The Importance of Focusing the Purpose

Classmate Gloria P. states the importance of focusing the purpose of the research in order to search productively is "...narrowing the topic and formulating a good question..." For me, this comment summed up the entire challenge of getting students to research effectively. If they can't create a good question, they'll likely produce a regurgitated or plagiarized product, leaving them very little synthesis of information and a lot of disinterest.
In the article Assignments Worth the Effort: Question are the Key, Koechlin and Zwaan state that "Teacher-librarians can help the students develop their metacognitive skills by providing them with checklists in the form of guiding questions that they can use throughout the ressearch process." The authors provide some examples of guiding questions such as:

• "What is the purpose of your research?"
• "What do you think you will discover?"
• "What is important if you are to be successful?"

With these questions as a start, I think students can at least begin to make the connection between creating a good question, focusing research and developing a personal understanding of a topic.