INLS 200: Research paper

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This course has one major assignment, worth 90% of your final grade: a research paper. (The final 10% is your participation grade.)

More accurately, your research paper should be an assignment for another course that you're taking this semester. The assignments for this course are a set of deliverables that come from the smaller steps that you must go through when working on a research paper.

This assignment requires you to develop strategies to retrieve information, evaluate the information retrieved, and use that information to respond to a question. There are 2 goals for this assignment:

  1. To get you to move through the process of working on a research paper more deliberately, and to think critically about your processes of information seeking, evaluation, and use.
  2. To improve your research paper for your other course.

You will use various sources to retrieve information relevant to your research question. You will critique the information sources that you use, and organize those sources in a citation database. You will seek the assistance of a librarian with some part of your research. You will contribute to the existing body of knowledge on your research topic, by contributing to Wikipedia. Finally, you will write a research paper and an overview of your research process.

I suppose it's possible that you might have no research paper assignments for other courses this semester. If you think this is your situation, you will need to convince me. If this is your situation, you can pursue a research question that comes from other sources: Are you an Honors Carolina student? Pursue a research question that you are considering for your senior Honors thesis. Are you Minoring in Entrepreneurship? Pursue a research question that will inform your venture plan. Or suggest an alternative.

The deliverables for this assignment are as follows:

  1. The assignment description from your other course, that describes the research paper you will be working on.
  2. A research question: 2 drafts. (10 points)
  3. 3 evaluations of information sources. (30 points)
  4. 1 evaluation of an interaction with a librarian. (10 points)
  5. Contribute to 2 Wikipedia articles on topics related to your research question. (10 points)
  6. A database of citations in Zotero, EndNote, or RefWorks. (20 points)
  7. The final paper or other deliverable that you submit in your other course. (10 points)


Contents

Research paper assignment description

This part of the assignment is a gimme: All you need to do is give me the number and name of your other course, and the assignment description for the research paper for this course.

Tag your post with the tag assignment description.


Research question

You will develop a research question, on which your research paper will be based.

Obviously you would have to do this anyway, in the context of your other course. The goal of this part of the assignment is to help you craft a better research question. It's difficult to craft a good research question; even seasoned researchers have trouble with this. A good research question must be large enough to be interesting, but small enough to be doable in a single semester... this is a difficult and narrow path. Too large, and you're looking at a career as a researcher; too small, and you're doing something profoundly trivial.

Two drafts of your research question will be due in the early part of the semester. Post these drafts to the course site. Tag your posts with the tag question draft.

You will provide feedback to at least 3 of your classmates, on each round of drafts.


Source evaluations

In the course of working on any research paper, you use a variety of information sources of a variety of types. You will write 3 evaluations of information sources that you consult during your research. These sources may or may not ultimately yield information that is useful to you in writing your article.

Each source evaluation should be approximately 500-1000 words, and include the following 7 parts:

  1. A complete citation for the source in American Psychological Association (APA) format. APA is the citation format most commonly used in the social sciences. If you are not familiar with this format, look at the APA Publication Manual, 5th edition, which is in nearly every library on campus. This page contains a good overview of APA citation style for print sources. The APA provides a FAQ list and a tutorial.
  2. Strategy for finding the source: How did you find the source? What database, book, bibliography, etc. did you find this source in?
  3. Rationale for selection of the source: Why did you think that the source would be useful for your research, before you actually used it? (Whether or not the source in fact turned out to be useful.)
  4. General evaluation of the source: The authority, scope, intended audience, and currency or timeliness of the source. Select the evaluation criteria that are most appropriate for evaluating this particular source. List each and write a short explanation of how well the source fulfills the criteria.
  5. Example strategies used to search within the source. How did you find information within the source? What were the results of your searches within the source? Keep in mind that many information sources get used repeatedly, so "searching within the source" may be conducted over multiple sessions. Your search strategy should evolve as you work with a source over time.
  6. A brief summary of the information yielded by the source: This follows up your rationale for selecting the source: your rationale for selection is why you thought that the source would be useful before you used it; this section should explain how your opinion of the source changed once you actually used it. What information does the source as a whole contain? What information does the source contain that is relevant to your research question? How does the source help you (or not) to answer your research question?

Post these evaluations to the course site. Tag your posts with the tag Source evaluation.


Interaction with a librarian

You will seek assistance on your research paper from a librarian, and write a post evaluating the interaction and its outcomes.

Once you have your research question more or less finalized (after draft #2 is submitted), identify a library where you can go to get assistance from a librarian. Ask the librarian for assistance with some aspect of your research question: help with locating resources on a specific sub-topic, help with using a the databases the library subscribes to, whatever.

When your interaction with a librarian is completed, write a post discussing the interaction. Use whatever evaluation criteria you think are appropriate: Did the librarian help you find new and useful resources? Do you think the librarian understood your research topic well enough to helpfully guide you? How well or poorly do any new resources fit in with the prior materials you've identified? Etc.

Obviously there are many libraries on campus that you can go to for assistance. If you go to a campus library, you may want to select one that specializes in the broad area whence your research topic derives (e.g., Health Sciences, Music, Journalism). If there is no such specialized library on campus, you may want to identify a librarian who specializes in the area of your research topic. If you identify a specific librarian with whom you would like to interact, I recommend that you make an appointment. Feel free to also go to any other library, either locally or out of town (when you're visiting home, for example).

Post these evaluations to the course site. Tag your posts with the tag Library service evaluation.


Wikipedia articles

You will contribute to 2 (or more) Wikipedia articles that are related to your research topic.

You may attempt to write a new article, but honestly it's pretty difficult to find a topic on which no article exists: there are approximately 3.7 million articles in the English-language Wikipedia.

More likely, you will contribute to 2 (or more) existing articles. There are many ways to contribute to Wikipedia. Choose one of more: add new information to an article, source new or existing information, add references, clean up and organize articles, etc.

Strive to move the articles to which you contribute closer to featured article status: I will use Wikipedia's featured article criteria as my criteria for evaluating your article. However, it's ok if your article does not actually become a featured article: featured article status is decided by Wikipedia's editors, and we have no influence over that, except insofar as we're all also Wikipedia editors (approximately 30 of us out of almost 15 million editors). And after all, the perfect article is not attainable.

Before you contribute to any articles, create an account on Wikipedia. Then, when you are writing your article, make sure that you are logged in. You must post your username on the course wiki. I will view your contributions to your Wikipedia article by your username.

Most articles in Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, so it's possible that your edits will be edited by others, possibly even while you're still working on them. This is fine: you can edit others' edits in turn, but please avoid getting involved in an edit war. It's also possible that your edits will get removed after you make them. This is also fine, though of course you should strive to have your contributions be worthy of not being deleted. Every Wikipedia article has a History page, and I will evaluate your contributions based only on your contributions, not on others' edits to it. (This is why it's critical that I know your username, and that you be logged in when you make edits.)

These are some Wikipedia resources that I would recommend you read before starting to write your article:


Citation database

The University library has subscriptions to two citation management applications: EndNote and RefWorks. Zotero is a free citation manager that operates as a browser plugin. Choose one to manage the information sources that you will be reviewing for your research project.

Your citation database must:

  • Contain at least 15 items
  • Contain your notes on the items
  • Use folders, tags, or some other method for organizing items into sub-categories

At the end of the semester, you will submit evidence of your use of a citation management application. If you're using RefWorks, probably the easiest way to submit this evidence is to post a link on the course site to your database. If you're using EndNote, I'm not sure yet what the easiest way will be to submit this evidence... we can figure this out as the semester progresses.


Final paper

This part of the assignment is also a gimme: Whatever final paper or other deliverable that you submit in your other course, also submit to me. I will not evaluate your final paper for content; that's for the instructor of your other course to do. And I don't need to know what grade you got on your final paper (though I hope it's higher than it would have been if you hadn't taken this course). What I will evaluate your final paper for is evidence of use of information resources in analysis and presentation. This must, of course, take the form of citations and a bibliography, but should also be evident in your analysis and discussion.


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