The major projects in this course are expository research essays. The basic goal for each is to give you practice in defining a workable topic, gauging the scope of your project appropriately, conducting college-level research, and writing up your findings in a logical and interesting way. You and/or you and your group will be asked to follow the procedures outlined in the Writing Process section of this website so you can achieve these basic goals efficiently.
Topic choice is entirely up to you, but below I suggest three possible fields of inquiry to help you get started. You don’t necessarily have to investigate a topic in each field for each paper. In fact, your topic doesn’t have to fit neatly into any of the fields. We’ll both be happier if your topic is something that interests you.
Note: The assignment is to craft an expository research essay—not a research-based persuasive essay. Any topic is fair game in this course, but some students find it difficult to stand back from their own intellectual and/or spiritual commitments when writing about such controversial subjects as abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, or religion. You may write about such hot-button issues, but only if you can do so as an objective reporter considering fairly all sides. Please note: even if you write the most brilliant research-based argument in human history and convert me and the rest of the world to your position, I’ll still fail your paper for not following the assignment to wirte an expository research essay.
Field 1: The “Green Paper.” Anyone who is not in complete denial is talking about our deteriorating environment—deforestation, strip mining, acid rain, global warming, over-fishing, over-fertilization, the difficulties in disposing of toxic and nuclear wastes. But what are the facts? What do you really know about any environmental issue? Where does your information come from? How reliable is it? Choosing a topic in this field will help you to gain some expertise in a least one area of environmental concern and draw your own conclusions.
Once you’ve decided on a topic within this field, you’ll need to dig up information on at least three related issues: 1) the physics of the problem—how the environmental impact occurs; 2) the biology of the problem—what happens to the plants and animals affected by the problem; and 3) the socio-economics of the problem—the human activities and needs that occasion the environmental impact. (Some papers will also have to consider the “chemistry of the problem”—what chemical compounds are released into the environment as a result of the environmental impact and what chemical reactions result from this release.)
Field 2: The “Public Policy” Paper. You hear people criticize government officials all the time: they’re crooks; they don’t keep promises; they aren’t principled; they waste money; they don’t use common sense. But these easy criticisms don’t consider the difficulty of creating laws that are simultaneously intelligent, fair, and politically possible. The question remains: what influences shape public policy? What information is considered? What pressures do special interest groups exert? How do such abstract and occasionally relative moral values like right and wrong figure in the making of public policy?
You will choose an area of public policy that interests you, read all you can about it, and write a report that explains what you found out. The possibilities are almost endless—health care, stem cell research, anti-smoking laws, the consitutional concerns about raising money for public schools through property taxes, term limits, campaign finance reform, our lack of an energy policy and what that means for the near future—you name it.
Stuck for ideas? Read through the front sections of the Plain Dealer or the New York Times for the last couple of weeks and see what public policy issues they’re discussing. Then find out all you can about that issue and write up a report that explains it to the rest of us.
Field 3, the “Discovery Channel Paper”: It’s hard to pick up a newspaper or listen to the news without hearing about the latest scientific discovery. Whether it’s space probes sent to Mars or elsewhere in the galaxy, new medical findings, or something astonishing from an archeological dig, new knowledge is being generated all the time. This paper asks you to acquaint yourself with a recent invention, exploration, or discovery and to report what you learn to the rest of us. Like all research papers, this paper asks you to work like a news writer, answering the 6 basic questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how?
Formatting and Packaging Your Research Paper
Since this is a paperless classroom, all work-for-grade will be typed. In addition, your work should be double-spaced, use a 12-point serif font (i.e. Times or Times New Roman), 1" margins on all sides. The pages should be numbered, after page one (if you don’t know how to make a “different first page,” please ask). Do not create title pages, enlarge the font size, shrink the margins, or any other means of making your paper seem longer than it actually is; instead, observe the above formatting rules and put your name, the date, and a title in the upper-left corner of the first page of your document.
When submitting your research papers for a grade, please attach all drafts as Microsoft Word files, being sure they are clearly labeled using the approved abbreviations for each assignment. No paper will be graded that does not include all drafts in the final package.
You will be asked to do a total of four relatively short assignments that formalize crucial steps in the research and writing processes. The first three of these assignments—the Exploratory Search, the Work Plan, and the Abstract—are to be completed before you begin drafting your research papers. The final “minor” assignment—the Post-Paper Analysis—should be emailed in the final package that includes the working and final drafts of your paper. While these assignments are “minor” in terms of length, their importance to the successful completion of your research papers cannot be overstated. They will help you think through your project, get it organized, and to learn from your experience.
Once you have (or your group has) decided on a subject, you will need to get started on the research. This assignment helps you organize and make good early use of the sources and information you uncover. The Exploratory Search is a bibliographic summary of your initial research—it will look just like a works cited page. The goal is to generate as large a list as you possibly can (or 3 pages whichever is shortest). In addition to a long list, you will want to tap as many kinds of sources as possible; attempt to find and present in this document equal numbers of books, periodical articles, and websites.
How to: Go on-line and, using the Maagnet and OhioLink databases and the Web, search for all you can find on your topic and closely related areas. Alphabetize these materials (see the Research Process materials for helpful hints on this) and format them according to one of the style sheets for creating a Works Cited page in our Handbook. Whether or not you ultimately use or can even acquire the information discovered during this initial search of the literature, you’ll be able to put it to several good uses right from the start. (For example, you'll be able to identify a good introduction to your subject which you can read and use for the Abstract assignment and to gain some basic information about your subject before you start writing.)
Note: To receive full credit, your Exploratory Search needs to be no less than three full pages long (2.5 pages isn’t three pages). Entries should be double-spaced, but please do not place extra paragraph returns between entries, use large font sizes, large margins, or pad your Exploratory Search with citations that won’t help you understand your subject.
Format: As with the Research Papers, simply record your identifying information in the upper-right-hand corner of your first page and staple together all relevant pages in the upper-left-hand corner. Consult the following model. Notice that entries are alphabetized & utilize hanging indents.
Click here to see a model of this assignment.
The Work Plan Memo
The Work Plan is as close to outlining as we get in this class. If you’re good at outlining and it helps you get organized, by all means do that too. However, for those, like me, who find that outlines and the final product have too little relationship to one another to be worth the effort, this assignment allows you to assess the scope, content, and organization of your project—and submit it to me for feedback—without having to remember whether Roman numerals are below or above arabic numerals.
Students are often tempted to breeze through this assignment; but, like more formal outlines, time spent figuring out what you have to say and how to organize it will save you hours of revising and reshuffling later. So, invest careful thought into this assignment to save yourself work later.
The Work Plan Memo is addressed to me and should discuss all of the following:
1. What your topic is and what the key issues related to your topic are. For example, if your topic is “Deforestation in the Amazon,” you’ll need to formulate a sentence that tells me what you’re going to say or do with your topic: “Our paper will discuss the effects of deforestation on . . . X, Y, and Z.” When you discuss the key issues related to your topic, be as thorough as possible: “We think the key issues are forestry techniques, short-sighted land management policies, government corruption, soil erosion, species loss, the prospect of sustainable harvests, and we’ll conclude with the reasons why people are willing to work so hard at cutting down the last great rain forest on earth.”
2. What you do and don’t know about your subject and what your research has so far turned up. Take the trouble to be specific—and be honest about what you do and don’t know. List specific texts you’ve encountered in your research that should prove helpful and discuss why you think they will help. If you can formulate questions that you can’t answer at the beginning of your research, you can make much better use of search engines, indices, and your reading time.
3. How you plan to organize the data. Do your best to figure out which sections and issues will appear in which order in the paper. Doing this much advance thinking will help you manage your time. You can time when to dive into which research materials by figuring where your paper is going to start and focusing your reading only on the information relevant to that section. Thinking through organization issues should also help you determine what gaps you have in your knowledge or research materials and what questions you’ll need to get answers to.
Note to Collaborators: Collaborative groups will prepare a joint Work Plan Memo. You will cover all the same issues that individual writers must cover, but there are some additional things to consider when writing with a group. Most importantly, you should be very specific about who is doing which tasks. If you’ve determined that your paper is going to cover 4 basic issues, you need to delegate those tasks and let me know who is doing what. Strive for an equitable distribution of work. If the number of sections you have to read and write for cannot be evenly divided amongst the members of your group, you could assign someone responsibility for editorial duties in lieu of writing a section. The primary consideration is that everyone makes an approximately equal contribution to the final project.
Click here to see a model of this assignment.
The abstract gives you an occasion to familiarize yourself with the basic issues concerning your topic by reading or at least skimming one of the sources you’ve uncovered before you set to work on a draft. Therefore, you should pick something that looks like it will give you basic overview information or that will fill gaps in your knowledge. The ultimate goal of this assignment is to transmit all of the author’s key points and to give your reader some sense of how the text is organized and how useful it might be to his or her own research. It doesn’t strive for originality or flair—nor does it communicate your opinion.
How to: Format your abstract with a hanging indent. The abstract begins with the full bibligraphic citation of the text you’re summarizing and continues as though it were one paragraph. Consult the model below to get a sense of how all this goes together.
Format: There are many ways to abstract texts, but in this class we’ll put the emphasis on brevity. Therefore all abstracts must be no more than 150 words long (and not a lot less). Begin the abstract with a bibliographic citation of the text you’ve chosen; thereafter you will not need to repeat the author’s name or the text’s title. Most importantly, you may not paraphrase the author’s ideas; rather, you will summarize what the text does. To encourage this, begin each line with a verb that goes with the words “The text . . .” The text can cover, present, demonstrate, argue, outline, recount, and so on. See the model below.
Someone reading your abstract should be able to tell the quality of the research and what information they will find there. It will be important to mention whether your source has a bibliography or index or some other scholarly apparatus that would help other researchers.
Click here to see a model of this assignment.
The Post-Paper Analyis
The Post-Paper Analysis (PPA) requires a great deal of detail; therefore, you should keep notes as you work along. Present your information to me in memo form and address the following:
√ The degree to which your paper followed your work plan. (It will help if you re-read your work plan before you write this memo.) In this section of your memo, you should consider how well your original plan was conceived—did it really help you draft your paper? What could you have done to make the work plan more useful? You should also consider how far your paper diverged from the work plan and why you think it did or did not change as you began to write—did the information you uncovered during your research cause you to alter the proposed direction of the paper? What organizational decisions did you have to make as you read more and more about your topic?
√ What you learned about how you convert ideas into written words. Reflect on how you came up with our original idea. Why did you choose this of all possible topics? What, specifically, did you learn about your topic that you didn’t already know? How do you feel about your topic choice now that you have read and written about it? How did research change your perception of your topic? Did you find yourself writing differently the more you read? In what ways?
√ What did you learn about writing from the multi-draft process that we used in this class? What kinds of things do you pay more attention to now than you used to? What do you think you’ll be able to take with you from this class and apply to other assignments in other classes—or even on the job?
√ What did you learn about how you think and write that you never really thought about before?
For Collaborative Papers: The PPA assignment, since it requires you to reflect on what you learned and the experience of researching and writing, is an individual assignment—even when the paper was produced collaboratively. However, you must discuss all of the above and the following:
√ Which group member wrote which specific parts of the paper
√ Attendance at group meetings; who showed, who didn’t on which specific days and meeting times
√ Tone of group meetings; were your meetings friendly, businesslike? Were their irritations and conflicts? What issues were involved? How were they resolved?
√ Which member fulfilled which of the basic collaborator roles discussed earlier in this packet? Review the above list and cite specific behaviors that confirm your assessment of acted in which roles.
√ What did you learn about collaboration that you wish you’d known before you got started?
Click here to see a model of this assignment.
Oral Presentation
During the last week of class, your collaborative writing group will be asked to make a PowerPoint presentation summarizing the highlights of your final research paper. While it may seem strange at first that a writing class would require an oral presentation, this exercise will prepare you for advanced college work and the world after college. This assignment will provide you with a general format and some basic principles that you can adapt to any number of future speaking situations.
Every presentation in this class will observe the following outline:
Overview: You will provide a description of your overall presentation—what your topic is, what dimensions of it you will cover in your presentation. To get started, your group will need to appoint a moderator who will introduce the topic, the members of the group, and outline who will being discussing which aspect of your presentation.
Content: The purpose of your talk is to inform your audience about the key findings of your research. To accompish this, your group will have to decide how much of what your research uncovered can be fit into a 20-minute presentation. Create enough subtopics so that each member of your group speaks for about the same length of time and so that all the highlights can be covered in the time allowed.
Conclusion: Please don’t end your presentation with a summary of all that you just said. Rather, conclude your talk by indicating explicitly what significance the information you just shared has for your audience and/or the future directions research in your subject area is likely to take. Be sure to allow time for a couple of questions at the conclusion of your presentation.
Evaluation Criteria: Your grade on the Oral Presentation will be based on the following criteria:
1. Introduction: Did the introduction capture audience interest; was necessary background given; was a clear purpose conveyed?
2. Organization & Content: Was there a clear pattern of organization; were transitions between sections clear and effective; did the presentation lead the audience through the most significant research findings; did the presentation adequately anticipate audience questions; were all of the most significant issues included in the presentation?
4. Visual Aids: Were PowerPoint slides and other visual aids used effectively and appropriately; were they carefully prepared?
5. Conclusion: Were key points reinforced in terms of why they are relevant to the audience; was a sense of closure provided?
6. Discussion: Were questions answered accurately, clearly, effectively?
Please consult these guidelines for additional help creating your oral presentation.
The Class Evaluation Memo
When the class is over and you’re really, really cranky, it’ll be your turn to grade me and this class. Your last official act before heading out the door will be to prepare a memo that considers the following:
• The Assignments. What did you think of the assignments? Do you feel that they were sufficiently broad to permit freedom of choice? Or were the assignments too restrictive? Were the assignment sheets clear? What did you like the most/the least about the assignments?
• Teaching style. How’d I do? Did I articulate course expectations clearly enough? Did I answer questions well? Did I seem to pay equal attention to everyone? Did I provide sufficient help as you worked through the various drafts of your papers? What did I cover well? What strengths and/or weaknesses do I seem to possess as a teacher?
• The comments on the drafts. Were they sufficiently helpful? What could have been covered during class that we really didn’t cover? Were you expecting to learn about some aspect of writing that we didn’t pay sufficient attention to?
• The grading. Was the grading, in your view, fair? Why do you or don’t you think so?
• The Handbook. I know we didn’t use the Handbook every day, but was sufficiently useful as a reference tool to justify the expense of buying it? How else might we have used it?
You earn full points on this assignment by being thorough and honest. You can tell me the class sucked and that I should find a new line of work, but you need to say why in a thoughtful, detailed way.
Click here to see a model of this assignment.