1. Determine how your research will be gathered?

• Where and how you are storing your information eg pen and paper / OneNote etc.

• Take notes.

• Write a summary of the key information.

2. How will your research will analysed / interpreted?

• What new information has been raised

• Has this new information raised more questions?

• How does this information relate to your focus question?

• What are your thoughts on this information?

3. How will your research be communicated?

• Organise your information - Sort information into parts which belong together. This is the beginning of telling the complete story.

1. First, use your own ideas. It should be your paper and your ideas that should be the focus.

2. Use the ideas of others sparingly--only to support or reinforce your own argument.

3. When taking notes, include complete citation information for each item you use.

4. Use quotation marks when directly stating another person's words.

5. A good strategy is to take 30 minutes and write a short draft of your paper without using any notes. It will help you think through what you want to say and not be too dependent on your sources.

Plagiarism can sometimes be the result of poor note taking, or paraphrasing without properly citing the reference. You can avoid plagiarism by:

• citing your references
• referencing correctly
• recording direct quotes and paraphrases correctly when note taking.

Quotes

When you use the exact words, ideas or images of another person, you are quoting the author. If you do not use quotation marks around the original author's direct words and cite the reference, you are plagiarising.

Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is when you take someone else's concepts and put them into your own words without changing the original meaning. Even though you are not using the same words you still need to state where the concepts came from.

Note taking

Poor note taking can lead to plagiarism. You should always take care to:

• record all reference information correctly
• use quotation marks exactly as in the original
• paraphrase correctly
• clearly distinguish your own ideas from the ideas of other authors and researchers.

Remember

If it is not your idea or words, cite it!