What are students supposed to get out of doing this?
Besides learning something about the research topic, all students are supposed to develop some skills that will be useful in some other courses, and in the future beyond college:
 | Experience in finding a variety of sources of ideas and information -- books, articles, online sources, etc. -- by using efficient and intelligent searching strategies. |
| Evaluating those sources in order to decide if they are worth relying on, or whether they are worth responding to. |
| Incorporating source material into your own work. This is something
that almost everyone needs to practice a lot. Intelligent incorporation
of source materials is far more than including a quote here and there, and far
more than paraphrasing. Intelligent incorporation of source materials requires one to build on the ideas one has found in the reading, or to argue against those ideas. Don't let the sources speak for you!! Don't just compile a list of things you found in your sources. That's not intelligent incorporation of sources. |
| More experience in constructing your own complex arguments for a position. Every research project result should be an extended argument for something, not just a list of points or facts. |
| Experience in publishing your ideas on the Web, for the whole world to see. OK-- so maybe no one will visit your Web site unless you tell them about it, but one thing is sure -- your classmates will be looking at your Web site and evaluating it (since that will be part of the whole research project). |
Grading checklist
Guess what? Grades for this project will be based on how well you do the things listed above. So, check for the following things in your own work:
| Demonstrated use of a variety of relevant and useful sources. Research progress reports that show you are being intelligent about finding these. |
| Don't use garbage sources. Demonstrate judgment in relying on a source. |
| Incorporate research well into your own writing. See above discussion of intelligent use of sources. |
| Your work should be an argument or a series of arguments for something significant related to your topic. Your work should not be just a collection of facts or a list of points. |
| Connect your work with the work done by the other team members. This can be done with links to their contributions. The links should not just be stuck in for no good reason. They should actually be a useful part of your argument. |
| If your sources are available online, include links to them. |
| Your arguments should be as strong as possible. |
| Your published results on the Web should be of high overall quality -- worth publishing. (This remark refers to the content of what you have to say and how you say it. If your Web site is beautiful or cute, that's nice, but if it is full of nonsense, its being beautiful or cute won't save it.) |
| Complete a report on your research process, at the end of the project. (Instructions for this will be provided. This is not part of the Web site.) |