This Final Research Project is your chance to add your own perspectives, voices, interests, and research to the class. This project is worth 20% of your final course grade, and it is an individual, researched project developed in consultation with the professor. Each student will design her own project, but regardless of the project, each student will incorporate research, an abstract, reflection (Cover Letter), and in-class presentation.
The Final Project as a whole accounts for 20% of your Final Course Grade: the presentation is worth 15%, and the Cover Letter + Abstract are worth 5%.
Below is an outline of the project, along with my expectations / guidelines / requirements / and due dates. There is also important information here about grading & feedback.
[Important Deadlines for the Proposal Drafting/Review/Revising]
*Exploratory Research + First Draft of Proposals: due Th 5/11 by 2pm. Post to our OpenLab course site as “Proposals, Drafts” & bring 3 printed copies to class.
*Additional Focused Research + Second Draft of (thoroughly revised) Proposals: due Tu 5/16 by 2pm. Post to our OpenLab course site as “Revised Proposals” & bring 3 printed copies to class.
- The weeks of 5/9 and 5/16 are BYOD (bring your own devices). We will peer review your drafts of proposals in class on Th 5/9 and Tu 5/16, so please bring any notes, research, and devices (laptops, tablets, etc.) to work on in class.
- There is no minimum word length for this first draft of proposals, but you want to provide as much detail and explanation as possible so that your peers and I can ask intelligent questions and help you to further focus/refine/improve your topic and approach (read carefully through the Proposal and Research section of this assignment for more guidance about what to research and then include in your proposal).
- When you will revise your proposals for early the following week, you will further refine your topic, add more detail and sources, and shape it in a more focused way. I will provide feedback, point you to additional resources/things to think about, and then (hopefully) will officially sign off on each project in our individual conferences.
*Individual out-of-Class Conferences with Professor Belli: Tuesday 5/16 before & after class. Click here for the schedule of conferences.
*Project Progress Blogs: due by Th 5/18 by 2pm. Post to our OpenLab course site as “Project Progress” & bring 3 printed copies to class.
This should be an update on your progress on your project to date. You should make sure to include:
- Guiding research questions + claims you are making (answers to those questions)
- Summary/discussion of the research you’ve done. Make sure to include all sources consulted/found useful. For each source, provide:
- the full MLA citation with an annotation of the source: brief paragraph of summary of the source followed by brief paragraph of how/why this source will be useful for your particular project (e.g., is it background info.? evidence for a counter-argument? etc.)
- Reflection on your progress to date and next steps [this should include discussion of the specifics feedback you received from me in our individual conference, and changes you made to address this feedback]
- What your next steps are, to get ready for the presentation?
- Questions you still have at this point or things you need help with
* In-Class “Lightening Presentations”: in-class, do a two minute “lightening” presentation summarizing your project & presentation. We will peer review these presentations
*In-Class Presentations: Tu 5/23 + Th 5/25 (worth 15% of Final Project Grade)
- We will also have end-of-the-semester celebrations on Th 5/25 (yay!), I will bring in some goodies for the class, and I encourage you to do the same.
*Click the links below to learn more about the various aspects of this project:
