| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

EN200: Collaborative Project Assignment

This version was saved 15 years, 7 months ago View current version     Page history
Saved by Tonya Howe
on August 7, 2008 at 7:59:19 pm
 

This collaborative project is assigned midway through the term. Thus far, we have spent the first part of the class becoming intimately familiar with the language of literary analysis. We are now moving into a section of the course devoted to research. This project seeks to present the class with an opportunity to conduct research on a literary topic in a way that emphasizes the creative aspects of literary research--and, hopefully, to make research less intimidating and more exciting!

 

Most students are overwhelmed and intimidated by the prospect of "conducting research"--it seems so formal, so distant, so difficult. But we all do research every day. Perhaps not on explicitly literary topics, true, but we do research every day nonetheless. You're doing it whenever you look up some fact on Wikipedia, and you're doing it when you use IMDB to find out what else your favorite actress has appeared in.  In fact, whenever you think critically and deliberately about something, especially when you have to evaluate or analyze, you're doing a form of research. Research is about discovering something new. If you think about the word itself, "research," you should notice that it contains two parts--the prefix "re-" and the root "search." What does this tell you about research? What does it mean to search again?

 

This project has a variety of discrete components. Be sure you read through everthing before you start!

 

  1. We'll be using this wiki space to create what amounts to a hypertextual research archive, so one of the first things we'll need to do is learn what a wiki is and how to use it. Then, be sure you've read all about the project on these wiki pages, and check out the sample I've provided. Once you've done that, you're ready to move on to the fun parts!
  2. On paper, read and reread the text; mark it up; ask questions of it. Read it critically and actively. Read with a pencil in your hand!
  3. Discuss/Plan:
    1. Choose textual moments to explicate.
    2. Choose a topic to research for your bibliographic annotation.
    3. Determine what else you want to learn about the text for your additional research annotation.
    4. Very Important: Consider how the annotations will be linked from the text in the wiki.
  1. Upload the drafts of your explication annotations to the wiki. 
  2. Research a topic in the MLA Bibliography and upload the draft of your bibliographic annotation to the wiki.
  3. Research the additional topic and upload your draft and its documentation to the wiki.
  4. Workshop your annotations and their documentation.
  5. Revise your annotations for content and style, including documentation.
  6. Add links to other annotations and bibliographic entries as necessary to fully exploit the capabilities of the web as a medium.
  7. Create your author profile, so later readers can learn about the folks who put this project together, and congratulate yourself!
  8.  
    • Bibliographic Annotation: Each student will be contributing one annotation on a critical secondary source of his or her choice. Find an article about the text (or some aspect of it) that interests you, read it, and create an annotated bibliographic entry on it for inclusion into the project. These annotations will appear in the "Bibliography" page. We will be using the MLA Bibliography for this portion of the project.
    • Research Annotation: Each student will be contributing one additional annotation based on the research you choose, as a group, to do. This annotation should be between two and three paragraphs in length, and it should be well-organized and clearly written, as all your work for this class is! Be sure to document your sources, and practice complete and accurate in-text citation.
  9. Write your five explication annotations and link them to the specific moments in the text. Consider them as in the first draft stage--you might find an interesting point to incorporate in your later research, and you'll definitely need to revise. But it's important to get started; keep in mind that wikis can easily be updated!
  10. MLA Bibliography
  11. Plan:
    •  
  12. Plan: Determine how you're going to go about your research. Remember that you have two annotations now to complete--one is your bibliographic entry and one is your researched annotation [More Info]
  13. Begin compiling your research. Take extensive notes, and keep track of your sources!
  14. Plan: Determine how you'll add your researched annotations to the text. While the five explication annotations should be linked to specific moments in the text, your other research may not be so easily incorporated. [More Info]
  15. Begin annotating the text. [More Info]
  16. Workshop all your annotations. [More Info]
  17. Finalize the project by proofreading, editing for style, checking documentation, and adding links to other useful pages.
  18.  

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.