Getting started

Once you are confident that you understand your assignment question and what is required via the marking rubric, it’s time to start developing your ideas. These ideas can form the beginning of an assignment plan, which will help keep you on track and make completing your assignment more efficient and achievable as well as save you time when you start the writing process.

An assignment plan creates a roadmap that you can return to, and refine, throughout the process to ensure you are on track. It can be a broad overview or specific and detailed, whichever method works best for you.

In brief, you can develop your ideas through:

  • Brainstorming helps you develop your thinking in a visual way.
  • Freewriting helps to develop your thinking on a question in a written way.
  • Test searching is important to ensure there will be enough evidence to support your assignment. It’s particularly vital if you’re developing your own question.
  • Reviewing the result of these activities can be translated into an assignment plan.

To use and of these methods effectively, we recommend that you have some prior knowledge about your topic. If you feel lost or are unsure where to start, return to your lecture or class notes or do a general search on a search engine like Google or Wikipedia. This will allow you to get some background information and identify concepts you might want to cover.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming allows you to visualise your thoughts on a topic and can be done at any point in the assignment journey. It enables you to evaluate your current knowledge, identify areas to further explore, and stimulate your thinking. It’s particularly useful for group assignments as it’s easy to do collaboratively.

Brainstorming can be used to:

  • Determine what you already know about a topic
  • Discover areas that you might like to include in your assignment
  • Quickly summarise the relevant content that has been covered in classes
  • Establish potential topics for paragraphs
  • Determine the links between different topics, ideas or areas.

Method

  1. Use a piece of paper or a program like GroupMap (Curtin provided) or TL Draw (no account required).
  2. Write your topic words/question in the centre of the page.
  3. Set yourself a timer for two - five minutes.
  4. Start the timer and record all your thoughts about the topic as quickly as possible. Don’t worry about it being messy or if ideas aren’t good – just follow the thoughts as far as they take you. The goal is quantity, not quality. Additionally, sometimes the wilder the idea, the more useful it is.
  5. When the timer ends, step back and review your brainstorm. Identify:
    • Areas of strength
    • Areas requiring more research
    • Words that need to be defined
    • Categories or ideas that relate to or complement each other.

A mindmap of notes, using colour and arrows to link similar ideas.

Top tips! If you’re creating your own question, your brainstorm will help you to identify areas of focus within your broader topic. Ultimately, your aim is to develop a question that is specific enough that you can conduct your research successfully but not so specific that no research is available.

At the bottom of your brainstorm, write down a draft or potential research question. This can be further refined in the research phase, but it will help provide some direction as you begin test searching.

Freewriting

Freewriting, also known as a stream of consciousness, works like a brainstorm. It involves setting aside dedicated time to write ideas and thoughts as they come to you, without worrying about structure or organisation. It allows you to explore concepts in a free and flexible way and uncover insights that can be later refined into a coherent assignment.

Method

  1. Write your question at the top of a document (use a program like Word or Pages).
  2. Set a timer for 20 minutes. Use this time to write continuously without pausing to edit or structure. The goal is to record your thoughts about the topic in full, including any thoughts, ideas, questions or concepts related to the topic.
  3. Let your mind lead you from one idea to another. If something triggers a related thought, write it down even if it seems irrelevant to your assignment question.
  4. When the 20 minutes is up, take some time to pause and reflect on what you’ve written. Review your notes, highlight key points, and group related concepts. Identify central or common themes that emerge from your stream of consciousness.
  5. Based on your reflections, build an initial outline for your assignment.

Here is an example of what the freewriting process could look like:

Freewriting example [DOCX, 26.2kB]

Top tips! If you’re creating your own question, freewriting may help you to identify areas of focus within your broader topic. Ultimately, your aim is to develop a question that is specific enough that you can conduct your research successfully but not so specific that no research is available.

At the bottom of your page of notes, write down a draft or potential research question. This can be further refined in the research phase, but it will help provide some direction as you begin test searching.

Test searching

Test searching is a quick, initial search to easily determine if you will be able to find enough information on your topic. Using any concepts you have identified, do a quick search in the Library catalogue or Google Scholar using at least two concepts (make sure you’re being specific, as single words rarely present useful information in a search).

Top tips! If you’re developing your own question, you can use the test search to identify areas of focus within your broader topic that you might not be aware of. Consider checking out the Wikipedia page for your broader topic. Is there anything that interests you that you can incorporate into your research?

Never search with a single concept, as your results will contain everything that has ever been published with those words - much of it won’t be relevant. Be more specific by including additional concepts. They may come from your question, or from your brainstorming/freewriting exercises. Additional examples may include:

  • By demographic (e.g. among teenagers, among elderly Australians, among the LGBTQI+ population, etc.)
  • By location (e.g. in rural communities, in Australia, in the Global South, etc.)
  • By industry (e.g. entertainment, medicine, finance, mining, etc.)
  • By time period (e.g. in the 21st century, in the last five years, since the COVID pandemic, during lockdowns, etc.)

If you find too little or don’t find anything, you may need to refine your question or broaden your topic. For example, rather than “the impact of artificial intelligence on Hollywood screenwriters”, you could broaden your topic to “the impact of artificial intelligence on the entertainment industry”.

If you have completed your test search and you don’t find anything that looks relevant, don’t despair! Discover strategies to help you improve your search in our Finding Information guide.

Assignment plan

Developing an assignment plan is a natural extension of developing your ideas. Fill in the assignment plan template to map out the next stages of the assignment process.