My approach to guiding students through producing Research Papers depends entirely on the class. When teaching first-year writing, I know that every stage of the process is going to be new to them, so I do a lot of scaffolding, assigning a lot of low-stakes writing and exercises (especially on quoting, summarizing, and citing ) leading up to the RP assignment. This gets students into the flow of engaging with sources, and learning how to explore a  theme via different genres. The exercises are always based on what we are all reading as a class. For example, I will take one paragraph of an assigned reading and turn that into a citation exercise where students need to respond to that plus an assigned video on the same topic and cite both, in a response, including their own reflections at the end.

I usually include as readings a combination of different genres of writing: fiction, journalism, essay, poetry – all touching on a content theme that the whole class is exploring. It might be the changing digital information landscape, or issues confronting out communities, like policing, education, or public health. Or it might be ideas we are exploring through fiction and poetry. I also like to include some video resources, as well, and sometimes visual art, depending on the class theme. As sources, the students draw from a combination of in-class sources and outside sources, all tied to a topic that they develop themselves, related to the ideas we are discussing in class. I find that by the time we get to the Research Paper,  they have already practiced a lot with the in-class sources in many rhetorical situations – discussion board posts, class discussion, personal reflections, and citation exercises. This helps them to understand the expectations for the paper. They use their own scaffolding work as a model for how to work with the sources they find themselves. This usually works well.

I try to use the Research Paper as an opportunity to for the students to explore different writing and information genres more in depth. It’s a way of developing their own responses to and ideas about what others are saying about the issues that are important to them.