The Literature Review : A Comprehensive Six Step Guide

This course serves as a logical road map to guide the researchers and students from finding a topic to researching, organizing, arguing, and composing the review. This course consists of four steps:

Step 1. Select a Topic — Recognize and Define the Problem

Step 2. Develop the Tools for Argument — Create a Process for Solving the Problem

Step 3. Search the Literature — Collect and Organize the Information

Step 4. Survey the Literature — Discover the Evidence and Build Findings

Step-5. Critique the Literature — Interpret the findings

Step-6.  Write the Review — Communicate and evaluate the conclusions

Along with details of the main concepts, each section contains activities and checklists to master the contents in a professional manner. Creating a successful literature review is a complex project. This course serves as a logical road map to guide the researcher from finding a topic to researching, organizing, arguing, and composing the review. The many and varied skills needed for literature review are sure to be more difficult to employ if learning is confined to trial and error. Here, gathered into one volume, are many of the strategies, tools, and techniques used by experienced researcher’s intent on building a high-quality literature review.

The course is directly aligned and explained using an applied critical-thinking model that demonstrates the logical progression needed to produce a quality literature review, while taking the mystery out of the process. This course is mainly intended for two groups of researchers: those completing master’s theses and those working on doctoral dissertations. For those doing a class research assignment or completing most master’s degree projects, the course will address the type of literature review that summarizes and evaluates the existing knowledge on a particular topic. Some master’s theses, and all doctoral dissertations, require a more sophisticated literature review. This course is also useful for the initial stage of completing a complex literature review, one that requires the student to argue and define a problem needing original research.