Below is a model of the Post-Paper Analysis memo. Notice how this student took this assignment as an opportunity to reflect carefully on how his group’s paper came together (warts and all!). Notice also how he works through most of the questions raised by the assignment sheet.

To: Scott Leonard

From: Norman Conquest

RE: Post-Paper Analysis 3

15 Feb. 2005

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I’ve got to admit, this collaborative paper stuff turned out better than I thought it would.  My previous experiences with group projects were bad.  The other people in those groups sucked!  I ended up doing all the work most of the time and my grade suffered.  But Grace and Bill worked hard, had good ideas, and pushed me to do my best work ever!

Like the other two times, the final project deviated somewhat from the work plan—but in a good way!  I guess that the Work Plan helped, but our topic changed pretty drastically.  I think that’s because our research question was pretty general—“Why are gas prices so high?”  We learned a lot about commodities markets.  Well, o.k., Bill learned a lot about commodities markets.  He’s the business major in the group. 

But, to tell the truth, all the stuff about future supplies and current demand was pretty boring.  We discovered there’s a lot of stuff out there about the coming “end of oil” and alternative sources of energy and so we decided to look into that.  But “Alternative Energy” is pretty broad too.  In the end, we decided to do an in-depth paper on one form of alternative energy—windmills.

Once we got settled on this specific topic, we used a couple of the websites we found in our Exploratory Search to get started.  These led us to other references and pretty quick we were able to divide the reading up and get started drafting.

The drafting process really helped because we felt like we were getting a late start on our actual topic.  That first draft wasn’t very long and so we didn’t get much helpful feedback that time, but it gave us a little breathing room.  The next draft was much better, but it was still three separate papers.  This time the feedback was much better, especially your comments.  We never really thought about the fact that there might be negative environmental consequences by putting wind farms up all around the world.  Once we started looking into that, we found out that most of the critics of wind farms actually are proponents of other alternative energy sources.  So we tried to present what they said farily, but pointed out to our readers that the critics might be biased.

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All in all, I’ve learned quite a bit about research.  Not just how to find stuff, but how to think about whether the information I’m reading is reliable.  I used to pretty much trust anything I saw in writing.  I figured that nobody would go to the trouble of writing something if they didn’t know their facts.  Boy, was I wrong about that one!

Anyway, the group met regularly and the attendance was pretty good.  We got along great!  I actually looked forward to coming to class.  (ha!)  Bill missed one class meeting and I missed those two (when my mom couldn’t watch my daughter and I had to hang out with her.  Grace was perfect—of course!  But seriously, she was sort of the unofficial leader of the group.  She made sure that we didn’t leave class until everybody knew what their assignment was.  She also was our editor.  She took the drafts and combined them into one paper and made sure they were ready to go on draft days.  Bill and I read more than she did and our sections were longer, but Grace was like the glue that held our group together. 

Bill did the section on how wind farms actually work and how they make money for the people who build them and sell the energy to energy companies.  I did the section on the environmental impact of wind farms and the one that considered how wind farming technology might spread and help supply electricity in the future.  Grace wrote our introduction and conclusion and helped Bill with the technical information about how windmills work to produce electricity.

I’d say I was the idea-generator because I was the one who came up with the original topic and was the one who realized that we needed to narrow it.  Grace was the project manager and sometimes the devil’s advocate.  She always looked for holes in our ideas.  Bill was the joker of the group.  He kept things light when we felt under pressure.  He was super easy to work with. 

I just want to say thanks for forcing me to try group work again.  This is the best paper I’ve ever written.  Or I should say that it is better than any paper I could have written on my own.  And I’ve made a couple new friends!