Design Research Methodology - Critical Thinking
Glen Owen / 0354952
Design Research Methodology / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Taylor's University
PRE-RECORDED LECTURES
Week 4-5
A. What is a Critical Review?
A critical review is much more than a simple summary; it's an analysis and evaluation of a book, article, or other medium. Writing a good critical review requires that you understand the material, and that you know how to analyze and evaluate that material using appropriate criteria. A critical review of a journal article evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of an article's ideas and contents. It provides description, analysis, and interpretation that allow readers to assess the article's value.
Fig 1.1 Critical review tips
Before we read the article:
- What does the title lead you to expect about the article?
- Study any subheadings to understand how the author organized the content
- Read the abstract for a summary of the author's arguments
- Study the list of references to determine what research contributed to the author's arguments
- If possible, read about the author to learn what authority he or she has to write about the subject
- See if other writers have cited the author's work
Points to consider:
- Who is the intended audience?
- What is the author's purpose? To survey and summarize research on topic? To present an argument that builds on past research? To refute another writer's argument?
- Does the author define important terms?
- Is the information in the article fact or opinion? (Facts can be verified while opinions arise from interpretations of facts) Does the information seem well-researched or is it unsupported?
- What are the author's central arguments or conclusions? Are they clearly stated? Are they supported by evidence and analysis
- If the article reports on an experiment or study, does the author clearly outline methodology and the expected result?
- Is the article lacking information or argumentation that you expected to find?
- Is the article organized logically and easy to follow?
- Does the writer's style suit the intended audience? Is the style stilted or unnecessarily complicated?
- Is the author's language objective or charged with emotion and bias?
- If illustrations or charts are used, are they effective in presenting information?
B. Preparing an Outline
Read over your notes, Choose a statement that expresses the central purpose or write-up of your review. When thinking of a write-up, consider the author's intentions and whether or not you think those intentions were successfully realized. Eliminate all noted that do not relate to your write-up. Organize your remaining points into a separate groups such as points about structure, style, or argument. Devise a logical sequence for presenting these ideas. Remember that all of your ideas must be support your central write-up/literature.
C. Writing the First Draft
The review should begin with a complete citation of the article. For example: Platt, Kevin M.F. "History and Despotism, or: Hayden White vs Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great." Rethinking History 3:3 (1999) : 247-269.
Note: use the same bibliographic citation format as you would for any bibliography.
The first paragraph may contain:
- a statement of your write-up
- the author's purpose in writing the article
- comments on how the article relates to other work on the same subject
- information about the author's reputation or authority in the field
The body of the review should:
- state your arguments in support of your write-up
- follow the logical development of ideas that you mapped out in your outline
- include quotations from the article which illustrate your main ideas
The concluding paragraph may:
- summarize your review
- restate your write-up
D. Revising the First Draft
Ideally, you should leave your first draft for a day before revising. This allows you to gain more objective perspective on your ideas. Check for the following when revising:
- grammar and punctuation errrors
- organization, logical development and solid support of your write-up
- errors in quotations or in references
You may make major revisions in the organization or content of your review during the revision process. Revising can even lead to a radical change in your central write-up
Fig 1.2 Process of critical thinking
Fig 1.3 Critical thinking example
INSTRUCTION
Fig 2.1 Design Research Methodology MIB
Project 2 - Critical Thinking
Fig 3.1 Final Submission Critical Thinking (Week 7, 18/05/2023)
FEEDBACK
Week 6 (11/05/2023)
Change the 1st and 2nd article to another one
Week 7 (18/05/2023)
Each summary make it 1 page each
REFLECTION
In this project, I learnt that reading and summarizing 5 articles take so much time because each article has different content inside. We won't know if the article we critic are relevant to our topic or not. Not only that we have to observe the author research way like if its quantitative or qualitative. Even if the timeframe is 3 weeks I felt like it can kill someone's time just to summarize an article. In my perspective, this may have be useful for our project but for daily basis please don't do this.
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