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College 1 Research Guide

Find resources to help you conduct research for your final project.

College 1 Group Research Project

This semester, you'll become an expert on a topic related to American Like Me or another theme from the College 1 course. Working with a group of classmates, you'll use the knowledge you gather to develop a thesis (or main claim) about your topic. Finally, you will present your thesis along with supporting evidence in the form of a visually appealing, informative research artifact (a visual representation of your research). 

PCC Librarians are here to help you with this project!

The College 1 Research Project fosters development of essential skills including choosing and narrowing a research topic, formulating research questions, finding and selecting reliable sources using PCC Library databases, selecting information from sources to support your position, and citing sources using MLA format.

Librarians can help you with the following aspects of the project: 

  • Selecting and refining a research topic.
    • Be sure to choose a topic that you and your group mates are curious about
    • Broad topics may need to be narrowed down 
  • Finding credible information on your topic. Each student in your group will need to find: 
    • Two or more sources (articles from encyclopedias, newspapers, magazines, or scholarly journals) on your topic 
    • library databases are a great place to find reliable sources
  • Citing your sources using MLA format
    • Include in-text citations for each quote, data point, illustrative graphic, or summary / paraphrase from library or outside sources. Anything that is not your group's own, original idea needs to be cited. 
    • Include a Works Cited list. This is a detailed list of all the sources you used for the project. Every in-text citation should have a corresponding citation on the Works Cited list.