literature survey class

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless.

• Teaching the Literature Survey Course: New Strategies for College Faculty

In this Book

• John A. Staunton, Gwynn Dujardin, James M. Lang
• Published by: West Virginia University Press
• Series: Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Table of Contents

• Title Page, Copyright
• Introduction: The Promises and Perils of the Survey
• James M. Lang
• Part One: Pedagogies
• 1. Mapping the Literature Survey: Locating London in British Literature I
• Kevin Bourque
• 2. Creative Imitation: The Survey as an Occasion for Emulating Style
• Scott L. Newstok
• 3. Bingo Pedagogy: Team-based Learning and the Literature Survey
• Desirée Henderson
• 4. Extended Engagement: In Praise of Breadth
• Aaron Rosenfeld
• Part Two: Projects
• 5. Reacting to the Past in the Survey Course: Teaching the Stages of Power: Marlowe and Shakespeare, 1592 Game
• Joan Varnum Ferretti
• 6. The Blank Survey Syllabus
• Chris Walsh
• pp. 102-119
• 7. Errant Pedagogy in the Early Modern Classroom, or Prodigious Misreadings in and of the Renaissance
• Melissa J. Jones
• pp. 120-132
• 8. Digital Tools, New Media, and the Literature Survey
• Jennifer Page
• pp. 133-150
• Part Three - Programs
• 9. Thematic Organization and the First-Year Literature Survey
• Kristin Lucas and Sarah Fiona Winters
• pp. 153-169
• 10. Fear and Learning in the Historical Survey Course
• Gwynn Dujardin
• pp. 170-192
• 11. The Survey as Pedagogical Training and Academic Job Credential
• Tim Rosendale
• pp. 193-213
• 12. Re-Visioning the American Literature Survey for Teachers and Other Wide-Awake Humans
• John A. Staunton
• pp. 214-228
• Contributor Biographies
• pp. 229-232
• pp. 233-250

Additional Information

Project muse mission.

Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.

2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218

+1 (410) 516-6989 [email protected]

©2024 Project MUSE. Produced by Johns Hopkins University Press in collaboration with The Sheridan Libraries.

Now and Always, The Trusted Content Your Research Requires

Built on the Johns Hopkins University Campus

• USC Libraries
• Research Guides

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

• 5. The Literature Review
• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Reading Research Effectively
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Applying Critical Thinking
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• Research Process Video Series
• Executive Summary
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tiertiary Sources
• Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Insiderness
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Generative AI and Writing
• USC Libraries Tutorials and Other Guides
• Bibliography

A literature review surveys prior research published in books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have used in researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within existing scholarship about the topic.

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . Fourth edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2014.

Importance of a Good Literature Review

A literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but in the social sciences, a literature review usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories . A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate a research problem. The analytical features of a literature review might:

• Give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations,
• Trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates,
• Depending on the situation, evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant research, or
• Usually in the conclusion of a literature review, identify where gaps exist in how a problem has been researched to date.

Given this, the purpose of a literature review is to:

• Place each work in the context of its contribution to understanding the research problem being studied.
• Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration.
• Identify new ways to interpret prior research.
• Reveal any gaps that exist in the literature.
• Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies.
• Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort.
• Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research.
• Locate your own research within the context of existing literature [very important].

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2011; Knopf, Jeffrey W. "Doing a Literature Review." PS: Political Science and Politics 39 (January 2006): 127-132; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012.

Types of Literature Reviews

It is important to think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three layers. First, there are the primary studies that researchers conduct and publish. Second are the reviews of those studies that summarize and offer new interpretations built from and often extending beyond the primary studies. Third, there are the perceptions, conclusions, opinion, and interpretations that are shared informally among scholars that become part of the body of epistemological traditions within the field.

In composing a literature review, it is important to note that it is often this third layer of knowledge that is cited as "true" even though it often has only a loose relationship to the primary studies and secondary literature reviews. Given this, while literature reviews are designed to provide an overview and synthesis of pertinent sources you have explored, there are a number of approaches you could adopt depending upon the type of analysis underpinning your study.

Argumentative Review This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply embedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. The purpose is to develop a body of literature that establishes a contrarian viewpoint. Given the value-laden nature of some social science research [e.g., educational reform; immigration control], argumentative approaches to analyzing the literature can be a legitimate and important form of discourse. However, note that they can also introduce problems of bias when they are used to make summary claims of the sort found in systematic reviews [see below].

Integrative Review Considered a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes all studies that address related or identical hypotheses or research problems. A well-done integrative review meets the same standards as primary research in regard to clarity, rigor, and replication. This is the most common form of review in the social sciences.

Historical Review Few things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and to identify the likely directions for future research.

Methodological Review A review does not always focus on what someone said [findings], but how they came about saying what they say [method of analysis]. Reviewing methods of analysis provides a framework of understanding at different levels [i.e. those of theory, substantive fields, research approaches, and data collection and analysis techniques], how researchers draw upon a wide variety of knowledge ranging from the conceptual level to practical documents for use in fieldwork in the areas of ontological and epistemological consideration, quantitative and qualitative integration, sampling, interviewing, data collection, and data analysis. This approach helps highlight ethical issues which you should be aware of and consider as you go through your own study.

Systematic Review This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect, report, and analyze data from the studies that are included in the review. The goal is to deliberately document, critically evaluate, and summarize scientifically all of the research about a clearly defined research problem . Typically it focuses on a very specific empirical question, often posed in a cause-and-effect form, such as "To what extent does A contribute to B?" This type of literature review is primarily applied to examining prior research studies in clinical medicine and allied health fields, but it is increasingly being used in the social sciences.

Theoretical Review The purpose of this form is to examine the corpus of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to help establish a lack of appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging research problems. The unit of analysis can focus on a theoretical concept or a whole theory or framework.

NOTE : Most often the literature review will incorporate some combination of types. For example, a review that examines literature supporting or refuting an argument, assumption, or philosophical problem related to the research problem will also need to include writing supported by sources that establish the history of these arguments in the literature.

Baumeister, Roy F. and Mark R. Leary. "Writing Narrative Literature Reviews."  Review of General Psychology 1 (September 1997): 311-320; Mark R. Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Kennedy, Mary M. "Defining a Literature." Educational Researcher 36 (April 2007): 139-147; Petticrew, Mark and Helen Roberts. Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide . Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2006; Torracro, Richard. "Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples." Human Resource Development Review 4 (September 2005): 356-367; Rocco, Tonette S. and Maria S. Plakhotnik. "Literature Reviews, Conceptual Frameworks, and Theoretical Frameworks: Terms, Functions, and Distinctions." Human Ressource Development Review 8 (March 2008): 120-130; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

Structure and Writing Style

I.  Thinking About Your Literature Review

The structure of a literature review should include the following in support of understanding the research problem :

• An overview of the subject, issue, or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review,
• Division of works under review into themes or categories [e.g. works that support a particular position, those against, and those offering alternative approaches entirely],
• An explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others,
• Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research.

The critical evaluation of each work should consider :

• Provenance -- what are the author's credentials? Are the author's arguments supported by evidence [e.g. primary historical material, case studies, narratives, statistics, recent scientific findings]?
• Methodology -- were the techniques used to identify, gather, and analyze the data appropriate to addressing the research problem? Was the sample size appropriate? Were the results effectively interpreted and reported?
• Objectivity -- is the author's perspective even-handed or prejudicial? Is contrary data considered or is certain pertinent information ignored to prove the author's point?
• Persuasiveness -- which of the author's theses are most convincing or least convincing?
• Validity -- are the author's arguments and conclusions convincing? Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way to an understanding of the subject?

II.  Development of the Literature Review

Four Basic Stages of Writing 1.  Problem formulation -- which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues? 2.  Literature search -- finding materials relevant to the subject being explored. 3.  Data evaluation -- determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic. 4.  Analysis and interpretation -- discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature.

Consider the following issues before writing the literature review: Clarify If your assignment is not specific about what form your literature review should take, seek clarification from your professor by asking these questions: 1.  Roughly how many sources would be appropriate to include? 2.  What types of sources should I review (books, journal articles, websites; scholarly versus popular sources)? 3.  Should I summarize, synthesize, or critique sources by discussing a common theme or issue? 4.  Should I evaluate the sources in any way beyond evaluating how they relate to understanding the research problem? 5.  Should I provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history? Find Models Use the exercise of reviewing the literature to examine how authors in your discipline or area of interest have composed their literature review sections. Read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or to identify ways to organize your final review. The bibliography or reference section of sources you've already read, such as required readings in the course syllabus, are also excellent entry points into your own research. Narrow the Topic The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to obtain a good survey of relevant resources. Your professor will probably not expect you to read everything that's available about the topic, but you'll make the act of reviewing easier if you first limit scope of the research problem. A good strategy is to begin by searching the USC Libraries Catalog for recent books about the topic and review the table of contents for chapters that focuses on specific issues. You can also review the indexes of books to find references to specific issues that can serve as the focus of your research. For example, a book surveying the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may include a chapter on the role Egypt has played in mediating the conflict, or look in the index for the pages where Egypt is mentioned in the text. Consider Whether Your Sources are Current Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. This is particularly true in disciplines in medicine and the sciences where research conducted becomes obsolete very quickly as new discoveries are made. However, when writing a review in the social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be required. In other words, a complete understanding the research problem requires you to deliberately examine how knowledge and perspectives have changed over time. Sort through other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to explore what is considered by scholars to be a "hot topic" and what is not.

III.  Ways to Organize Your Literature Review

Chronology of Events If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials according to when they were published. This approach should only be followed if a clear path of research building on previous research can be identified and that these trends follow a clear chronological order of development. For example, a literature review that focuses on continuing research about the emergence of German economic power after the fall of the Soviet Union. By Publication Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on environmental studies of brown fields if the progression revealed, for example, a change in the soil collection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies. Thematic [“conceptual categories”] A thematic literature review is the most common approach to summarizing prior research in the social and behavioral sciences. Thematic reviews are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time, although the progression of time may still be incorporated into a thematic review. For example, a review of the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics could focus on the development of online political satire. While the study focuses on one topic, the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics, it would still be organized chronologically reflecting technological developments in media. The difference in this example between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: themes related to the role of the Internet in presidential politics. Note that more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point being made. Methodological A methodological approach focuses on the methods utilized by the researcher. For the Internet in American presidential politics project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of American presidents on American, British, and French websites. Or the review might focus on the fundraising impact of the Internet on a particular political party. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.

Other Sections of Your Literature Review Once you've decided on the organizational method for your literature review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out because they arise from your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period; a thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue. However, sometimes you may need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. However, only include what is necessary for the reader to locate your study within the larger scholarship about the research problem.

Here are examples of other sections, usually in the form of a single paragraph, you may need to include depending on the type of review you write:

• Current Situation : Information necessary to understand the current topic or focus of the literature review.
• Sources Used : Describes the methods and resources [e.g., databases] you used to identify the literature you reviewed.
• History : The chronological progression of the field, the research literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
• Selection Methods : Criteria you used to select (and perhaps exclude) sources in your literature review. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed [i.e., scholarly] sources.
• Standards : Description of the way in which you present your information.
• Questions for Further Research : What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

IV.  Writing Your Literature Review

Once you've settled on how to organize your literature review, you're ready to write each section. When writing your review, keep in mind these issues.

Use Evidence A literature review section is, in this sense, just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence [citations] that demonstrates that what you are saying is valid. Be Selective Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the research problem, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological. Related items that provide additional information, but that are not key to understanding the research problem, can be included in a list of further readings . Use Quotes Sparingly Some short quotes are appropriate if you want to emphasize a point, or if what an author stated cannot be easily paraphrased. Sometimes you may need to quote certain terminology that was coined by the author, is not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. Do not use extensive quotes as a substitute for using your own words in reviewing the literature. Summarize and Synthesize Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each thematic paragraph as well as throughout the review. Recapitulate important features of a research study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to your own work and the work of others. Keep Your Own Voice While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice [the writer's] should remain front and center. For example, weave references to other sources into what you are writing but maintain your own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with your own ideas and wording. Use Caution When Paraphrasing When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. Even when paraphrasing an author’s work, you still must provide a citation to that work.

V.  Common Mistakes to Avoid

These are the most common mistakes made in reviewing social science research literature.

• Sources in your literature review do not clearly relate to the research problem;
• You do not take sufficient time to define and identify the most relevant sources to use in the literature review related to the research problem;
• Relies exclusively on secondary analytical sources rather than including relevant primary research studies or data;
• Uncritically accepts another researcher's findings and interpretations as valid, rather than examining critically all aspects of the research design and analysis;
• Does not describe the search procedures that were used in identifying the literature to review;
• Reports isolated statistical results rather than synthesizing them in chi-squared or meta-analytic methods; and,
• Only includes research that validates assumptions and does not consider contrary findings and alternative interpretations found in the literature.

Cook, Kathleen E. and Elise Murowchick. “Do Literature Review Skills Transfer from One Course to Another?” Psychology Learning and Teaching 13 (March 2014): 3-11; Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . London: SAGE, 2011; Literature Review Handout. Online Writing Center. Liberty University; Literature Reviews. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2016; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012; Randolph, Justus J. “A Guide to Writing the Dissertation Literature Review." Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation. vol. 14, June 2009; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016; Taylor, Dena. The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Writing a Literature Review. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra.

Writing Tip

Break Out of Your Disciplinary Box!

Thinking interdisciplinarily about a research problem can be a rewarding exercise in applying new ideas, theories, or concepts to an old problem. For example, what might cultural anthropologists say about the continuing conflict in the Middle East? In what ways might geographers view the need for better distribution of social service agencies in large cities than how social workers might study the issue? You don’t want to substitute a thorough review of core research literature in your discipline for studies conducted in other fields of study. However, particularly in the social sciences, thinking about research problems from multiple vectors is a key strategy for finding new solutions to a problem or gaining a new perspective. Consult with a librarian about identifying research databases in other disciplines; almost every field of study has at least one comprehensive database devoted to indexing its research literature.

Frodeman, Robert. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity . New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Another Writing Tip

Don't Just Review for Content!

While conducting a review of the literature, maximize the time you devote to writing this part of your paper by thinking broadly about what you should be looking for and evaluating. Review not just what scholars are saying, but how are they saying it. Some questions to ask:

• How are they organizing their ideas?
• What methods have they used to study the problem?
• What theories have been used to explain, predict, or understand their research problem?
• What sources have they cited to support their conclusions?
• How have they used non-textual elements [e.g., charts, graphs, figures, etc.] to illustrate key points?

When you begin to write your literature review section, you'll be glad you dug deeper into how the research was designed and constructed because it establishes a means for developing more substantial analysis and interpretation of the research problem.

Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1 998.

Yet Another Writing Tip

When Do I Know I Can Stop Looking and Move On?

Here are several strategies you can utilize to assess whether you've thoroughly reviewed the literature:

• Look for repeating patterns in the research findings . If the same thing is being said, just by different people, then this likely demonstrates that the research problem has hit a conceptual dead end. At this point consider: Does your study extend current research?  Does it forge a new path? Or, does is merely add more of the same thing being said?
• Look at sources the authors cite to in their work . If you begin to see the same researchers cited again and again, then this is often an indication that no new ideas have been generated to address the research problem.
• Search Google Scholar to identify who has subsequently cited leading scholars already identified in your literature review [see next sub-tab]. This is called citation tracking and there are a number of sources that can help you identify who has cited whom, particularly scholars from outside of your discipline. Here again, if the same authors are being cited again and again, this may indicate no new literature has been written on the topic.

Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2016; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

• << Previous: Theoretical Framework
• Next: Citation Tracking >>
• Last Updated: May 22, 2024 12:03 PM
• URL: https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to footer

Teaching in Higher Ed

Teaching the Literature Survey Course

By Bonni Stachowiak | June 21, 2018 | Leave a Comment | Array Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Email

As I mentioned on episode #210 with James Lang , I wasn’t expecting to enjoy reading Teaching the Literature Survey Course as much as I was some of the other books in the West Virginia University Press Teaching and Learning in Higher Education series . Teaching the Literature Survey Course was thought of  as “eating my veggies” and as part of my obligation as part of West Virginia University Press' overall sponsorship of the Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts project.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Teaching the Literature Survey Course addresses two key challenges, which are often characteristics of general survey courses:

• “Too much” to adequately “cover” in a single course
• Lack of opportunities for deeper learning

In each of the classes I've taught in my career, I can’t ever recall a time when I didn’t feel at least some tension around wishing I could “cover” more. At the same time, my greatest desire in my teaching is that students would experience learning that would stay with them for the long haul and would be of great relevance in their lives.

Teaching the Literature Survey Course, Edited by Gwynn Dujardin, James M. Lang, and John A. Staunton

While the examples they provide are specific to literature classes, they are wide-ranging enough to have it be likely that you might find inspiration for teaching in a different discipline.

Leveraging Maps in Your Teaching

One area that really inspired me was involving using maps in our teaching. This is an approach I have never experimented with before, but have found myself regularly thinking about since I read Teaching the Literature Survey Course .

Two related tools that I regularly see people reference when talking about using maps in their teaching are Google Maps and Google Earth . I was confused about the difference between them, but found this explanation on Quora  that cleared it up for me:

“Google Maps contains all of the navigation, lightweight mapping power and points of interest with just a small hint of satellite imagery, while Google Earth has complete 3D satellite data and just a small subset of information on places, without any point-to-point navigation.”

Todd Gardiner described them as related products . He advised that we think of them as a suite of products, like we would Microsoft Office .

Within that suite of products is Tour Builder (a Google Earth experiment), where you can “put your story on the map.” Instead of only seeing a map that was composed by others, we can add to an existing map points of interest, the way we might give someone a tour of our neighborhood.  Google suggests that you:

“See how people are using Tour Builder on the site – From a nonprofit documenting its global missions , to a teacher transforming American history .”

While maps might at first seem primarily useful to those who teach history or other social sciences, Tom Barrett decided to use Google Maps to teach math . While his example comes from K-12, it provides us with enough inspiration to get us started thinking…

If you do teach history, there are plenty of sites that are great examples of ways to leverage Google maps in your teaching. Other disciplines will find inspiration on how to: “Pin point a book’s setting, use detective skills, measure distances” and more from Jessica Sanders . The Google Earth example categories are: history, science, space science, math, and geography , yet Teaching the Literature Survey Course is a perfect illustration of how to extend beyond those disciplines and into literature.

Doing something for one of my classes at this exact moment feels out of reach for me, until I become more familiar with the tools and what’s possible. However, I was thinking that I could start small and tackle the sixth suggestion from The Thinking Stick and  to:

Create a Map for My Community

They gave an example of creating a map for friends who were visiting China with their favorite restaurants, places to visit, etc .

I could see making one for our local community and getting some practice with the tools. My colleague studies homeless populations and I imagine that maps like this could be very useful for his research (even if it started solely as a means for delegating the student researcher observations).

But Wait, There’s More

It is hard for me to stop writing at this point, because I have so many more notes I am reflecting back on after having read Teaching the Literature Survey Course . I started to think to myself that I should write ten posts about some of my take-aways, but then I thought I was getting a little ahead of myself with all of that.

Part of our work as educators is discovering new possibilities. But, there’s also the important step of beginning to experiment and increasing our tolerance for (or perhaps even delight with):

Not Yet-ness

As Amy Collier said all the way back on episode #70:

“When you embrace not yet-ness, you are creating space for things to continue to evolve.” – Amy Collier

Thank you to the editors and authors of Teaching the Literature Survey Course . You have given us so many ways to embrace not yet-ness in our teaching and contribute to deeper learning for our students. 

• Bonni Stachowiak

Bonni Stachowiak is the producer and host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, which has been airing weekly since June of 2014. Bonni is the Dean of Teaching and Learning at Vanguard University of Southern California. She’s also a full Professor of Business and Management. She’s been teaching in-person, blended, and online courses throughout her entire career in higher education. Bonni and her husband, Dave, are parents to two curious kids, who regularly shape their perspectives on teaching and learning.

GET CONNECTED

Join over 4,000 educators.

Receive a free Educational Technology Essentials Guide and weekly update.

Related Blog Posts

• The environment in which we’re teaching today

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

• Weekly Update
• Recommendations
• EdTech Essentials Guide
• The Productive Online Professor
• Bonni’s Favorite Podcasts
• How to Listen to Podcasts

Subscribe to Podcast

• Speaking + Workshops
• Podcast FAQs
• Lilly Conferences Partnership
• CSU Collaboration
• Get in Touch
• Support the Podcast
• Sponsorship
• Privacy Policy

Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library

• Collections
• Research Help

YSN Doctoral Programs: Steps in Conducting a Literature Review

• Biomedical Databases
• Global (Public Health) Databases
• Soc. Sci., History, and Law Databases
• Grey Literature
• Trials Registers
• Data and Statistics
• Public Policy
• Google Tips
• Recommended Books
• Steps in Conducting a Literature Review

What is a literature review?

A literature review is an integrated analysis -- not just a summary-- of scholarly writings and other relevant evidence related directly to your research question.  That is, it represents a synthesis of the evidence that provides background information on your topic and shows a association between the evidence and your research question.

A literature review may be a stand alone work or the introduction to a larger research paper, depending on the assignment.  Rely heavily on the guidelines your instructor has given you.

Why is it important?

A literature review is important because it:

• Explains the background of research on a topic.
• Demonstrates why a topic is significant to a subject area.
• Discovers relationships between research studies/ideas.
• Identifies major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic.
• Identifies critical gaps and points of disagreement.
• Discusses further research questions that logically come out of the previous studies.

APA7 Style resources

APA Style Blog - for those harder to find answers

1. Choose a topic. Define your research question.

Your literature review should be guided by your central research question.  The literature represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you in a synthesized way.

• Make sure your research question is not too broad or too narrow.  Is it manageable?
• Begin writing down terms that are related to your question. These will be useful for searches later.
• If you have the opportunity, discuss your topic with your professor and your class mates.

2. Decide on the scope of your review

How many studies do you need to look at? How comprehensive should it be? How many years should it cover? 

• This may depend on your assignment.  How many sources does the assignment require?

3. Select the databases you will use to conduct your searches.

Make a list of the databases you will search. 

Where to find databases:

• use the tabs on this guide
• Find other databases in the Nursing Information Resources web page
• More on the Medical Library web page
• ... and more on the Yale University Library web page

4. Conduct your searches to find the evidence. Keep track of your searches.

• Use the key words in your question, as well as synonyms for those words, as terms in your search. Use the database tutorials for help.
• Save the searches in the databases. This saves time when you want to redo, or modify, the searches. It is also helpful to use as a guide is the searches are not finding any useful results.
• Review the abstracts of research studies carefully. This will save you time.
• Use the bibliographies and references of research studies you find to locate others.
• Check with your professor, or a subject expert in the field, if you are missing any key works in the field.
• Ask your librarian for help at any time.
• Use a citation manager, such as EndNote as the repository for your citations. See the EndNote tutorials for help.

Review the literature

Some questions to help you analyze the research:

• What was the research question of the study you are reviewing? What were the authors trying to discover?
• Was the research funded by a source that could influence the findings?
• What were the research methodologies? Analyze its literature review, the samples and variables used, the results, and the conclusions.
• Does the research seem to be complete? Could it have been conducted more soundly? What further questions does it raise?
• If there are conflicting studies, why do you think that is?
• How are the authors viewed in the field? Has this study been cited? If so, how has it been analyzed?

Tips: 

• Review the abstracts carefully.  
• Keep careful notes so that you may track your thought processes during the research process.
• Create a matrix of the studies for easy analysis, and synthesis, across all of the studies.
• << Previous: Recommended Books
• Last Updated: Jan 4, 2024 10:52 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.yale.edu/YSNDoctoral

West Virginia University Press

• African American Literature
• Appalachian Studies
• Creative Nonfiction
• Digital Writing and Literature
• Energy and Environment
• Medieval Studies
• Natural History
• West Virginia
• Central Appalachian Natural History
• Energy and Society
• Gender, Feminism, and Geography
• Radical Natures
• Regenerations
• Rural Studies
• Salvaging the Anthropocene
• Sounding Appalachia

Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

• Vandalia Press
• West Virginia Classics
• West Virginia and Appalachia
• West Virginia History: Open Access
• Education and Treatment of Children
• Essays in Medieval Studies
• Tolkien Studies
• Victorian Poetry
• West Virginia History
• Sound Archive
• ePub Editions
• PDF Editions
• Kindle Editions
• Author Events
• Submit a Proposal
• For WVU Press Authors
• Editorial & Style
• Permissions Requests
• Join Our Mailing List
• Find us on Facebook
• Give to WVU Press

• Histories of Capitalism and the Environment
• Appalachian Studies 
• Creative Nonfiction 
• Higher Education
• West Virginia History: An Open Access Reader  

Edited by  Gwynn Dujardin, James M. Lang, and John A. Staunton

January 2018 276pp  PB  978-1-946684-09-7 $28.99 CL  978-1-946684-08-0 $99.99 Epub  978-1-946684-10-3 $28.99 PDF  978-1-946684-11-0 $28.99

Teaching the Literature Survey Course makes the case for maintaining—even while re-imagining and re-inventing—the place of the survey as a transformative experience for literature students. Through essays both practical and theoretical, the collection presents survey teachers with an exciting range of new strategies for energizing their teaching and engaging their students in this vital encounter with our evolving literary traditions.

From mapping early English literature to a team-based approach to the American survey, and from multimedia galleries to a “blank syllabus,” contributors propose alternatives to the traditional emphasis on lectures and breadth of coverage. The volume is at once a set of practical suggestions for working teachers (including sample documents like worksheets and syllabi) and a provocative engagement with the question of what introductory courses can and should be.  

Receive a 30% discount on orders of 10 or more copies of this title with code HIGHEREDBULK30 at checkout.

Introduction, James M. Lang

Part One: Pedagogies 1. Mapping the Literature Survey: Locating London in British Literature I, Kevin Bourque 2. Creative Imitation: The Survey as an Occasion for Emulating Style, Scott L. Newstok 3. Bingo Pedagogy: Team-Based Learning and the Literature Survey, Desirée Henderson 4. Extended Engagement: In Praise of Breadth, Aaron Rosenfeld

Part Two: Projects 5. “Reacting to the Past” in the Survey Course: Teaching the Stages of Power: Marlowe and Shakespeare, 1592 Game, Joan Varnum Ferretti 6. The Blank Survey Syllabus, Chris Walsh 7. Errant Pedagogy in the Early Modern Classroom, or Prodigious Misreadings in and of the Renaissance, Melissa J. Jones 8. Digital Tools, New Media Survey, and the Literature Survey, Jennifer Page

Part Three: Programs 9. Thematic Organization and the First-Year Literature Survey, Kristin Lucas and Sarah Fiona Winters 10. Fear and Learning in the Historical Survey Course, Gwynn Dujardin 11. The Survey as Pedagogical Training and Academic Job Credential, Tim Rosendale 12. Revisioning the American Literature Survey for Teachers and Other Wide-Awake Humans, John A. Staunton Contributor Biographies Notes S

Gwynn Dujardin is assistant professor of English at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON, Canada.

James M. Lang is a professor of English and director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College.

John A. Staunton is professor of English education and American literature at Eastern Michigan University.

“An effectively organized collection that I believe will benefit college—and potentially, some high school—instructors at many levels and institutions. Even as I was reading it, I felt the gears in my mind turning and trying to think of ways to adapt some of its ideas right away.” Jesse Kavadlo, Maryville University

Related Titles

How To Structure Your Literature Review

3 options to help structure your chapter.

By: Amy Rommelspacher (PhD) | Reviewer: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | November 2020 (Updated May 2023)

Writing the literature review chapter can seem pretty daunting when you’re piecing together your dissertation or thesis. As  we’ve discussed before , a good literature review needs to achieve a few very important objectives – it should:

• Demonstrate your knowledge of the research topic
• Identify the gaps in the literature and show how your research links to these
• Provide the foundation for your conceptual framework (if you have one)
• Inform your own  methodology and research design

To achieve this, your literature review needs a well-thought-out structure . Get the structure of your literature review chapter wrong and you’ll struggle to achieve these objectives. Don’t worry though – in this post, we’ll look at how to structure your literature review for maximum impact (and marks!).

But wait – is this the right time?

Deciding on the structure of your literature review should come towards the end of the literature review process – after you have collected and digested the literature, but before you start writing the chapter. 

In other words, you need to first develop a rich understanding of the literature before you even attempt to map out a structure. There’s no use trying to develop a structure before you’ve fully wrapped your head around the existing research.

Equally importantly, you need to have a structure in place before you start writing , or your literature review will most likely end up a rambling, disjointed mess. 

Importantly, don’t feel that once you’ve defined a structure you can’t iterate on it. It’s perfectly natural to adjust as you engage in the writing process. As we’ve discussed before , writing is a way of developing your thinking, so it’s quite common for your thinking to change – and therefore, for your chapter structure to change – as you write. 

Need a helping hand?

Like any other chapter in your thesis or dissertation, your literature review needs to have a clear, logical structure. At a minimum, it should have three essential components – an  introduction , a  body   and a  conclusion . 

Let’s take a closer look at each of these.

1: The Introduction Section

Just like any good introduction, the introduction section of your literature review should introduce the purpose and layout (organisation) of the chapter. In other words, your introduction needs to give the reader a taste of what’s to come, and how you’re going to lay that out. Essentially, you should provide the reader with a high-level roadmap of your chapter to give them a taste of the journey that lies ahead.

Here’s an example of the layout visualised in a literature review introduction:

Your introduction should also outline your topic (including any tricky terminology or jargon) and provide an explanation of the scope of your literature review – in other words, what you  will   and  won’t   be covering (the delimitations ). This helps ringfence your review and achieve a clear focus . The clearer and narrower your focus, the deeper you can dive into the topic (which is typically where the magic lies). 

Depending on the nature of your project, you could also present your stance or point of view at this stage. In other words, after grappling with the literature you’ll have an opinion about what the trends and concerns are in the field as well as what’s lacking. The introduction section can then present these ideas so that it is clear to examiners that you’re aware of how your research connects with existing knowledge .

2: The Body Section

The body of your literature review is the centre of your work. This is where you’ll present, analyse, evaluate and synthesise the existing research. In other words, this is where you’re going to earn (or lose) the most marks. Therefore, it’s important to carefully think about how you will organise your discussion to present it in a clear way. 

The body of your literature review should do just as the description of this chapter suggests. It should “review” the literature – in other words, identify, analyse, and synthesise it. So, when thinking about structuring your literature review, you need to think about which structural approach will provide the best “review” for your specific type of research and objectives (we’ll get to this shortly).

There are (broadly speaking)  three options  for organising your literature review.

Option 1: Chronological (according to date)

Organising the literature chronologically is one of the simplest ways to structure your literature review. You start with what was published first and work your way through the literature until you reach the work published most recently. Pretty straightforward.

The benefit of this option is that it makes it easy to discuss the developments and debates in the field as they emerged over time. Organising your literature chronologically also allows you to highlight how specific articles or pieces of work might have changed the course of the field – in other words, which research has had the most impact . Therefore, this approach is very useful when your research is aimed at understanding how the topic has unfolded over time and is often used by scholars in the field of history. That said, this approach can be utilised by anyone that wants to explore change over time .

For example , if a student of politics is investigating how the understanding of democracy has evolved over time, they could use the chronological approach to provide a narrative that demonstrates how this understanding has changed through the ages.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you structure your literature review chronologically.

• What is the earliest literature published relating to this topic?
• How has the field changed over time? Why?
• What are the most recent discoveries/theories?

In some ways, chronology plays a part whichever way you decide to structure your literature review, because you will always, to a certain extent, be analysing how the literature has developed. However, with the chronological approach, the emphasis is very firmly on how the discussion has evolved over time , as opposed to how all the literature links together (which we’ll discuss next ).

Option 2: Thematic (grouped by theme)

The thematic approach to structuring a literature review means organising your literature by theme or category – for example, by independent variables (i.e. factors that have an impact on a specific outcome).

As you’ve been collecting and synthesising literature , you’ll likely have started seeing some themes or patterns emerging. You can then use these themes or patterns as a structure for your body discussion. The thematic approach is the most common approach and is useful for structuring literature reviews in most fields.

For example, if you were researching which factors contributed towards people trusting an organisation, you might find themes such as consumers’ perceptions of an organisation’s competence, benevolence and integrity. Structuring your literature review thematically would mean structuring your literature review’s body section to discuss each of these themes, one section at a time.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when structuring your literature review by themes:

• Are there any patterns that have come to light in the literature?
• What are the central themes and categories used by the researchers?
• Do I have enough evidence of these themes?

PS – you can see an example of a thematically structured literature review in our literature review sample walkthrough video here.

Option 3: Methodological

The methodological option is a way of structuring your literature review by the research methodologies used . In other words, organising your discussion based on the angle from which each piece of research was approached – for example, qualitative , quantitative or mixed  methodologies.

Structuring your literature review by methodology can be useful if you are drawing research from a variety of disciplines and are critiquing different methodologies. The point of this approach is to question  how  existing research has been conducted, as opposed to  what  the conclusions and/or findings the research were.

For example, a sociologist might centre their research around critiquing specific fieldwork practices. Their literature review will then be a summary of the fieldwork methodologies used by different studies.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself when structuring your literature review according to methodology:

• Which methodologies have been utilised in this field?
• Which methodology is the most popular (and why)?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the various methodologies?
• How can the existing methodologies inform my own methodology?

3: The Conclusion Section

Once you’ve completed the body section of your literature review using one of the structural approaches we discussed above, you’ll need to “wrap up” your literature review and pull all the pieces together to set the direction for the rest of your dissertation or thesis.

The conclusion is where you’ll present the key findings of your literature review. In this section, you should emphasise the research that is especially important to your research questions and highlight the gaps that exist in the literature. Based on this, you need to make it clear what you will add to the literature – in other words, justify your own research by showing how it will help fill one or more of the gaps you just identified.

Last but not least, if it’s your intention to develop a conceptual framework for your dissertation or thesis, the conclusion section is a good place to present this.

Example: Thematically Structured Review

In the video below, we unpack a literature review chapter so that you can see an example of a thematically structure review in practice.

Let’s Recap

In this article, we’ve  discussed how to structure your literature review for maximum impact. Here’s a quick recap of what  you need to keep in mind when deciding on your literature review structure:

• Just like other chapters, your literature review needs a clear introduction , body and conclusion .
• The introduction section should provide an overview of what you will discuss in your literature review.
• The body section of your literature review can be organised by chronology , theme or methodology . The right structural approach depends on what you’re trying to achieve with your research.
• The conclusion section should draw together the key findings of your literature review and link them to your research questions.

If you’re ready to get started, be sure to download our free literature review template to fast-track your chapter outline.

Psst… there’s more!

This post is an extract from our bestselling short course, Literature Review Bootcamp . If you want to work smart, you don't want to miss this .

You Might Also Like:

27 Comments

Great work. This is exactly what I was looking for and helps a lot together with your previous post on literature review. One last thing is missing: a link to a great literature chapter of an journal article (maybe with comments of the different sections in this review chapter). Do you know any great literature review chapters?

I agree with you Marin… A great piece

I agree with Marin. This would be quite helpful if you annotate a nicely structured literature from previously published research articles.

Awesome article for my research.

I thank you immensely for this wonderful guide

It is indeed thought and supportive work for the futurist researcher and students

Very educative and good time to get guide. Thank you

Great work, very insightful. Thank you.

Thanks for this wonderful presentation. My question is that do I put all the variables into a single conceptual framework or each hypothesis will have it own conceptual framework?

Thank you very much, very helpful

This is very educative and precise . Thank you very much for dropping this kind of write up .

Pheeww, so damn helpful, thank you for this informative piece.

I’m doing a research project topic ; stool analysis for parasitic worm (enteric) worm, how do I structure it, thanks.

comprehensive explanation. Help us by pasting the URL of some good “literature review” for better understanding.

great piece. thanks for the awesome explanation. it is really worth sharing. I have a little question, if anyone can help me out, which of the options in the body of literature can be best fit if you are writing an architectural thesis that deals with design?

I am doing a research on nanofluids how can l structure it?

Beautifully clear.nThank you!

Lucid! Thankyou!

Brilliant work, well understood, many thanks

I like how this was so clear with simple language 😊😊 thank you so much 😊 for these information 😊

Insightful. I was struggling to come up with a sensible literature review but this has been really helpful. Thank you!

You have given thought-provoking information about the review of the literature.

Thank you. It has made my own research better and to impart your work to students I teach

I learnt a lot from this teaching. It’s a great piece.

I am doing research on EFL teacher motivation for his/her job. How Can I structure it? Is there any detailed template, additional to this?

You are so cool! I do not think I’ve read through something like this before. So nice to find somebody with some genuine thoughts on this issue. Seriously.. thank you for starting this up. This site is one thing that is required on the internet, someone with a little originality!

I’m asked to do conceptual, theoretical and empirical literature, and i just don’t know how to structure it

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Print Friendly

Open Yale Courses

You are here, introduction to theory of literature.

This is a survey of the main trends in twentieth-century literary theory. Lectures will provide background for the readings and explicate them where appropriate, while attempting to develop a coherent overall context that incorporates philosophical and social perspectives on the recurrent questions: what is literature, how is it produced, how can it be understood, and what is its purpose?

This Yale College course, taught on campus twice per week for 50 minutes, was recorded for Open Yale Courses in Spring, 2009. The Open Yale Courses Series. For more information about Professor Fry’s book Theory of Literature, http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300180831 .

Richter, David, ed. The Critical Tradition , 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 2006.

Two short papers (5-7 pp.) will be required (each counting for 30% of the grade), and there will be a final exam (25% of the grade). Graduate students may either do these assignments or opt to write a 20-25 pp. term paper and be excused from the exam. Attendance at sections is crucial, as discussion is needed to ensure understanding of the material, and participation in this discussion will count for 15% of the final grade.

Paper 1: 30% Paper 2: 30% Final paper: 25% Discussion section attendance and participation: 15%

This Open Yale Course is accompanied by a book published by Yale University Press.

English Literature Course Suggestions (BA)

Ba general education requirement: 6 credit hours (2 courses).

The Department of English offers seven literature survey courses at the 200 level: ENG 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226. No other English course will meet this requirement. Transfer courses designated ENG 22x (not ENG 2xx) will satisfy this requirement.

All survey courses develop students’ understanding of literary forms and movements in literary history. Surveys introduce students to the basic emphases of literary study, exposing them to different genres and methodologies and building for them a vocabulary for the critical discussion of literature. Students learn to recognize and discuss key literary works within each course’s historical range and set of national and cultural traditions. They explore the complex relationships between a text and its contexts, seeking to understand what inspired people to create, remember, and read literature. Students consider why we read old and new literatures and what value they have for us today. They gain analytic techniques for critical reading, thinking, and writing about texts of all kinds.

ENG 220. Survey in Literary History . English 220 surveys a topic in literary history across multiple centuries and cultures. Examining genres such as poetry, fiction, and autobiography, students learn how literature has shaped and been shaped by fields of human knowledge and experience. Topics vary by semester and may include but are not limited to “Literature, Medicine, and Science,” “Literature and Money,” and “Literature and Law.”

ENG 221. Survey of World Literature to 1650.  English 221 explores the global foundations of literary expression. Students survey texts from ancient times to the rise of modernity, and sample readings from such sources as Sophocles, Homer, the Hebrew and vernacular bibles, the Bhagavad Gītā, Confucius, Arabian Nights , and Shakespeare. Throughout, students consider the role of literature in creating human societies.

ENG 222. World Literature after 1650.  English 222 introduces students to the wide array of literary works produced on almost every continent of the world. Covering a variety of genres—short stories, poems, film, etc.—from Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas, the course investigates the work of world literatures in promoting, complicating and reinforcing relationships between peoples from the rise of modernity to today. Students examine the unique qualities of texts produced by different cultures and practice strategies for studying world cultures through literature. Possible authors include Voltaire, Fyodor Dostoevsky, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe, Jamaica Kincaid, and Arundhati Roy.

ENG 223. American Literature to the Civil War.  English 223 surveys American literature from its beginnings (variously defined), through colonization and the American Revolution, and finally to the mid-nineteenth century and the Civil War, paying particular attention to historical and cultural influences. The course engages how various groups and cultures used writing to express and debate what it meant to be a community in changing and uncertain times, and charts the contested development of a national identity. The class complicates any singular idea of “America” by considering texts and experiences other than those produced by Europeans and their descendants, including works by Native Americans, Latin Americans, and African Americans. Possible authors include Anne Bradstreet, Benjamin Franklin, Samson Occom (Mohegan), Phillis Wheatley, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and Edgar Allan Poe.

ENG 224. American Literature since the Civil War.  English 224 provides an overview of the trends and literary movements that shaped U.S. America from the Civil War to our contemporary period. Questions of cultural belonging, social participation, and political citizenship have been and continue to be in the foreground of this nation. Students examine how U.S. writers sought to engage with these questions through literature—a powerful and problematic tool.  Ranging from the rise of realism through naturalism, modernism, postmodernism, and beyond, the course covers established movements and major authors, but it also showcases its many other dynamic if less well-known developments and voices. Students read a variety of genres by Americans of diverse backgrounds, such as Charles Chesnutt, Mark Twain, Kate Chopin, Langston Hughes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Audre Lorde, Maxine Hong Kingston, Sandra Cisneros, Sherman Alexie, and Toni Morrison.

ENG 225. Survey of British Literature to 18th Century.  English 225 provides a broad survey of British literature from its Medieval beginnings through the Renaissance and Early Modern periods and into the Enlightenment and Romantic eras of the eighteenth century. Students explore how English literature reflects and shapes historical shifts (political, economic, social, religious, and linguistic) and how writers used language, genre, and persona to experiment with new possibilities for personal and national identity. Possible texts and authors include Beowulf , Geoffrey Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton’s Paradise Lost , Aphra Behn, William Blake, and Olaudah Equiano.

ENG 226. Survey of British Literature since Romantic Period.  English 226 considers the development of English literature from the Romantic period to the early twenty-first century, tracing important intellectual, social, and aesthetic issues as they change over the period and across Britain and its colonies. It begins with the end of Romanticism, then across the industrialization of England and the expansion of science in the 1800s, into the world wars and imperial fragmentation of the 1900s and today. Possible authors and texts include Frankenstein , Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Zadie Smith.

ENGL 2330 - World Literature Survey I

• Discoveries-Art/Humanities
• Competency-Intercultural Fluency

Advertisement

A literature review: efficacy of online learning courses for higher education institution using meta-analysis

• Published: 04 November 2019
• Volume 26 , pages 1367–1385, ( 2021 )

Cite this article

• Mayleen Dorcas B. Castro   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6618-6958 1 , 2 &
• Gilbert M. Tumibay 3  

20k Accesses

180 Citations

148 Altmetric

11 Mentions

Explore all metrics

The Internet has made online learning possible, and many educators and researchers are interested in online learning courses to enhance and improve the student learning outcomes while battling the shortage in resources, facilities and equipment particularly in higher education institution. Online learning has become popular because of its potential for providing more flexible access to content and instruction at any time, from any place. It is imperative that the researchers consider, and examine the efficacy of online learning in educating students. For this study, the researchers reviewed literature through meta-analysis as the method of research concerning the use of ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation) framework for designing and developing instructional materials that can provide wider access to quality higher education. This framework can be used to list generic processes that instructional designers and training developers use (Morrison et al., 2010 ). It represents a descriptive guideline for building effective training and performance support tools in five phases, as follows: 1.) Analysis, 2.) Design, 3.) Development, 4.) Implementation, and 5.) Evaluation. The researchers collected papers relating to online learning courses efficacy studies to provide a synthesis of scientifically rigorous knowledge in online learning courses, the researchers searched on ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), ProQuest databases, PubMed, Crossref, Scribd EBSCO, and Scopus. The researchers also conducted a manual search using Google Scholar. Based on the analysis, three main themes developed: 1.) comparison of online learning and traditional face-to-face setting, 2.) identification of important factors of online learning delivery, and 3.) factors of institutional adoption of online learning. Based on the results obtained 50 articles. The researchers examine each paper and found 30 articles that met the efficacy of online learning courses through having well-planned, well-designed courses and programs for higher education institution. Also, it highlights the importance of instructional design and the active role of institutions play in providing support structures for educators and students. Identification of different processes and activities in designing and developing an Online Learning Courses for Higher Education Institution will be the second phase of this study for which the researchers will consider using the theoretical aspect of the ADDIE framework.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

A guide for evaluation of online learning in medical education: a qualitative reflective analysis

Assessment of Student Readiness, Willingness and Acceptance for Effective Transitioning Toward Online Instruction

An exploratory study to understand faculty members’ perceptions and challenges in online teaching

Allen, E., & Seaman, J. (2010). Class Difference$: Online Education in the United States. http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/class_differences

Alonso, F., Lopez, G., Manrique, D., & Vines, J. M. (2005). An instructional model for web-based e-learning education with a blended learning process approach. British Journal of Educational Technology, 36 (2), 217–235 http://www.fisme.science.uu.nl/publicaties/literatuur/2005_modelforwebbasedelearning.pdf .

Article   Google Scholar  

Arbaugh, J.B., Godfrey, M., Johnson, M., Pollack, BL., Niendorf, B., & Wresch, W., (2009). Research in online and blended learning in the business disciplines: Key findings and possible future directions. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1096751609000268 .

Bell, B. S., & Fedeman, J. E. (2013). E-learning in postsecondary education. The Future of Children, 23 (1), 165–185.

Chen, L., (2016). A Model for Effective Online Instructional Design. http://infonomics-society.org/wpcontent/uploads/licej/published-papers/volume-7-2016/A-Model-for-Effective-Online-Instructional-Design.pdf

Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2014). The systematic design of instruction (8th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc..

Google Scholar  

Finch, D., & Jacobs, K. (2012). Online education: Best practices to promote learning. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics 56th Annual Meeting.

Gallagher, S., & LaBrie, J. (2012). Online learning 2.0: Strategies for a mature market. Continuing Higher Education Review, 76 , 65–73.

Intulogy. (2010) ADDIE Instructional Design Model. http://www.intulogy.com/addie/

Lorenzetti, J. (2013). Academic Administration - Running a MOOC: Secrets of the World’s Largest Distance Education Classes - Magna Publications.

McConnell, D. (2000). Implementing computer supported cooperative learning.

Morrison, G. R., Ross, S. M., Kemp, J. E., & Kalman, H. (2010). Designing effective instruction (6th ed.). Hoboken: Wiley.

Neuhauser, C., (2010). Learning Style and Effectiveness of Online and Face-to-Face Instruction. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15389286AJDE1602_4

Pape, L. (2010). Blended Teaching & Learning. School Administrator, 67 (4), 16–21.

Parsad, B., & Lewis, L. (2008). Distance education at degree-granting Postsecondary Institutions: 2006–2007 (NCES 2009–044). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences . Washington, DC: US Department of Education http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009044.pdf .

Patrick, S., & Powell, A., (2009). A Summary of Research on the Effectiveness of K-12 Online Learning. https://?id=ED/?id=ED509626

Quality Matters (2015). QM publisher rubric: https://www.qualitymatters.org/

Razali, S., Nadiyah, S.F., (2015). The Development of Online Project Based Collaborative Learning Using ADDIE Model. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042815038719 .

Roblyer, M. D. (2015). Introduction to systematic instructional design for traditional, online, and blended environments . New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc..

Rubric for Online Instruction (2010). QOLT (Quality Online Teaching and Learning). http://courseredesign.csuprojects.org/wp/qolt/

Saba, F. (2012). A systems approach to the future of distance education in colleges and universities: Research, development, and implementation. Continuing Higher Education Review, 76 , 30–37.

Schmid, R. F., Bernard, R. M., Borokhovski, E., Tamim, R. M., Abrami, P. C., & Surkes, M. A. (2014). The effects of technology use in postsecondary education: A meta-analysis of classroom applications. Computers & Education, 72 , 271–291.

Serhat, K., (2017). ADDIE Model: Instructional Design. https://educationaltechnology.net/the-addie-modelinstructional-design/ .

Sherry, L. (1995). Issues in distance learning. International Journal of Educational Telecommunications, 1 (4), 337–365.

Siemens, G., Gasevic, D., & Dawson, S., (2015). Preparing for the Digital University: A review of the history and current state of distance, blended, and online learning. https://linkresearchlab.org/PreparingDigitalUniversity.pdf

Siragusa, L., Dixon, K. C., & Dixon, R., (2007). Designing quality e-learning environments in higher education. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/siragusa.pdf

Zhang, D., (2010). Interactive Multimedia-Based E-Learning: A Study of Effectiveness. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15389286ajde1903_3

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

DIT at Angeles University Foundation, Angeles City, Pampanga, Philippines

Mayleen Dorcas B. Castro

Faculty, BulSU Graduate School and College of Information & Communications Technology, Bulacan State University, Malolos, Bulacan, Philippines

ITE Program, Graduate School, Angeles University Foundation, Angeles City, Pampanga, Philippines

Gilbert M. Tumibay

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mayleen Dorcas B. Castro .

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Castro, M.D.B., Tumibay, G.M. A literature review: efficacy of online learning courses for higher education institution using meta-analysis. Educ Inf Technol 26 , 1367–1385 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-10027-z

Download citation

Received : 16 April 2019

Accepted : 25 September 2019

Published : 04 November 2019

Issue Date : March 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-10027-z

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Online learning courses
• ADDIE framework
• Efficacy and meta-analysis
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• Kindle Store
• Kindle eBooks
• Education & Teaching

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

• Highlight, take notes, and search in the book
• In this edition, page numbers are just like the physical edition

Buy for others

Buying and sending ebooks to others.

• Select quantity
• Buy and send eBooks
• Recipients can read on any device

These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Follow the authors

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Teaching the Literature Survey Course: New Strategies for College Faculty (Teaching and Learning in Higher Education) 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

• ISBN-13 978-1946684097
• Edition 1st
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher West Virginia University Press
• Publication date January 1, 2018
• Part of series Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
• Language English
• File size 3166 KB
• See all details
• Kindle (5th Generation)
• Kindle Keyboard
• Kindle (2nd Generation)
• Kindle (1st Generation)
• Kindle Paperwhite
• Kindle Paperwhite (5th Generation)
• Kindle Touch
• Kindle Voyage
• Kindle Oasis
• Kindle Scribe (1st Generation)
• Kindle Fire HDX 8.9''
• Kindle Fire HDX
• Kindle Fire HD (3rd Generation)
• Fire HDX 8.9 Tablet
• Fire HD 7 Tablet
• Fire HD 6 Tablet
• Kindle Fire HD 8.9"
• Kindle Fire HD(1st Generation)
• Kindle Fire(2nd Generation)
• Kindle Fire(1st Generation)
• Kindle for Windows 8
• Kindle for Windows Phone
• Kindle for BlackBerry
• Kindle for Android Phones
• Kindle for Android Tablets
• Kindle for iPhone
• Kindle for iPod Touch
• Kindle for iPad
• Kindle for Mac
• Kindle for PC
• Kindle Cloud Reader
• Next 3 for you in this series $75.57
• Next 5 for you in this series $126.64
• All 15 for you in this series $356.34

• In This Series
• By James M. Lang
• Customers Also Enjoyed

Editorial Reviews

From the back cover, about the author.

Gwynn Dujardin is assistant professor of English at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON, Canada.

James M. Lang is a professor of English and director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College.

John A. Staunton is professor of English education and American literature at Eastern Michigan University.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07956WBYR
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ West Virginia University Press; 1st edition (January 1, 2018)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 1, 2018
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 3166 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 258 pages
• #567 in College & University Education
• #872 in Pedagogy
• #6,431 in Instruction Methods

About the authors

James m. lang.

James M. Lang writes about higher education and writing. Currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame, he served for two decades a Professor of English and Director of the D'Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption University. His books include Distracted (2020), Small Teaching (2016) and Small Teaching Online (2019), and Cheating Lessons (2013). His work has appeared in multiple newspapers and magazines, including Time, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, the Conversation, and more. He received a Fulbright Specialist award in 2016 and has consulted for the United Nations on the development of educational materials on ethics and integrity. He has a Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University and a B.A. in English and Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame.

Jim lives in Worcester, MA with his wife, a public school teacher. They have five children in various stages of college or their early careers. Jim and Anne together operate the Lang Family Foundation, which provides grants in the areas of the arts, the environment, education, and initiatives to alleviate poverty and homelessness.

John A. Staunton

John A. Staunton is Associate Dean of the Honors College at Eastern Michigan University; he is a Professor of English education and American literature, and affiliate faculty in Women's and Gender Studies at EMU. He is the 2017 recipient of the Ronald W. Collins Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching at Eastern Michigan University. His scholarship focuses on issues of equity, access, and representation in literature pedagogy, American women writers, and place-based approaches to English Education. He is a founding Board Member of the Kate Chopin International Society and serves on the Advisory Board of the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Series for the West Virginia University Press.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Report an issue

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

Alice Munro, Nobel literature winner revered as short story master, dead at 92

(AP) - Nobel laureate Alice Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world’s most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history’s most honored short story writers, has died at age 92.

A spokesperson for publisher Penguin Random House Canada said Munro, winner of the Nobel literary prize in 2013, died Monday at home in Port Hope, Ontario. Munro had been in frail health for years and often spoke of retirement, a decision that proved final after the author’s 2012 collection, “Dear Life.”

Often ranked with Anton Chekhov, John Cheever and a handful of other short story writers, Munro achieved stature rare for an art form traditionally placed beneath the novel. She was the first lifelong Canadian to win the Nobel and the first recipient cited exclusively for short fiction. Echoing the judgment of so many before, the Swedish academy pronounced her a “master of the contemporary short story” who could “accommodate the entire epic complexity of the novel in just a few short pages.”

Munro, little known beyond Canada until her late 30s, also became one of the few short story writers to enjoy ongoing commercial success. Sales in North America alone exceeded 1 million copies and the Nobel announcement raised “Dear Life” to the high end of The New York Times’ bestseller list for paperback fiction. Other popular books included “Too Much Happiness,” “The View from Castle Rock” and “The Love of a Good Woman.”

Over a half century of writing, Munro perfected one of the greatest tricks of any art form: illuminating the universal through the particular, creating stories set around Canada that appealed to readers far away. She produced no single definitive work, but dozens of classics that were showcases of wisdom, technique and talent — her inspired plot twists and artful shifts of time and perspective; her subtle, sometimes cutting humor; her summation of lives in broad dimension and fine detail; her insights into people across age or background, her genius for sketching a character, like the adulterous woman introduced as “short, cushiony, dark-eyed, effusive. A stranger to irony.”

Her best known fiction included “The Beggar Maid,” a courtship between an insecure young woman and an officious rich boy who becomes her husband; “Corrie,” in which a wealthy young woman has an affair with an architect “equipped with a wife and young family”; and “The Moons of Jupiter,” about a middle-aged writer who visits her ailing father in a Toronto hospital and shares memories of different parts of their lives.

“I think any life can be interesting,” Munro said during a 2013 post-prize interview for the Nobel Foundation. “I think any surroundings can be interesting.”

Disliking Munro, as a writer or as a person, seemed almost heretical. The wide and welcoming smile captured in her author photographs was complemented by a down-to-earth manner and eyes of acute alertness, fitting for a woman who seemed to pull stories out of the air the way songwriters discovered melodies. She was admired without apparent envy, placed by the likes of Jonathan Franzen, John Updike and Cynthia Ozick at the very top of the pantheon. Munro’s daughter, Sheila Munro, wrote a memoir in which she confided that “so unassailable is the truth of her fiction that sometimes I even feel as though I’m living inside an Alice Munro story.” Fellow Canadian author Margaret Atwood called her a pioneer for women, and for Canadians.

“Back in the 1950s and 60s, when Munro began, there was a feeling that not only female writers but Canadians were thought to be both trespassing and transgressing,” Atwood wrote in a 2013 tribute published in the Guardian after Munro won the Nobel. “The road to the Nobel wasn’t an easy one for Munro: the odds that a literary star would emerge from her time and place would once have been zero.”

Although not overtly political, Munro witnessed and participated in the cultural revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s and permitted her characters to do the same. She was a farmer’s daughter who married young, then left her husband in the 1970s and took to “wearing miniskirts and prancing around,” as she recalled during a 2003 interview with The Associated Press. Many of her stories contrasted the generation of Munro’s parents with the more open-ended lives of their children, departing from the years when housewives daydreamed “between the walls that the husband was paying for.”

Moviegoers would become familiar with “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” the improbably seamless tale of a married woman with memory loss who has an affair with a fellow nursing home patient, a story further complicated by her husband’s many past infidelities. “The Bear” was adapted by Sarah Polley into the 2006 feature film “Away from Her,” which brought an Academy Award nomination for Julie Christie. In 2014, Kristen Wiig starred in “Hateship, Loveship,” an adaptation of the story “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage,” in which a housekeeper leaves her job and travels to a distant rural town to meet up with a man she believes is in love with her — unaware the romantic letters she has received were concocted by his daughter and a friend.

Even before the Nobel, Munro received honors from around the English-language world, including Britain’s Man Booker International Prize and the National Book Critics Circle award in the U.S., where the American Academy of Arts and Letters voted her in as an honorary member. In Canada, she was a three-time winner of the Governor’s General Award and a two-time winner of the Giller Prize.

Munro was a short story writer by choice, and, apparently, by design. Judith Jones, an editor at Alfred A. Knopf who worked with Updike and Anne Tyler, did not want to publish “Lives of Girls & Women,” her only novel, writing in an internal memo that “there’s no question the lady can write but it’s also clear she is primarily a short story writer.”

Munro would acknowledge that she didn’t think like a novelist.

“I have all these disconnected realities in my own life, and I see them in other people’s lives,” she told the AP. “That was one of the problems, why I couldn’t write novels. I never saw things hanging together too well.”

Alice Ann Laidlaw was born in Wingham, Ontario, in 1931, and spent much of her childhood there, a time and place she often used in her fiction, including the four autobiographical pieces that concluded “Dear Life.” Her father was a fox farmer, her mother a teacher and the family’s fortunes shifted between middle class and working poor, giving the future author a special sensitivity to money and class. Young Alice was often absorbed in literature, starting with the first time she was read Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” She was a compulsive inventor of stories and the “sort of child who reads walking upstairs and props a book in front of her when she does the dishes.”

A top student in high school, she received a scholarship to study at the University of Western Ontario, majoring in journalism as a “cover-up” for her pursuit of literature. She was still an undergraduate when she sold a story about a lonely teacher, “The Dimensions of a Shadow,” to CBC Radio. She was also publishing work in her school’s literary journal.

One fellow student read “Dimensions” and wrote to the then-Laidlaw, telling her the story reminded him of Chekhov. The student, Gerald Fremlin, would become her second husband. Another fellow student, James Munro, was her first husband. They married in 1951, when she was only 20, and had four children, one of whom died soon after birth.

Settling with her family in British Columbia, Alice Munro wrote between trips to school, housework and helping her husband at the bookstore that they co-owned and would turn up in some of her stories. She wrote one book in the laundry room of her house, her typewriter placed near the washer and dryer. Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers and other writers from the American South inspired her, through their sense of place and their understanding of the strange and absurd.

Isolated from the literary center of Toronto, she did manage to get published in several literary magazines and to attract the attention of an editor at Ryerson Press (later bought out by McGraw Hill). Her debut collection, “Dance of the Happy Shades,” was released in 1968 with a first printing of just under 2,700 copies. A year later it won the Governor’s General Award and made Munro a national celebrity — and curiosity. “Literary Fame Catches City Mother Unprepared,” read one newspaper headline.

“When the book first came they sent me a half dozen copies. I put them in the closet. I didn’t look at them. I didn’t tell my husband they had come, because I couldn’t bear it. I was afraid it was terrible,” Munro told the AP. “And one night, he was away, and I forced myself to sit down and read it all the way through, and I didn’t think it was too bad. And I felt I could acknowledge it and it would be OK.”

By the early ‘70s, she had left her husband, later observing that she was not “prepared to be a submissive wife.” Her changing life was best illustrated by her response to the annual Canadian census. For years, she had written down her occupation as “housewife.” In 1971, she switched to “writer.”

Over the next 40 years, her reputation and readership only grew, with many of her stories first appearing in The New Yorker. Her prose style was straightforward, her tone matter of fact, but her plots revealed unending disruption and disappointments: broken marriages, violent deaths, madness and dreams unfulfilled, or never even attempted. “Canadian Gothic” was one way she described the community of her childhood, a world she returned to when, in middle age, she and her second husband relocated to nearby Clinton.

“Shame and embarrassment are driving forces for Munro’s characters,” Atwood wrote, “just as perfectionism in the writing has been a driving force for her: getting it down, getting it right, but also the impossibility of that.”

She had the kind of curiosity that would have made her an ideal companion on a long train ride, imagining the lives of the other passengers. Munro wrote the story “Friend of My Youth,” in which a man has an affair with his fiancee’s sister and ends up living with both women, after an acquaintance told her about some neighbors who belonged to a religion that forbade card games. The author wanted to know more — about the religion, about the neighbors.

Even as a child, Munro had regarded the world as an adventure and mystery and herself as an observer, walking around Wingham and taking in the homes as if she were a tourist. In “The Peace of Utrecht,” an autobiographical story written in the late 1960s, a woman discovers an old high school notebook and remembers a dance she once attended with an intensity that would envelop her whole existence.

“And now an experience which seemed not at all memorable at the time,” Munro wrote, “had been transformed into something curiously meaningful for me, and complete; it took in more than the girls dancing and the single street, it spread over the whole town, its rudimentary pattern of streets and its bare trees and muddy yards just free of the snow, over the dirt roads where the lights of cars appeared, jolting toward the town, under an immense pale wash of sky.”

This story has been updated to correct the title of “The Beggar Maid.”

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Auburn football head coach gives update on Brian Battie after Florida shooting leaves 1 dead, 4 injured

Troup County student dies after being ejected from car in accident

WATCH LIVE: 2024 Graduations on WTVM

Two dead in shooting at Lowell Apartments in Columbus

Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office seize $350,000 worth of illegal narcotics in joint arrest

Latest news.

Grayson Murray dies at age 30 a day after withdrawing from Colonial, PGA Tour says

Customers left without their clothes after dry cleaning business suddenly closes

Nicki Minaj arrested at airport while on her Pink Friday 2 World Tour, reports say

Dolphin stuck in creek dies after 'last resort' rescue attempt, officials say

‘Seinfeld’ star Michael Richards reveals prostate cancer battle: ‘I thought ... I’m ready to go’