WEBVTT

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[Morse code beeps]
[Whoosh]

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Hi. My name is Annika Thomas, and I'm a fellow
with the AeroAstro Communication

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Lab at MIT,
and today we're going to be talking about

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how to organize a research paper.

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By the end of this lesson, you should be
able to understand that organization

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is important for an audience's
understanding of a research paper.

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You'll be able to use

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common organization templates
to craft a cohesive research story,

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and you'll be able to develop
central arguments

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and organizational structure of a paper.

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So we're going to start off
with a brief introductory activity

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where you're going to organize
paper claims.

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So go ahead and open up the activity
called “Organize Paper Claims”

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and take about five minutes to organize

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these lettered claims into the story
for a research paper.

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Write the sequence of letters from A
to J in your chosen

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order, down, and then we can compare it
with the next slide,

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where we have the actual answers
of how this research paper was organized.

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[Alien spaceship beeps]

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So in

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the paper
“Length Scaling in Spacecraft Dynamics”,

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this is the organization of the claims
within the research paper.

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And you might have
some little discrepancies or changes

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in the way
in which you organize these specifically,

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but they should follow
roughly the same format where it goes

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from more general ideas into specifics

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and then back into general ideas again.

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And so we're going to talk a little bit
about this structure of papers, which

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is the way that you should be presenting
material in your research papers.

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So we use what's called the hourglass

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approach, where the hourglass structure

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is a measure of generality
within your paper.

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So you start off with more general things

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like establishing significance,
describing the status quo,

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and identifying the gap
that you're addressing with your paper.

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Then you move into your work of addressing

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the problem where you talk about
what did you do?

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You fill the gap with your research
and then reestablish

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significance in the context of the field.

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Now this hourglass can look
a bit different.

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The shape of
it is largely dependent on your audience.

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If there's a larger bowl,
this is usually focused more towards

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a general audience that doesn't have
as much background information

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on what you're working on.

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If you're working with an audience
that has a similar experience

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and background to you,
you might have a longer stem instead,

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where you are talking about the specifics
of what you did,

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and not spending as much time establishing
kind of the generality of your work.

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So your paper is going to be comprised
of what we call arguments.

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And arguments are a combination
of claims, evidence, and reasoning.

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Your claim is a

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statement of our understanding
about a phenomenon,

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the results of some study or you
as the author, and your view of the field.

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Your evidence is your quantitative

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or qualitative data
that is used to support that claim,

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and your reasoning
is the justification of that claim,

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which shows how the evidence
specifically supports that claim.

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And when you shape these arguments,
we actually work backwards.

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We start by gathering evidence,
including notes,

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results, slides, etc.

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Then we can rearrange that material,
that evidence,

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until we start to see a logical series
of conclusions.

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Next, we identify thematic bins

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that correspond to different claims.

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And finally we tie that evidence together,

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those claims, into a mean claim

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that has reasoning associated with it.

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So remember,

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when you're working backwards
and you're shaping these arguments, that

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the goal of your paper is to prove
that you did something new and useful.

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So just to

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recap, the two main tools that you learned
about during this lesson

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for organizing a research paper include,
first off, crafting your research story

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using the hourglass approach,
of kind of changing the generality

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of what you're talking about
based on your audience.

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Next, we learned how to develop arguments

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using claims, evidence, and reasoning.

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And now you should be able to use
common organization templates

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to craft a cohesive research story
and to develop the central arguments

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in organizational structure
of your research paper.

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