Skip to Main Content

Honors College Workshop Series: About the Workshop Series

Workshop Sessions

This workshop series consists of a Brightspace component and a live component on Microsoft Teams.

  • Conducting Primary Market Research to Create a Meaningful Senior Project You Can Be Proud Of
  • Starting your Literature Review
  • Plagiarism, Citations, and Copyright
  • Writing your Literature Review and Abstract (optional)

Please sign-up for the live sessions. There a hyperlinks to the sign-up form on this webpage.

Conducting Primary Market Research to Create a Meaningful Senior Project You Can Be Proud Of

For those who are just starting their Honors Research Project or those that are well into the process, this workshop will help you drive meaningful, real world impact from your research project by:

  • Finding purpose in what you are doing
  • Grounding your project in real world needs
  • Finding a target audience/industry to apply your idea
  • Narrowing down the most important improvements and performance indicators for your project

The key is primary market research, a structured process for talking to people who know about your project or will be impacted by it. In addition to learning how to conduct primary market research, this workshop also seeks to help you build confidence and create an Honors Research Project you will be proud to brag about.

Before the live session, please review the online content in Brightspace. The activities will be completed during the live session on Microsoft Teams. Please sign-up for this session.

Elyse Ball is the Assistant Counsel & Project Manager at the University of Akron Research Foundation (UARF). She has significant experience in commercializing new business ideas and in supporting entrepreneurs and startup companies in the polymer science and biomedical fields.

Starting your Literature Review

Finding literature has an important purpose; it isn't just an assignment. Likely, you will do this over and over through the course of your career. This workshop discusses where to find information and how search for it. It discusses how to evaluate information critically. As an added bonus, critically evaluating what you read will help you produce a better literature review. Taking this workshop will save you time.

Before the live session, please take the pre-session survey, review the online content in Brightspace, do the self-check exercises and take the post-session quiz. During the live session, we will do some searches in Web of Science. Please sign-up for the live session.

Prof. Tammy Stitz is the applied sciences librarian. She has assisted many students find literature particularly in the engineering disciplines.

Plagiarism, Citations, and Copyright

There are serious consequences to plagiarism and copyright including but not limited to failing a class or being sued by a copyright holder. This workshop discusses plagiarism and copyright infringement. Have you ever read something and you weren't sure if the author was making a point or if they were stating the idea of someone else? This workshop discusses techniques to make clear where ideas in your paper originated.

Prior to the live session, please take the pre-session survey, review the Brightspace content, do the self-check exercises, and take the post-session quiz. During the live session, we will do direct quotes and paraphrase citations. We will create a mini reference sheet as well. Please sign-up for the live session.

Prof. Tammy Stitz applied sciences librarian at UA. She has delivered presentations to students about plagiarism and copyright. She has written theses, papers, and articles that require using citations in many different citation styles.

Writing your Literature Review and Abstract

When you are writing your honors thesis, you want to analyze other literature related to your topic. This workshop discusses the difference between summary and synthesis, as well as techniques to make the process easier. Often, students have difficulty writing an abstract. Learn about the 5 questions all abstracts should answer and common mistakes that authors make.

Activities in live session are TBA.

Prof. Tammy Stitz is the Applied Sciences Librarian. She has written literature reviews for articles and her thesis. he gained experience writing abstracts in consultation with professors in the department of electrical engineering. The video presentation was done by Prof. Michelle Byrne who has expertise in teaching technical writing formerly at the University of Akron.