Undergraduate Unit Project
You will select or be assigned one of the communities
we study this semester to explore in more depth. There will be from
two to four students working on the unit with you.
This project will require two stages:
- Prepare an annotated bibliography
on that unit of the course. This should be ten to twenty
sources including some to explain how people in that community lived,
some that explain discourse from that community, and some on the
speakers we will be studying. If appropriate, you may also want
to read responses to public life or the speakers of the day in newspapers
or magazines from the time and place. You may start with the bibliography
on the class website, but should go beyond it. The bibliography
should be well rounded. Although some of your sources may
be from the internet, the internet cannot always be relied upon
for quality sources of information. You will want to make
certain that you go beyond strict reliance on the internet.
The bibliography should cite, in proper MLA or APA format, sources
you have consulted. To each should be added an annotation. An annotation
is two or three sentences that (1) describe what is contained in
the source, and (2) explain what you learned from the source that
you find important to our class discussion. Attach a properly signed
honors pledge.
You may do the bibliography individually or
in a group. All students choosing to complete the bibliography assignment
in a group are expected to work together on the assignment; that is, you may pool your sources for the bibliography, but everyone should read all the sources collected, and a healthy discussion of the things found should precede your responsibilities in class. The criteria for grading will be applied to the bibliography so when the sources come together make certain it measures up to expectations. Your group bibliography should be a single document with consistent and correct style. If you do work in groups, each person in the group should sign off individually with an honor pledge on
a bibliography submitted by a group and will receive an identical
grade with all others in the group. Your signature on the group honor pledge indicates that you did work as a group.
The bibliography is due on the
day we discuss your unit in the course. The bibliography will be
five percent of your grade.
- Classroom discussion. Read
the material you gathered in the bibliography to prepare yourself
for class discussion. It is also a good idea for the group to get
together before the class discussion to share the knowledge they have
attained in reading the material in their bibliography. You are responsible
and will be graded on your participation in class on the day(s) when
your community is discussed. I will expect you to have comments that
go beyond the reading of the class and the lectures, comments that
show your use of the bibliography you have constructed. Your grade
on the discussion will be five percent of your final grade.
Recommendations for doing
the assignment
Step 1: Planning your research strategy
Conceptualizing the Research. Remember that your purpose
is to deepen your knowledge of a particular community studied in
the course this semester. I also expect some breadth as you
deepen your knowledge. The assignment
indicates three different areas you will need to research: "some
[sources] to explain how people in that community lived, some that
explain discourse from that community, and some on the speakers
we will be studying."
Planning your time. This is not going to be an assignment
you complete overnight. You will have read somewhere between
three and five hundred pages of material by the time you have finished.
So leave yourself plenty of time. But also, don't overestimate
what you will be able to do. Have an intelligent strategy
that allows you to do the assignment well within the time constraints
that you have.
General strategies for your reading. What sorts of
things are you going to spend your time reading?
Internet sites often give you shallow explanations
of ideas that are important to your understanding but most such
sites lack depth or full vetting for accuracy. Learn
to differentiate unvetted from vetted sources when you access
material through your computer.
Articles that appear in vetted academic journals or even some
well edited magazines have passed the scrutiny of others who are
able to judge whether they are accurate and reasonable in the
context of their historical period.
Obviously, books are longer than journal articles, so they take
longer to read. Yet, they may or may not tell you much more
than the article. For example, one can read about the ideograph
of <equality> in a journal article by Celeste Condit and
John Lucaites or can read their book on the topic. The book
will provide you many more details and a fuller historical sweep,
valuable to a scholar reading their work. But you may not
need that additional depth. If you understand the journal
article, you may be able to make your full contribution to the
discussion. I do not discourage the reading of a book at some
point in your preparation, but deal with books intelligently.
Obviously, reading focused sections of books takes less time
but provides less depth than full books. Thus, you could
read the section of Condit and Lucaites' book dealing with abolition,
but would miss the full context of the ideograph in history.
Yet, if the abolition period is your unit assignment, this section
may be sufficient reading.
Another type of book collects essays from several authors on
a particular subject. These essays function more like journal
articles than full books so they can be very useful sources.
I would encourage you to think in terms of starting with shallower
sources, perhaps from the internet (with proper
caution), moving quickly to articles from periodicals and
essays from, or sections of, books before you take on whole books.
Thus, you will have built a kind of upside down pyramid, beginning
with shallower material and working yourself toward more depth
based on that early reading. But think through this strategy
before you begin.
Identifying search terms. As you begin your research
you need to find quality sources using data bases. The first
step in this is your making a list of search terms to put into the
search engines you will use. You should
construct this list from the following:
Key terms from the lecture on the unit.
Names of important speakers from the period including those whose
speeches you will read.
This list should be expanded as you begin your research and discover
new terms to add and search. Drop unfruitful search terms
from your list and add terms you discover in your research that
seem useful.
Identify Key Databases. To complete your strategy,
you need to decide which databases to consult and/or search using
the key terms you have developed. I recommend the following:
Begin with the bibliography from the course website.
Indexes accessing reliable and disciplined sources. Available
through the RESEARCH PORT at the library's website, including
Communication and Mass Media Complete. This database
will give you access to earlier work in communication.
America: History and Life. This is an excellent
database for the history portion of the assignment.
Early American Imprints. This will give you access
to some rhetoric written at the time.
Academic Search Premier. While this is a general,
multidisciplinary database, its size and scope make it worth
searching for most academic subjects.
Non-library internet search engine
such as GOOGLE. Realize that material is placed on the internet
without regard to its reliability and without benefit of checks
for accuracy. Information you gain through this mode of
searching should be approached with due caution.
Step 2: Beginning your research
Building your Bibliography. You are now ready to execute
your strategy and begin your research.
Don't do your bibliography last, begin it now.
As you find possible sources record them in proper form in a
bibliography including information on their call number in the
library, URL, or any other information that will help you locate
them. You will save yourself time later.
Annotate as you acquire information on what the sources might
have in them.
Implement your strategy by placing your bibliography in the
order you want to look at the sources.
Locate your initial sources. You are ready to begin
looking for your initial sources.
Follow your strategy decisions above.
Keep your research balanced, looking for six or seven sources
in each category that you need to look at.
Don't expect everything you look at to be useful. When
it is not, indicate this on the bibliography entry so that you
do not go back to sources you have already seen.
Reading sources. As you read read for three different
things:
Knowledge. How is your understanding growing?
What did you learn from the source?
Specifics. What are your finding that you want to
add to the class discussion? Take these in notes.
Other things to read. Keep adding to your bibliography
from footnotes and references. Pay special attention to
books that might be worthwhile to spend the time on.
Step 3: Completing your research
Follow the hot trails. When you find good material,
follow up on it with other sources mentioned by the source.
Keep checking yourself for balance. Remember the balance
I am looking for in your reading:
by subject matter, how people lived, the discourse of the community,
and speakers we are studying.
by depth and quality, shallower sources such as the general internet
and more disciplined sources from your library research.
Work through what you have gained. Look back over
your notes and summarize what you know. If you are working
with a group sit down and talk through how your work fits together.
Think about what you would like to add to the discussion.
Finalize your annotated bibliography. Select the sources
that have been most useful in each of the areas of your research
and prepare them biblioography to be handed in. Remember to prepare
it with a word processor, using proper MLA or APA form. You
will be graded on form as well as content. An "A"
bibliography will have a well balanced and sufficient choice of
sources, will have annotations that assist in your preparation for
discussion, and will follow proper form and format.
A note about "the internet"
Obviously electronic access makes the gathering of information easier
for all of us. But there are some things that you have to keep
in mind when doing research through this easy method.
It is wise to differentiate between the internet -- that vast accumulation
of information that you access through GOOGLE, YAHOO, and similar
search engines -- and the less open resources of a library that
are increasingly available electronically through your computer.
Both are accessible through your computer but they are different
reservoirs of information. These reservoirs have different gateways:
GOOGLE and YAHOO versus GOOGLE SCHOLAR, RESEARCH PORT, and the ONLINE
CATALOG, the latter two found on the university libraries' website..
Not all information available on the internet or anywhere else
is equally reliable. There are institutions and processes that are
designed and function to examine the truth, comprehensiveness, and
reliability of information. Among these institutions are those of
academic scholarship and responsible editorial scrutiny. We say
that in these instiutional processes that information is "disciplined"
or "vetted." The internet has greatly complicated our
lives with regard to such vetting. Some material found on the internet
is disciplined, but much is simply posted by someone without benefit
of the full, careful, review of disciplined research. You
must now develop your ability to differentiate between information
that has this reliability and information without this reliability.
The library door used to do that for you; now you are on your own.
You need to train yourself to recognize the signs of this reliability.
Is the material published under the primature of a scholarly organization?
Is the source a known reliable researcher in the subject matter
involved? Is there evidence of an editorial process that would insist
on the reliability of material published? Does a website explain
how material is screened for inclusion?
The material that is generally available in the bricks and mortar
library is more reliable knowledge, disciplined by careful
review, correction, and improvement through the editorial processes
that are a part of academic life. It is this kind of disciplined
knowledge that you pay big bucks to acquire at a university.
We are in the midst of a period when the access to this information
is shifting from the bricks and mortar library to electronic access.
During this period, you will seldom be able to get the full benefit
of the library from your computer. You will need to go to
the bricks and mortar building to do some of your work.
So, I offer the following advice to you:
Start with what you can access electronically.
Differentiate in your own mind between the internet and electronically
accessible library material. Both you access electronically,
but with different levels of reliability.
Be prepared to work across the electronic/bricks and mortar threshold
of the library.
I do not expect that all your research will have to take place in the
library, but I suspect some of it will. I will not penalize you
for not entering the library. But I will penalize you for having
narrow bibliographies without depth in the areas I have asked for depth.
You may penalize yourself if you restrict yourself only to material
available on the internet or through electronic sources.
Grading the bibliography
The bibliography will be graded on the following criteria:
Comprehensiveness. Does the overall biblography treat all I asked:
how people in that community lived, the discourse
from that community, the speakers we will be studying and, if appropriate,
responses to public life or the speakers of the day in newspapers
or magazines from the time and place?
Depth. Does the bibliography contain some
specific work as well as general treatments of the time, place,
and speaker?
Quality. Does the bibliography reflect due
attention to the vetting process? That is, is their sufficient material
that would indicate academic or carefully edited work?
Quantity. Are there sufficient entries (at
least ten to twenty) to achieve comprehensiveness? Note the numbers
are guidelines, comprehensiveness is the criterion.
Proper Form. Have you followed APA or MLA
form in citing your sources?
Annotation. Do your annotations provide
evidence that you have (a) read the material, and (b) thought about
how you might use it in class discussion.
An "A" bibliography will be superior in all regards. All
students choosing to complete the bibliography assignment in a group
will receive an identical grade with all others in the group. The bibliography
will be five percent of your grade.
Grading the class discussion
You will be graded on your participation in
class on the day(s) when your community is discussed. Criteria will
be:
Willingness to contribute. Have you taken
the initiative to add valuable content to our class discussion?
Notice that there is no linear scale that the more you contribute
in class, the better your grade. On the other hand, I expect to
see your participating freely and voluntarily.
Depth of contribution. Do your comments
go beyond the reading of the class and the lectures? Do they show
your use of the bibliography you have constructed?
Relevance and significance of contribution.
Do your comments add important insight into the unit and the speaker
that we are studying.
An "A" contribution will add signficantly
to the quality of the learning that takes place during the contribution.
Even if your bibliography grade is a group grade, your discussion grade
will be individual. Your grade on the discussion will be five percent
of your final grade.
