Engineering Literature Review
An engineering literature review is a critical evaluation of existing research and knowledge in a specific engineering field. It involves identifying, analyzing, and synthesizing relevant information to provide a comprehensive understanding of the topic. The review helps to identify gaps in current knowledge and informs future research and development in engineering.
7 Key excerpts on "Engineering Literature Review"
- Bruce B. Frey(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...Jackie Waterfield Jackie Waterfield Waterfield, Jackie Literature Review Literature review 983 987 Literature Review The term literature review can be viewed as both what is read and the process that has been undertaken to produce the work in question. Broadly, it denotes the bringing together and summary or synthesis of previous published work. In the academic literature, the terms review, literature review, descriptive review, systematic review, and narrative review are often used. At times, such terminology denotes specific distinctions between different types of review, but on other occasions some of the terms are used interchangeably. The term literature review covers a range of approaches. This entry first discusses literature reviews in education. It then describes narrative reviews and systematic reviews, before explaining two approaches commonly used in systematic reviews, meta-analysis, and metasynthesis. Literature Reviews in Education Literature reviews are seen in academic writing, both in students’ essays and theses and in professional peer-reviewed journals. The purpose in the former is most commonly either as a very circumscribed piece of written work for an assessment or to create a rationale for an individual’s research. In the latter, it may well be a resource to influence policy, to guide practice, or to identify gaps in knowledge and influence future research. In an educational thesis, students demonstrate through the literature review their knowledge and understanding of the research and theories in their field of study and, by critiquing others’ work, position themselves and the focus of their research. The review therefore gives both a theoretical framework and a methodological rationale for the student’s research. These reviews are of the traditional type...
eBook - ePubResearch Skills for Teachers
From research question to research design
- Beverley Moriarty(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...4 Understanding and completing a literature review hThis chapter will help you to: locate and read evidence-based research articles and other literature relating to your topic, problem, broad research question and draft research question/s develop a conceptual framework, write a critical literature review and reassess your research questions. The ideal time to start working intensively on your literature review is after you decide on a topic and a problem and learn how to draft one or two research questions in your area of interest before making decisions about your research design and your methods of data collection. Your draft research question/s will guide your search for evidence-based research articles on your topic and what you find out from your literature review will help you to refine the focus of your study, your specific research question/s and how you wish to conduct your study. Research design The broad approach or framework employed to investigate or explore a topic or problem and the research question. Research designs can be quantitative (for example, experiments) or qualitative, or use mixed methods (combining quantitative and qualitative). Evidencebased research articles may explicitly identify the design used in the study–for example, a case study or a longitudinal study. Literature review The central purpose of a literature review is to find out what is already known about a specific area of interest and how we know (the design and methods used in previous studies), what still needs to be discovered and how the research builds on previous research or fits into part of a gap left by previous research. The literature review leads into the research question/s guiding the study. The central purpose of a literature review is to find out: what is already known about your specific area of interest and how we know (the design and methods used in previous studies)...
eBook - ePub- Gail Craswell, Megan Poore(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
...As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries. (undated) In short, an ‘effective review creates a firm foundation for advancing knowledge’ (Webster and Watson, 2002: xiii). key points The literature review provides a rationale for your research in terms of what has gone before, a justification of its value and significance. Writing tasks engaged In order to fulfil the purposes of a literature review, you will engage writing tasks of the following types (depending on the nature of your research): Demonstrating through engagement with the literature that you have a thorough critical understanding of the literature. That is, you will be critically appraising strengths and weaknesses of the literature relevant to your own research. Pointing out gaps in the literature, identifying problems remaining to be solved or issues needing to be addressed and so forth. Drawing together the main themes and arguments of a particular body or bodies of literature. Developing arguments in the process of reviewing the literature. Showing how your research fits in with what has already been done so as to justify its value and communicate the nature of your contribution (sometimes occurs in a separate section). Review mode and orientation With a formal literature review, review mode means moving from review of the literature to points being made in building your arguments, like so: (From: review of literature) → (To: points abstracted from the review to develop your discussion) In short, keep your eye firmly on the literature when writing your review. All literature reviews have a strong research orientation in that they engage the relevant research and show how the individual student’s research fits in...
eBook - ePubHow To Do Primary Care Educational Research
A Practical Guide
- Mehmet Akman, Valerie Wass, Felicity Goodyear-Smith, Mehmet Akman, Valerie Wass, Felicity Goodyear-Smith(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
...Chapter 10 Finding out what is already known: how to develop a literature review Sophie Park, Rebecca Rees and Claire Duddy Why Do a Literature Review? Any research project needs to describe the contribution it makes to existing fields of knowledge. A literature review enables you to learn from relevant texts, progress to become expert in your topic of enquiry and produce new knowledge to address identified gaps. Becoming familiar with existing research and practice helps you understand and describe the ways your contribution fits into, complements or contrasts with existing knowledge. A review is fundamental to the learning process, shaping how you conduct your research. When published, literature reviews often appear discrete and linear. In reality, moving between your own thinking and published texts is integral to ongoing research. It is easy to assume that your body of literature already exists: it does not and how you create and design it shapes the focus of your review. How you determine which literature is relevant will be unique to your project. It is important to reflexively plan and explicitly describe your approach, but there is no ‘right’ way to select literature and assess its quality and relevance. Instead, keep asking yourself about the purpose of your review. This helps justify how and why you applied a particular approach and made specific knowledge claims. This chapter focuses on literature reviews for a research project. Many principles are also relevant to conducting a formal systematic review. 1 – 3 Working With Others Whilst researchers often conduct informal literature reviews alone, consulting and collaborating with others can be extremely productive. People with different perspectives (e.g. patients, educators or clinical managers) can help identify key concepts and terminology, and highlight gaps and overlooked aspects of a topic...
eBook - ePubSchool-based Research
A Guide for Education Students
- Elaine Wilson(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
...If you do this thoroughly, the process will help you to generate new ideas and direct your research questions, while also being an integral part of planning your research design. In other words, the actual process of doing a review is an initial important step in carrying out good research, and the outcome of this process, in the form of a written literature review, will provide the evidence that you have been thorough in situating your own work. Therefore, the purposes of undertaking a literature review are threefold. First, the process will inform your search about what is already known about your area of interest so that you can identify the key ideas in the domain and the important researchers in the field. So, that means becoming familiar with the key thinkers in the subject area, along with developing an understanding of the significance of their work. It will be through getting to know who is doing what, and where they are doing this, that you will be able to evaluate the relevance of literature encountered in your search. As you become familiar with specific knowledge areas and vocabulary, it will become apparent where the ideas originated and how they have been developed. Second, during the process of searching existing literature, you will also gain an understanding of the interrelationships between the domain being considered and other subject areas...
eBook - ePubConducting Research in Online and Blended Learning Environments
New Pedagogical Frontiers
- Charles D. Dziuban, Anthony G. Picciano, Charles R. Graham, Patsy D. Moskal(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...A literature review enables the researcher to identify with confidence where the scholarly conversations are going and where the areas for meaningful contribution are. A challenge with research in an emerging area such as online and blended learning is that the conversations are not taking place in one central location; they are distributed across many disciplines and scholarly communities. For example, a recent analysis of the top-cited blended learning literature identified that there are actually a wide range of scholarly communities talking about blended learning, including medicine and nursing, business, engineering, political science, teacher education, biology, statistics, and English (Halverson, Graham, Spring, & Drysdale, 2012). The conversations in these different communities are very likely at different stages of development, but this does not mean that they cannot and should not learn from each other. The distributed nature of the online and blended learning literature presents a challenge to researchers because it requires becoming familiar with research that may be outside their specialized domains. It also heightens the need for comprehensive literature reviews, so that research efforts are well informed and build the knowledge base more coherently, rather than expending energy to reinvent what has already been tried before. This chapter will introduce the reader to various types and purposes of the literature review. It will also introduce some technology tools and strategies for more quickly identifying literature that is important to a particular scholarly inquiry. Finally, a general process for conducting a literature review will be shared, and examples within the blended learning domain will be analyzed at each stage of the process. Types/Purposes of Literature Review Scholars have articulated many reasons why researchers embark on a literature review (Knopf, 2006 ; Baumeister & Leary, 1997 ; Boote & Beile, 2005)...
eBook - ePubSo, You Have to Write a Literature Review
A Guided Workbook for Engineers
- Catherine Berdanier, Joshua Lenart, Ryan K. Boettger(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Wiley-IEEE Press(Publisher)
...As the author you must present your topic in a compelling way, provide relevant (usually not comprehensive) coverage of the research that has been done in an area, address relevant conversations in the field, discuss specific studies that are of special relevance to the project, and establish gaps in the body of the literature. Think of the literature review as an inverted triangle, where the broad top of the triangle comprises overarching motivation and background about what is being done in the disciplines, and then each new paragraph continues to focus more explicitly on the details that the author wishes to turn the reader's attention toward (see Figure 2.1). Figure 2.1 The “shape” of the argument of a literature review, envisioned as an inverted triangle or funnel from motivation to specific research questions. At the end of the literature review, most research articles have an explicit problem or gap statement, followed by the author's specific research questions and (or) research objectives. (Field‐ and advisor‐dependent, these might be statement as actual questions, or it might be written as a statement of purpose.) Regardless of this format, the questions or objectives must align with the established gap. Think of this alignment as a hero narrative wherein you get to play the role of the superhero that exactly fills the gap that you have defined and honed through the literature review. To prepare writers for common barriers in writing good literature reviews, we address a common misconception before reiterating it in the following chapters when we cover best practices for writing literature reviews. Although we call it a “Literature Review” or “Review of the Literature,” our job as writers is not to simply report or summarize on what has been done in the literature...
