Semester Project

CHAPTER 8: Organizing the Information You Evaluated, Part I

Tamma Williams, Criminal Justice

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Here’s What We Know from Chapter 7

 How to determine the difference between “biased” and “unbiased” content

 How to determine the difference between fact-based and opinion-based

information

 How to identify propaganda-based material in print and online

 How to identify “fake news” in print and online

By the End of This Chapter Here’s What You Will Know

 How to finalize your Semester Project thesis statement, research questions and

keywords

 How to organize your Semester Project presentation mode

 How to utilize time management skills to effectively organize your Semester

Project

 How to create an effective outline based on your selected mode of presentation

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 Love at First Sight, Or …

Occasionally, a research idea comes along that is so perfect for its purpose that

little is needed to be done along the way but fill in the gaps, a sort of research equivalent

to love at first sight.

Much more likely, the path of your Project research since you first set down your

ideas into a thesis statement and research questions back in Week 3 has taken some

twists, turns, and possibly a switchback or two. Oh, and those sudden avalanches of

information that blocked your way forward and slowed you down, making you feel like you

were trapped forever.

Along the way, your original ideas and thesis have been challenged and, possibly,

changed some by the content of the information you have found. Your Project has

evolved.

Though it still may not seem like it, the

end is in sight. Four weeks from now, your

Semester Project will be complete, beautifully

formatted and ready for submission.

Between now and then, there is still

much work to be done.

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These next two chapters will help you through Step 4 of our five-step process,

organizing the information you have gathered for your Semester Project into presentation-

ready form.

This chapter will guide you through the organization of the information itself,

from the finalizing of your thesis statement, research questions and keywords through the

preparation of the presentation mode you have chosen (or were assigned). Along the

way, you will apply time management skills and that time-tested old friend, the outline (or

its somewhat flashier friend, the storyboard), to help you accomplish these tasks.

Our next chapter (Chapter 9) continues the organization process with specifics on

the formatting and “look” of your presentation in the American Psychological Association

(APA) style.

 Finalizing Your Thesis Statement, Research Question & Keywords

Ch-ch-changes

Turn and face the strange …

So once sang David Bowie. As we noted above, it’s very likely your first research

idea and maybe even your thesis statement and resultant research question(s) and

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keywords have experienced some level of change since you began exploring your idea

at the beginning of our class.

This is very common, and, often, a very good thing. You begin with an idea. You

start searching for information in support of this idea. The information you find begins to

modify your idea into something more focused, more on-target and to-the-point than what

you began with. This is an expected part of the evolutionary process of research as it

moves from the idea phase through the evaluation process and into the final organization.

Lock it down

Now it’s time to turn and face the … hopefully, not-too-strange Project components

you have at this point. With the help and guidance of your LIB100 professor, you have

avoided the pitfalls of repeatedly changing your entire Semester Project every time a

passing information source winked at you and you now have the thesis, research

questions and information sources to create an outstanding Semester Project.

Now it’s time to lock it all down.

In this week’s end-of-the-chapter exercise, this is exactly what you will have the

opportunity to do: deliver a final thesis statement and research question that you already

have information sources to support, along with the final keywords you chose to facilitate

your database and open-web searching.

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Now all you need to do is put it all together.

Who’s Your Audience

In Chapter 7, we talked about knowing

your audience, and how this knowledge

informed both the purpose and point-of-view of

your Semester Project. This is essential to

know as you organize your Project and to

remind yourself of throughout the organizational process: who are you talking to? Who

are you persuading, convincing, informing? For your LIB100 Semester Project, your

audience is likely your professor. Other research projects might be directed towards your

fellow classmates, who might require a different “voice” or presentational approach. Then,

of course, there are the professional presentations as part of your career, where your

audience might be your boss, your colleagues or potential investors.

In everything you do in organizing your Project from this point on, Know. Your.

Audience.

 What’s Your Mode

Along with knowing who you are presenting to, how you are presenting your

research is also very important. There are three main modes of presentation for your

LIB100 Semester Project – traditional text (a word-processed paper), visual with

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graphics (PowerPoint, etc.), and multimedia (primarily video and audio). Your LIB100

professor will specify which of these modes are available to you in your particular class.

Let’s look at each mode individually.

Traditional Text

Most Semester Projects in LIB100 follow the traditional “research paper” text form

of presentation (that is, an MS Word document), although there is a rising number of

visual and multimedia variations. Each of these three is summarized here.

As the specifics of the Semester

Project final presentation – or

“deliverable” – can vary in LIB100

depending upon your professor’s

requirements, we won’t get too granular

here with the guidelines. But there are

certain elements all Semester Projects

should contain. One is that they be

formatted in the style of the American Psychological Association, or APA. The formatting

requirements of APA-style research papers and projects are formal and rather rigid. As a

significant portion of your final Semester Project grade will be based upon how well you

demonstrate your knowledge of APA-style formatting, the basics shared by all LIB100

Semester Project final submissions are examined here.

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APA-style formatting consists of two main areas. One is the formatting of your

citations, both in-text and for your Reference (bibliography) page. This area will be

covered in Chapter 9.

The other area is the formatting of your paper itself, setting the framework from

which you will work.

Margins for all APA-style pages should be 1” all around.

Then there are the two “bookends” of your paper – the Cover page and the

Reference page. Your Cover page is your title page, and goes first. Your Reference page

is your bibliography, where you will list alphabetically all the sources you used in your

Semester Project. This goes last.

Let’s take a closer look at these two.

 Your Cover Page

If you set out to create the plainest, blandest, least eye-catching cover page you

could possibly imagine for your research paper, it would look like the APA-style cover

page (Fig. 1). Students at times attempt to compensate for the dullness of the cover page

with colors, graphics and more interesting fonts.

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Resist the temptation. No matter how powerful it may be.

As your Semester Project will be graded on a rubric and the rubric includes the

Cover page, any deviation from the norm will result in points being taken off your score.

No matter how beautiful it may look.

Fig.1

Your LIB100 professor may provide you with a pre-formatted APA-style Cover

page for your final Semester Project submission. If so, use that. If not, copy the above

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example exactly as shown above (Fig. 1), replacing the placeholder information with your

own.

If this is your first encounter with headers in a paper submission, you might find

dealing with them a bit mysterious at first. “Headers” (and “footers”) are independently-

controlled parts of your Word document page that often repeat, sit in the background most

of the time and are accessed separately from the main text.

Header content can be accessed by placing your mouse over the header text and

double-clicking. This will bring the header text to the foreground and move the main text

to the background. When done working with the header text, you can close it and return

it to the background by either double-clicking your mouse anywhere on the document

page outside of the header, or by clicking the “Close Header and Footer” button that

becomes active when either the Header or Footer is open (Fig. 2). Working in the header

will also allow you to set the page number for the Cover page (yes, APA numbers

everything, even the first page).

See the following page for an example of how to close your header in MS Word:

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Fig. 2

Now, ready for some seriously plain vanilla?

See Fig. 3 on the following page for an example of an APA-style Reference page

awaiting your input of sources …

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Your Reference Page

An APA-formatted

Reference page takes the no-

frills approach to its most basic: it

is simply the word, References

centered at the top of an

otherwise completely blank page

(Fig. 3). It’s not even underlined.

Just that one, single word:

References.

Simple enough, right?

Sure. For now.

The other part comes later – when you fill it in with your citations (not to worry, we’ll

cover all this in Chapter 9).

 Visual with Graphics

If your Research Methods professor offers a visually-based presentation option

using PowerPoint or other slide-based software, other organizational considerations

come into play.

Fig. 3

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Students often think of PowerPoint-based presentations as “easier” than the

traditional text-based or word-processed research project, but this is not necessarily so.

Organizing a visually-based research project requires a different set of priorities than

those for the text-based, but they are not necessarily easier. Fewer words, yes, but you

still need to effectively communicate.

One of the most significant challenges in organizing a research project in

PowerPoint is the economy required. What do we mean by this? This time we’re using

the “resource management” definition of the word “economy” – how to get the most use

out of the fewest resources. In this case, your resources are all the research you have

found, accessed and evaluated over the course of our class so far. In text-based projects,

there are generally minimum page requirements but not often maximum, and using extra

words (or even pages) to strengthen and support your argument is not uncommon.

Not so with the visually-based presentation. Here, it is all about economy. It is not

only that you have far fewer words you can put on a slide than on a page, they must be

the right words – words that best support and present your argument to your audience.

Finding just the right words slide after slide can be much more challenging than you may

think at first. As you probably already know, there is nothing more boring than an

unfocused, rambling PowerPoint presentation that drones on and on.

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 Visual Presentation Tip Sheet

When organizing your PowerPoint or other visually-based research presentation,

keep in mind the following:

 Fonts: Choose a clean, sans-serif font for your text. What does “sans serif”

mean? “Serif” fonts are intended for print use and contain little flourishes at

the ends of letters, to finish them off. Times New Roman, the standard font

for text-based Semester Project submissions in LIB100, is a serif font. “Sans

serif” (“sans” means “without” in French) is just that – fonts without serifs, or

flourishes, which tend to clutter and muddy text when projected on a screen

or through a computer. Popular sans serif fonts include:

 Arial

 Tahoma

 Calibri

 Trebuchet MS

 Verdana

Use a font size of approximately 22-48pt. for ease of reading, especially if you are

planning on projecting your presentation to a roomful of viewers. Considering that 12pt.

is the standard font size for written papers, the increased font size means less words

available per slide and more … that’s right: economy.

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 Contrast and Ease of Reading: When organizing your visually-based

research presentation, keep your audience in mind and choose a slide

template and text contrast they won’t burn out an eyeball trying to read.

If black text on a white background (or vice versa) is too boring, or harsh

(Fig. 4), try experimenting with white text on a blue gradient background

(Fig. 5),

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

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or black text on light to medium gray (Fig. 6).

Avoid templates that are too “busy” as these tend to be distracting and can

interfere with your content (Fig. 7).

Fig. 6

Fig. 7

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 Your Text: In a visually-based project, think of your text as prompts or

highlights (even reminders to you in case you draw a blank) to complement

your presentation. Avoid at all costs cramming large chunks of text on slide

after slide and then just standing to the side and simply reading it. You will

lose your audience for sure with this approach (watch the smartphones

come out!)

 Using Graphics: Graphics can be a great complement to visually-based

presentations, as they provide you with the opportunity to show, rather than

tell, always a plus when your choice is with the visual. However, “graphics

fatigue” can set upon your viewers if you overuse, so choose and apply

sparingly. In general, clearly identified bar graphs and pie charts are the

best choices as these data’s display formats are universally recognizable.

As a general rule, limit your use of “eye candy” clip art and other visual

wingdings that may just clutter your presentation and make it more difficult

for your viewers to stay focused on your actual content

Multimedia

“Multimedia” is defined here as a presentation that goes beyond the visuals of a

PowerPoint or slide-based presentation to one that incorporates audio and video

segments (for example, archival podcasts and YouTube/Hulu/Vimeo, etc. videos) as the

primary driver of your information and/or is entirely audio/video based (your presentation

is a video or film you created).

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As with written text, any visual text you incorporate into your research requires

proper citation, which will be covered in our next chapter.

For now, let’s look at how to most effectively organize audio-visual content from a

presentation standpoint.

 Multimedia Presentation Tip Sheet

 No matter what you are using: With audio or visual content, the top tip

here is to be brief. Nothing kills the momentum of your presentation quicker

than a video or sound recording that goes on for too long. As with using

quotes from print text, use only the sections of the audio or video clip that

best support your argument, and even then, only the essentials

 Framing within your presentation:

o Audio: For audio clips of more than 10-15 seconds, it’s good to have

some complementary visuals to post during the clip, so that your

audience isn’t left staring at a blank screen during the audio-only

portion. For example, if your presentation on the history of hard bop

jazz includes an audio clip of

trumpeter Miles Davis discussing

his 1957 LP release, Cookin’ with

the Miles Davis Quintet, you

might include images of Davis

and his band performing from John Coltrane, left, & Davis

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that era. If the audio is difficult at all to understand (Mr. Davis, for

example, had an unusual way of speaking), providing an on-screen

transcription of what is being said is important (your audio won’t be

very effective if your audience can’t understand it)

o Video: Brief clips can be embedded in your PowerPoint slide. Longer

clips should be presented full screen, for easier viewing by your

audience, especially in large settings. Software programs like

PowerPoint provide the option to direct your content to “open in new

window,” which will “break out” the video into its own, full-screen

browser window. Programs like Blackboard will break out embedded

videos to full screen simply by clicking the appropriate icon in the

embedded video taskbar

 Streaming vs. download: If your video is linked to a

streaming service like YouTube or Vimeo, connection waits

should be minimal, depending upon your presentation internet

connection speed. If, however, you are using a downloaded

video stored to a hard drive or portable storage device,

minimize the load time by selecting medium quality and

reduced pixel (image) size during your initial download

process. Another sure momentum killer is that long wait for

files to download during your presentation

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 Hello Outline, My Old Friend

Now that we’ve talked some about organizing your presentation context (the

frame), let’s look now at organizing the content (the picture within).

For the traditional, text-based research project, nothing can beat a classic outline.

An outline is an effective way to both plan your overall project and allow you to see where

you are at any point within it. An outline helps provide balance to your overall project and

helps you make sure you are not overlooking anything or leaving something important

out.

An outline for your text-based research paper or project may look something like

this:

I. Introduction

II. First Main Idea

a. First supporting idea

b. Second supporting idea

c. Third supporting idea

III. Second Main Idea

a. First supporting idea

b. Second supporting idea

c. Third supporting idea

IV. Third Main Idea

a. First supporting idea

b. Second supporting idea

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c. Third supporting idea

V. Conclusion

If your Semester Project is a more visually-based presentation, you might find a

visually-based variation of the outline, called a storyboard, to be useful. A storyboard is

basically a grid you fill in with images of the visual progression of your project. Like the

traditional text-based outline, a storyboard helps you to both visualize and balance your

overall project.

Below and on the following page you will see two examples of storyboards. The

first (Fig. 8), below, is a professionally-drawn example:

Fig. 8

On the following page, you will see an example that looks like what most of the

rest of us would draw (Fig. 9):

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Fig. 9

When it comes to creating storyboards for your research projects, artistic ability is

optional. As long as it makes sense to you (and your professor) and helps you visualize

the project start to finish, its purpose is accomplished.

Let’s finish up with one final and very important area to consider …

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 A Word on Time Management

Nothing can trash the organization of your

Semester Project more effectively and completely than

poor time management. Waiting until the last moment to

try to toss together a Project designed to be researched

and assembled over the entire semester will produce

results that look, well … like they were tossed together at

the last moment. Your poor Semester Project will suffer

because of it, and so will your final course grade.

Don’t let this happen!

With effective time management, you can avoid these last-minute pitfalls and both

submit an excellent final Project and stay cool while doing it.

Here’s how:

 It’s easy to get overwhelmed, especially when you have multiple projects

from multiple classes all coming due at the same time.

Don’t be like this guy!

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First rule of effective time management: don’t try to do everything at once.

Focus on one item at a time. Not sure what that item is?

Make a list. List all the things competing for your time and

then prioritize them by number. Start with #1. Stay with #1

until it is done. Then go to #2, #3, etc. on your list.

 Plan ahead. Estimate the amount of time you think each task will need and

then double it. Finish ahead of time and you’re smiling. Finish late and you

may start to panic. Block out adequate time you estimate you will need over

as wide a period as you can and don’t let anything get between you and

that time you’ve reserved. Anything. Ever. Period

 Don’t procrastinate. OK, we all procrastinate, especially with the stuff we

don’t want to do. Got to get beyond this. Got to take a deep breath and just

dive in. Try this: begin with those tasks you least want to do. Get those out

of the way first. It is always easier to move away from pain than towards it

 So What Just Happened Here?

In this chapter, you began to work on how to take Step 4 – organizing your

Semester Project – from thought to action. Depending upon the delivery format of your

Project – traditional text-based, visual with graphics, or multimedia – you learned

organizational strategies for both the content (what your Project consists of) and the

context (how that content is presented). You learned that organizational tools such as

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outlines and storyboards can help you to both focus on specifics and give you an overall

balanced “big picture” perspective on your Project.

 Show What You Know

In this week’s exercise, you will have the opportunity to lock down your Semester

Project thesis statement, research questions and primary keywords, incorporating any

changes that have occurred along the way.

 What’s Next

In Chapter 9, we’ll wrap up Step 4 with a detailed look at how to format and cite in

the APA style the sources you have found, evaluated and organized for your Project, from

the in-text abbreviations to the full Reference page citations.

Reflections

The composition of an effective Semester project is an important tool that you will carry

with you throughout your academic career and beyond. Your presentations may be the

only way to distinguish yourself from your classmates in a large classroom setting, so

you want to do your best. It is vital that you learn the necessary skills and have ample

opportunity to practice. Here are some questions to consider:

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 Think of how your apartment is organized. How is the organization of a

research project similar?

 What is your preferred mode of project presentation? Why?

 What are two important identifiers of APA style?

 What are the differences in the assemblage of a PowerPoint presentation as

opposed to a more traditional text format?

 What are some tips to remember about multimedia presentations?

 What are the advantages of using an outline for your project? How does it

differ from a storyboard?

 What are some of your best time management techniques?