Today’s lecture was by Dr. Dana A. Williams and she is the Professor and Chair of English at Howard University. Her lecture was based on the topics of Research and Methodology. She also explained the purpose of Howard University’s freshman seminar class.
The goal of the freshman seminar class is to pursue a lifetime of independent discovery including the appreciation and the importance of research. She discussed how the freshman seminar course and project is a perfect example of how a research project should be pursued. She did so by discussing the basic components of research, which is first to state the problem and challenge. Then we must consider the reasonableness of our research and also the current state of the research. Next we are to consider the methodology and framework of the research by answering many basic questions such as how will you structure or display the data? Finally we must develop the thesis and the conclusion.
Many of these steps are displayed in the freshman seminar class. The issue is that many African Americans believe the history of Africa begins with enslavement due to miseducation from textbooks and loss of cultural connection. The goal at the end of this project is to inform students of the great African heritage, royalty, and culture that did indeed exist before slavery. The framework of the project is designed so the students receive six different research lectures and then blog a reflection after each one. We then as a class, take a trip to the African Burial Ground in New York City. Finally we explore the concept of community and responsibility by meeting with our groups and completing our group project. Overall, this lecture discussed the main points of the doing research and used the freshman seminar course to exemplify the research process. I feel like this lecture was a good overview of what our group projects will be like and I definitely feel more prepared to correctly achieve this assignment with my peers.
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