Thursday, October 17, 2013

Day 16: Finalizing Your Pre-Research: The "Rough" Outline and Formulating a Research Plan


Today is the last class dedicated to Unit: Pre-Research! We will begin Unit 3: The Annotated Bibliography next Tuesday. Unit 3 will be dedicated to a source for credible, reliable and relevant academic sources that you will use to research your topic. It will also be a discussion of how to properly cite sources and how to create an Annotated Bibliography. But before we can begin Unit 3, we must finish Unit 2 and in order to do that, we need to talk about how to create a rough outline as well as a plan for the next steps you will take as part of the research and writing process. 

An outline for today's class can be found below: 

Creating A Rough Outline and Research Plan

I. Brainstorming
What is an outline? How do you write an outline? What sorts of information should you include in an outline for an analytical research paper like the IRP? Why even write an outline? You can look here for some suggestions. 

What about a research plan....what is a research plan? Why is it a good idea to write one? You can look here for an idea of what I'm looking for. 

II. A Human Outline 
Working together as a class, you will have 4 minutes to put together a model outline for the individual research paper. While this paper will follow the standard APA format, it will be longer than 5 paragraphs, since each solution will have both a critique and improvement paragraph associated with it. 

III. Outline Presentations 
First, let's take a look at how I've filled out the outline for the demo topic here. After we talk about some of the features of the rough outline, you will be divided into four groups. Each group plan and present a short presentation on a different part of the outline. You will have about 20-25 minutes to plan your presentation (including the ppt, found below). The actually presentations shouldn't be longer than 2 minutes. Each group will be asked to answer the questions found in this document. Active participation in these presentations will be considered as part of your grade for "Sheet 2" of the "Pre-Research Portfolio". 

Groups #2-4 will use the third solution for our class demo topic ("moving more classes online"). Information on that topic can be found here.


I will give some feedback after every group has finished presenting. 

IV. Formulating a Research Plan
Finally, we'll spend a few minutes discussing what kinds of things should be included part of your research plan. 



Housekeeping Details and Homework for Tuesday (10/22/13)
-Step #7 Fill out the "Critique" and "Improvement" sections of the Pre-Research outline for your first solution. While this doesn't have to your final critique and/or improvement, I would still like to see you demonstrate your understanding of the ideas as we've discussed in class. See the example outline here for an idea of what I'm expecting. 

-Step #8 Create a research plan where you explain the next few steps you will take as part of the process of writing your research paper. These should be done in about 150-200 words. 

-Your completed Pre-Research Portfolios are due by Sunday (10/20/13) at 11:55pm. Please see the bottom of this post for submission details. You do not need to submit a title page for this assignment, but all other submission/formatting requirement should be followed as stipulated in the post. 

-Come to class with a list of three possible sources for your research paper topic. These should be from journals or academic texts. Google, wikipedia or any of the Pre-Research resources will not be considered acceptable. It would be a good idea to contact a librarian using the chat function found here or to visit one of the many campus libraries in person. 





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