Our First Research Assignments: Write-Ups

Every teacher wishes for a class that goes on forever; that way, the students have time to learn everything the teacher knows. Unfortunately, that's not the case for us. We're moving on from our first pieces of writing, and we're getting started with research. Of course, there are important questions to consider: What is research? How do I make research both easy to do and effective in proving my point? We'll try to get to these questions as we go. For now, let's go step-by-step.

Notice: Your first steps in doing research have already started. You might not have chosen a topic, but you've written about topics you're considering, and you've looked at what other people wrote in the same vein. You might not have found articles you trust and want to work with, but you've found some good ones that could at least be good enough.

Also, be aware: Your first two research assignments, your first two research write-ups, are due next week, by 11:59 PM Thursday, 2/27/2014.

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Let's get started thinking about research by looking at how research assignments are organized in this course. First, here's a handout that explains the motivation and grading behind our research write-ups:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B59oU02C12STWWpBR084ZTdWckk/edit.

Now let's take a look at how research assignments fit together in this whole semester, especially how write-ups lead to your more important major research essays:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B59oU02C12STSnh0ampzc0NiQ2M/edit.

Do you have a good basic idea of how we'll do organize our research this semester?