Teaching Students to Follow an Idea

The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. I teach first-year academic writing courses in the University of Georgia English Department. Lately, I have been using JSTOR to help my students see research differently through an activity I call “Biography of an Idea.” Students begin with one scholarly article in JSTOR, usually from their discipline, and choose an idea, question, concept, argument, or even a citation that interests them.

They then follow that idea backward and forward through scholarship: tracing where it came from, how other scholars have changed or challenged it, and what happens to it as it moves from one source to another. The goal is not simply to find more sources, but to experience research as an act of following knowledge. In this way, their paper becomes an intellectual conversation.

I developed this activity because students often perceive research writing as a series of requirements: finding scholarly sources, writing an annotated bibliography, citing sources, and producing a literature review. These requirements are useful, but they can also make scholarship seem like a collection of finished objects. Articles appear in databases, then students download them, extract information, and cite them.

I wanted students to see something different: scholarship as a conversation that changes over time. For “Biography of an Idea,” I ask students to select a scholarly article that connects to a question they are already exploring. The article does not have to provide the answer to their research question.

In fact, it is often more productive if it gives them something to wonder about. I then ask them to choose one idea from the article. It might be: In academic writing, we often tell students that they need to “join the conversation.” I use that particular metaphor frequently, but I realized that students did not always understand what a scholarly conversation actually looks like.

This is especially true for students from educational contexts where academic writing was not part of their training. Many of them come to my class and learn about it for the first time. The activity is especially useful for students who are new to academic writing.