Literature Review: A Self-Guided Tutorial for NUR 288

Unlike an annotated bibliography that summarizes sources in a list, a literature review discusses the themes, trends, and theories in a prose format. Your job in writing a literature review is to evaluate and synthesize the literature in order to make connections among scholarly works and to find gaps in the literature that your research could address. NOTE: If you used the synthesis matrix or the template Literature Review Prep - with Synthesis Matrix from the previous page to document your articles, then all you have to do at this point is write the literature review. 

The "Organizing your Review" portion of the Literature Review page from the John Hopkins Sheridan Libraries provides several effective strategies for writing the literature review:

• Include only the most important points from each source. Your literature review should not be a summary and evaluation of each article, one after the other.  Your sources must be integrated together to create a narrative on your topic. 
• Include your own conclusions from analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing what you learned from these articles.
• Be sure that you are accurately representing the scholars' works in your own words.

You can also reach out to the Writing Center at WCC for help with reviewing your final draft paper.

Refer back to the examples in section 2 to observe how these scholars have organized and written their literature reviews.

Remember to always include your references with your QI Poster to support your project based on evidence from the literature. 

FINAL STEP  for NUR 288 Library Research 

Submit the one-question acknowledgment question. Then you will return to NUR 288 Canvas Course Module 1 to complete the Library Research 30-question Quiz.