Week 2: Literature Review
Orientation
A literature review is a written summary of journal articles, books, and other documents that describes the past and current state of information on the topic of your research study. It also organizes the literature into subtopics and documents the need for a proposed study. In the most rigorous form of research, educators base this review mainly on research reported in journal articles. A good review, however, might also contain other information drawn from conference papers, books, and government documents. This week provides you with essential knowledge of what literature is, different types of literature reviews, and its importance. It also guides you with crucial skills for the process of conducting a literature review.
On Successful Completion of this Week, Students will be Able to:
- Enhance knowledge about what a literature review is and why it is important
- Identify the process/steps of conducting literature review and its related components
- Develop different skills to conduct and evaluate a rigorous literature review
- Identify challenges faced by researchers in conducting literature review
- Identify gaps in literature review and different types of literature review in educational research
Reading Resources
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- Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Chapter 2: Review of the literature. In Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (pp. 62-89). Sage publications.
- Xiao, Y., & Watson, M. (2019). Guidance on conducting a systematic literature review. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 39(1), 93-112.
- Tricco, A. C., Lillie, E., Zarin, W., O’Brien, K., Colquhoun, H., Kastner, M., & Straus, S. E. (2016). A scoping review on the conduct and reporting of scoping reviews. BMC medical research methodology, 16(1), 1-10.
- Chen, D. T. V., Wang, Y. M., & Lee, W. C. (2016). Challenges confronting beginning researchers in conducting literature reviews. Studies in Continuing Education, 38(1), 47-60.
- Yunusa, A. A., & Umar, I. N. (2021). A scoping review of critical predictive factors (CPFs) of satisfaction and perceived learning outcomes in E-learning environments. Education and Information Technologies, 26(1), 1223-1270.
- Zawacki-Richter, O., Kerres, M., Bedenlier, S., Bond, M., & Buntins, K. (2020). Systematic reviews in educational research: Methodology, perspectives and application. Springer Nature.
Supplementary Resources
This podcast discusses the way of using Excel to manage your literature review. It also provides you with a sample matrix from Excel. Listen and look at the sample to make your own matrix.
A short video on how to write a literature review in three simple steps
Seven major mistakes of conducting literature review and tips on how to avoid with examples
