Step 1:Findthree (3) non-scholarly sourcesthat help support your working thesis for the
MP
.
"What is a 'non-scholarly source?!"So glad you asked.So many things. These could be articles you find on the open web, blogs, social media accounts (Twitter), etc. Some common news sources areNew York Times,Huffington Post, etc. But remember you can go beyond that--especially if this isn't the typical stuff covered by those sites! Doing something on gaming? Try gaming sites/blogs. That sort of thing. Pretty much anything that is written and available on the open web (as in not stuffy peer reviewed stuff meant for academics) is fair game here...just make sure it passes the CRAAP test from last week's video!
Important:I know this can be overwhelming at first, but I would start with a simple Google search of your topic and/or thesis. See what's out there! Come to me with questions.
Step 2:Complete a Research Log (
linked here
Links to an external site.
--just
make your own copyLinks to an external site.
) for the articles you found this week as part of your research process.Complete one Research Log form for each article!As in please don't lump them all together in one chart...butyou can put all three charts in one document.
This project provides students with the opportunity to develop their approaches to research through inquiry by interrogating a topic and then arriving at a position supported by scholarship.
To start the research process, students will write a brief
Proposal
that includes: topic, a set of research questions, and a general plan of attack for the project at hand. This project itself has two major components: 1) the
Annotated Bibliography
and 2) the
Hypertext Essay
. Something important to note:This is not your typical research essay project.Those are stiff, formal, and probably won't be read by many people. It's best tothink of this more like an opinion article you would find on a website.What does that mean? It means the focus should be on somethingrelevantthat will generate interest to a wider audience. Yes, there's a strong research component...but that doesn't mean the project can't be fun! See the
list of topics and articles
to see what I mean.
This approach allows students to develop a research project while also incorporating a digital conversation within their essay. By first creating the annotated bibliography, students will learn the best way for them to fully explore research—finding sources, evaluating them, and then putting them into conversation with other scholars as well as finding their own academic voice in the essay. The multimodal nature of this project will include links to sources/contexts/genres, videos, images and polished words on the page. Students will explore approaches to citation methods (MLA/APA) which will also allow them to interrogate conceptions of plagiarism and copyright laws as they incorporate both print and digital work into their own document.
Instructions
This project asks that students engage with both scholarly and non-scholarly sources in order to gain a well-rounded understanding of their topic. To start,
choose an article from this list.From this article, you will get the topic of your project as well as establish your working thesis to help focus your research path and form the basis for your Hypertext Essay. Students must include a minimum of3 scholarly (peer reviewed) sources, at least3 non scholarly sources, and the inclusion of at least6 digital componentsthroughout the text. Therefore,at minimum 12 sources will be incorporated. Students have free reign over the non-scholarly source types, but proper citations must be included while the scholarly sources will be found through the use of Reynolds library databases.