Before you dive into finding scholarly articles, it’s essential to spend time on preliminary reading. The topics you’re working with — from microbial consortia to machine learning — are advanced and full of specialized language. If you try to jump straight into primary research articles, you’ll likely feel overwhelmed and miss the big picture.
Start instead with easier-to-read sources: Wikipedia, encyclopedia entries, explainers, even chatbots. Your goal isn’t to write your paper yet — it’s to build a firm foundation. Use this stage to:
Define the major concepts in your topic (What exactly is a life cycle assessment? How does catalytic conversion work?).
Collect useful vocabulary and search terms that will help later in databases.
Notice what kinds of questions researchers and practitioners are asking.
Find simple examples that make abstract ideas more concrete.
When we regroup next week, I want you to be able to define your topic and explain it to me in plain language. That’s how we’ll know you’ve built enough background to handle the complexity of scholarly sources — and to really understand and use them.
Perplexity AI – strong for Wikipedia-style overviews with citations (nice for fact-checking).
NotebookLM (Google) – as you noted, the podcast feature is a great “listening while learning” option.
Elicit.org – takes a research paper and helps generate key points, summaries, and related works.
Scholarcy – turns dense PDFs into digestible flashcards and summaries.
ChatGPT + PDF plugins (if available) – students can upload a PDF and ask for section summaries, key takeaways, or even “teach this to me like I’m new to the field.”
Explainpaper.com – purpose-built for pasting in tough academic passages and getting a plainer-language explanation.
2. Use your favorite chatbot to generate a list of useful search terms. We will be jumping head first into databases and Google Scholar next week, and although you will very likely begin with basic search terms taken from your topic list, you will soon want to branch out.
3. Use Google Scholar to find what looks like a highly relevant article related to your topic. Upload that article into Google's Notebook LM and generate an "audio overview" of the article. This is great for those who like to "listen while learning."
Your homework is simple. Come back next week:
1. Ready to explain your topic to your classmates. A real-world, plain-language of what you will be researching and why it matters.
2. With a list of search terms in hand to plug into databases and Google Scholar
3. With an "AI Experience" to share. A favorite source, or maybe even something that didn't work so well. Aim to broaden your horizons: If you are a ChatGPT devotee, branch out to another bot to compare responses. If you've never used AI to summarize an article, try it this week to see how it helped and how it didn't.