Literature Review
“A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis).” -- Purdue OWL
Literature Review Assignment Details
Your group will write the literature review together.
- Include 4-5 professional sources (journal article, professional association article, specification details, etc.).
- IEEE citation format.
- A cover page with title, every team member listed.
- Title and page number on each page, upper right hand corner.
- A References page.
- Assignment is due January 27, 11:59 PM.
All of your resources will be synthesized into one literature review. Follow the suggested steps for writing your literature review.
- Organize your ideas:
- Review the article themes.
- Notice the relationships between the themes and the different articles.
- Write down the overarching story between the articles.
- Organize your paper following the Purdue Owl's example:
- Introduction (what are you doing and why -- what problem are you going to solve?)
- Body (how will you do it -- what technology, materials etc. -- this is where patents, standards, articles will all inform those decisions)
- Conclusion (reiterate what, why, how)
- When writing your review, remember to use quotes sparingly and always cite where you got your information. Review signal phrases as a way to always give credit to authors.
- Take the time to learn more about literature reviews to help with this assignment and future reviews:
Examples
To read example literature reviews:
1. Purdue Owl gives this example using APA.
2. And here is a paper within research gate that has a literature review section in IEEE (you just need to see the lit review as an example).
