD and Masters dissertations?
11. What topics for Online Tutorials and where might they find them?

How do you use a source e.g. a paper?
  - When using a journal paper for research: Look at e.g. abstract/conclusion/references/flick through and look at data/results, do not always need to read the full paper

You will be working together in small groups to come up with a design, and then share this with the rest of the tutorial group. Use examples to demonstrate your designs.

Try and think about this before the tutorial, and bring your ideas along....