Exploring

Sparknotes-- a tool students of every kind use at one point or another, often to supplement actually reading an original text.
           Urban Dictionary (a dictionary for social definitions and common uses) defines it as: "mankind's greatest invention," "a lazy person's way to do a book report." Some of the context comments (censored) read: "I have a test on Macbeth tomorrow. Sparknotes to the rescue!" and "Give up [reading]?... No, I used Sparknotes."

So I have decided to look into a research paper about  Sparknotes and teaching.

I plan on gearing it towards a teacher audience concerning 'going beyond Sparknotes.'

I think it is important for teachers to realize that they are not going to get rid of Sparknotes, so they might as well use it as a launch-pad or create a teaching style that requires the student to go beyond what they can discover on this site.

Sparknotes is an aggregation of information including: general outlines and summaries of texts, symbolic meanings, character analysis, and more.

I plan on contacting a few high school teachers and see what their responses are to the influence of Sparknotes in their classroom and their methods of handling the reality that the majority of students use it. I will also focus them to the subject of Shakespeare because this is a paper for a Shakespeare class.

I hope to contact some English teachers--local and from my hometown. I also think that Drama teachers often encounter Shakespeare in their teaching, so I can reach out to a few of those. I think also contacting some professors who teach Shakespeare or general English classes would be interesting too.