After some time surfing the web and gathering random bits of information, you start to get a sense of the topic. You are jotting notes and recording questions. You've started a mind-map to graphically track the relationship between concepts and you feel like things are coming together. Even a couple of the things the teacher rambled on about start to resonate with you.
A particular aspect of this topic catches your interest and you put together a research question and proposal for the teacher. You run it past him and he accepts it. He makes some comments about your research that you now actually understand and find helpful. You run off to do your research and write your paper. Not an easy start to things but in the end, things worked out.
Students often struggle with choosing a specific direction for their research when they don't really understand the broad topic in the first place. We need to ensure that they have enough time to explore the borad strokes, and if not enought time is spent in class introducing the big picture, resources like Wikipedia are often outstanding.
In our particular research, we found that one of the most powerful changes that we could make in how we designed the learning experience for the students was to extend the amount time given to the exploration of the topic. Extra time spent here, where we often don't give it, tended to result in a better understanding of the basic concepts, especially when that time involved inquiry circles or other social collaborations around the learning. This time also gave students time to find a connection to the topic that held some personal relevance.