When Knowledge Market consultants say "working with a topic," we mean molding it and shaping it into something you care about, something that's academically relevant, something that'll meet the needs of your assignment, and would be interesting to learn more about. Oftentimes, students have to spend a lot of time and energy on just picking a topic -- but turning that topic into something great takes time too.

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Once you've chosen a topic for your project, it's important to make sure you've thought about --

• How it fits with your assignment: sometimes, assignments give you a topic to work with. If that's the case, working with it means turning it into something worth investigating. If the assignment hasn't given you a topic, consider thinking about what materials/topics you've covered in class -- what topics are hot right now in the field. If you need to come up with a topic, consider checking out our handouts on Brainstorming --
  • Choosing a topic from scratch
  • Choosing a topic from a theme
  • Choosing a topic with subject terms
• Whether it's too narrow: unfortunately, some topics may be interesting, but they're just too specific to be able to use for an entire project. Fortunately, the Knowledge Market has a whole resource on how you can make your very specific topic a little bigger, giving you more to work with.
  • Broadening your topic
• Whether it's too broad: if you're topic's too big, we can help you narrow it down! If there's too much room to move in while working on your project, your audience (or you) might get lost. Check out our tips on how you can make your topic smaller and easier to manage!
  • Narrowing your topic
• Learning more about it
  • Asking questions
  • Developing a research question