The Quest: Discovering new ideas through research
Step 1: Choosing a topic | Step 2: Asking a question | Step 3: Stating a thesis | Step 4: Building an argument | Step 5: Drafting | Step 6: Revising | Learning from Lisa
See also: Brainstorming | How to use Zotero to manage a bibliography | How to cite sources | Submitting documents with style
“Showing up is 80 percent of life,” said Woody Allen (Braudy 1977: 83). As in life, so too in university classes. You should format every piece of writing you submit in a neat, presentable, readable way. An author's style says a lot to a reader about whether the author should be taken seriously. In some ways, it is the first impression you will make; people do judge books by their covers! Paying attention to details (like having your name and the date on your assignments) makes you look serious.
Every document you submit to anyone should always have:
And in this class, you should also have:
In order for me to read your work easily:
In my mind, all university essays should look like this:
When you submit online, you do not need to submit a cover sheet. You can meet the requirement for submitting written work by reading the Faculty policy on plagiarism and ticking the checkbox on the submission form which says that you have not plagiarized your work.
Also, please read the instructions for submitting work online carefully. Weekly writings should be submitted by pressing the “Write Submission” button. Research process assignments should be saved to a file and uploaded as an attachment.
There are many things I dislike about Blackboard, but one thing I think we can all rally around is that Blackboard saves trees and reduces carbon emissions. We are so close to having purely digital, 100% paper-free classes! Part of that means cooperating with Blackboard; one false move in your submission can, multiplied several times over several weeks, adds up to a big problem for me.
You should submit each of the research process assignments, including the rough draft and the final paper, as an attached file in the assignment's dropbox on the class Blackboard. You should compose the assignment in a word processing program, and save it as a Microsoft Word (.doc) file, a Rich Text Format (.rtf) file, or an OpenOffice (.odt) file.
Braudy, Susan. 1977. “He’s Woody Allen’s Not-So-Silent Partner.” The New York Times, August 21, sec. Arts and Leisure.
Hobbs, Lois. 2012. “Political Science: Lois Hobbs.” Reed College Web Site. http://academic.reed.edu/poli_sci/faculty/hobbs.html. Accessed 19 June 2012.