Goals
The draft of your final project is an opportunity for you to 1) Develop your information literacy knowledge and skills through meaningful engagement with information and sources, 2) Integrate knowledge towards building an interdisciplinary, critical perspective, and 3) Communicate and present conclusions, interpretations, and implications clearly, concisely, and effectively.
Prompt
Unlike your first draft, in which you could submit a draft, an outline, or a handout, this second draft should be a completed (or mostly completed) draft of your final project. Feel free to draw from other assignments submitted for this class, including the Project Proposal, any related discussion, and of course revisions from your Draft 1.
Students should start with an introduction that orients readers with basic, relevant background information on the research topic, setting up the problem or question and its significance. The introduction should specify the primary research question as well as an answer to that question (i.e., the thesis statement). The thesis statement should be an original, clear, and concise takeaway for readers that is relevant to the research question, supportable through evidence at hand, precise, and advances a well-reasoned argument.
Then, students should include a short section on the research methods used to investigate their research question, particularly the primary methods. This session will clarify learning objectives for the project, set up the design of the project, and situate the project within its field of study.
In structuring the body of their essays, students should consider the expected writing conventions in their specific disciplines. The body should discuss findings and effectively argue the thesis statement by building on and using primary and secondary research as support and evidence for the argument. Each paragraph in the body section should make a distinct point in service to the thesis statement. Paragraphs should be organized logically and should start with a topic sentence that states the main idea of the paragraph, connects to the thesis, and acts as a transition from the preceding paragraph.
Students should end their essays with a conclusion that provides a brief summary of the main points of the argument and underscores the implications and/or significance of the research findings as well as further questions the research has raised and directions for future research or application of the argument.
Using Non-textual Elements as Evidence
- If you are using figures, tables, charts, etc. you do not need to summarize their results verbatim in the text of the paper. Instead, only mention those results that are relevant to your argument.
- You can place figures, tables, charts. within the text of the result OR you can include them in the back of the report—do one or the other but never do both.
- Regardless of placement, each non-textual element must be labeled numbered consecutively and complete with caption (caption goes under the figure, table, chart, etc.). In the text, refer to each non-textual element in numbered order (e.g., Table 1, Table 2; Chart 1, Chart 2; Map 1, Map 2).
- If you place non-textual elements at the end of the report, make sure they are clearly labeled and distinguished from any attached appendix materials.
- Be sure that each non-textual element is sufficiently complete so that it could stand on its own, separate from the text.
Tips
- Acknowledge any limitations or shortcomings to the limits of your project, such as sample size, time constraints, the observer’s paradox, or selection bias.
- Consider including alternative explanations of the findings or possible counterarguments.
- Don’t overgeneralize or assume that your findings are necessarily true of every person within the group or every person in a society.
- Avoid “cherry picking,” or making conclusions based on thin (or not enough) data or focusing on data that’s not necessarily representative of the larger dataset.
- Don’t draw conclusions from the findings without support: All the explanations of the
key results should be backed up by evidence.