Research Rabbit Holes

The past few weeks have found me neck-deep in academic research as I prepared a literature review on the topic of blended learning. I haven’t been in school for 15+ years, so my return to academia has been a little rocky. When I first read through the literature review requirements and saw that it required a minimum of twelve sources, I panicked. I had no idea where to start, so I began with the recommended sources. I quickly found that they were not as helpful as I was hoping. It was time to delve into the university library and the wilds of the internet.

In just a few hours, I had twelve academic sources I could use in my paper. Studying each resource would inevitably contain references to additional sources that I looked up and wanted to utilize! It felt like falling down a research rabbit hole. I just completed my literature review and ended up not referencing all twelve of my original sources, but found many new ones along the way. So many new ones that I didn’t have time to fully read them all. I have added them to my annotated bibliography to continue researching as I develop my blended learning innovation plan. The learning curve of academia is fairly steep, but I’m feeling more confident about future academic papers after this baptism-by-fire literature review!

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