Vanport Speed Research Paper

Speed Research Paper: The Vamport Flood

In this assignment, you will investigate one aspect of the Vanport Flood that you want to learn more about. You could explore its causes, the response to the flood or its aftermath. Your first step is to develop a focused research question. You will use this question to guide your research process. Finally, you will write a short paper relaying what you discover.

This is a speed research assignment, because you will have just three weeks to complete this process. Since this is such a short time frame, you will not be expected to explore your question in depth, but you should be able to come-up with a solid, defensible thesis that you can support with evidence from your research. You will have a research guide that includes a list of sources you can use for this project, and our class will crowd source some of the research, identifying potential sources you can use to help cut down on your investigative time. Your paper will relatively short, between 5-7 paragraphs long, but it should be a focused and original work.

1. Step One: Choose a research topic and develop a question

You need to come-up with a topic that explores some aspect of the Vanport Flood. You could examine how environmental and social conditions contributed to the flood, how the flood response was handled or the impacts the flood’s aftermath had on our city. The following table provides some conceptual guidance for thinking about a possible topic:

Conditions before the flood	Flood Response	Flood Aftermath
Natural conditions · Flood frequency · Weather Built Environment · Vanport location · Design and layout Social Conditions 1. Housing policies 2. Attitudes towards war workers 3. Racial segregation	4. Evacuation orders (or lack of) 5. Residents access to information 6. Temporary housing 7. City’s response	8. Resettlement of flood victims 9. Housing issues 10. Racial segregation 11. Flood control measures 12. Economic impacts 13. Impacts on neighborhoods

We will spend time in class working on developing your topic into a focused research question.

2. Researching your question

The trick to conducting effective research is to keep your search for information focused on answering your research question. For example, if you find a book about the Vanport Flood in the PSU Library and you are investigating the city’s evacuation plans during the flood, you will not need to read the entire book, you can just go directly to the information that is relevant to your topic. You can find this information by searching for keywords in the book’s index. Likewise, you can use a focused keyword search to locate articles in the library’s databases or on the web. However, research is not necessarily a linear process. If you are having trouble finding answers to your research question, you may need to go back and refine that question.

One of the joys of research is coming across new information that completely changes your perspective on a topic. Sometimes, you come across this type of information in a source that may not at first seem relevant to your topic. Reading information that isn’t directly relevant to your research question is still beneficial. It may help you understand the context of the situation, expose you to new perspectives or ideas, or lead you to new potential sources. However, in this assignment, you want to eliminate as much extraneous information as possible, so you can quickly answer your research question. To help you wade through a large amount of information in a short period of time, our class will hold a crowd-sourced research fair.

Each student will choose two sources from our Vanport Research Guide that are relevant to their particular question. You will read and take notes on your source. Then, you will fill out a worksheet that I will distribute in class, where you will highlight the key information that you gained from this sources and evaluate how it may be relevant to your topic or to others. We will hold a crowd-sourced research fair, where you will have an opportunity to recommend a source to your classmates.

These crowd-sourced worksheets are simply meant to help you find additional sources, you will still need to read and take notes on them to see if they are truly relevant to your question and to personally absorb the information and see how it fits with what you’ve already learned.

Since you have such a shortened time frame to get your research done, you’ll want to stay as focused and organized as possible. Keep your research question in front of you as you begin to go through your sources. Before you even start reading the sources in our research guide, take a few minutes to review your notes from the Vanport film and see what information is relevant to your question. This baseline information might already give you some insight into how you are going to answer your question and what your thesis might be. Write down any subheadings or themes that help answer your question as they arise. For example, if your question is: Why weren’t Vanport residents evacuated before the flood, and you learn that the Army Corps of Engineers assumed the levees would hold, you can make this into a subtopic. Record notes relevant to your subtopic on a separate sheet set aside for this subtopic. This will help you organize and outline your paper as you do your research. You may need to go back and revise your question or your working thesis as you go. Although, it may feel like you are taking a backwards step, revising your question or thesis will actually help you refine your thinking and ultimately, write a better paper.

As you take notes, make sure you record the basic bibliographic information about your source (Title, Author, Publication date, and so on). Also avoid inadvertently plagiarizing a source by paraphrasing the information you read in your notes. If you want to record a direct quote from your source, make sure you indicate that it is a quote and record the page you obtained it from. Taking the time to put information in your words as you read will make it easier to write later on. In addition, paraphrasing and notetaking help you retain and absorb the information you read.

3. Write your paper

If you’ve taken good, well-organized notes, the writing part should be easy. Your paper basically needs to have three parts---an introduction with a clear thesis, the body where you lay out and support your argument and a conclusion. Some students like to start at the beginning when they write, others prefer to jump in at the middle. Either way is fine. As you write your first draft, try to just let your words flow. Don’t revise as you write, you can always do this later, just try to get all of your information down at once.

Once you have a full draft, now go back and revise. At this point, revise for organization. Do you have a clear thesis? Is your argument laid out in a way that makes sense? Does each paragraph contain a clear idea? Feel free to eliminate whole sentences or move things around if you like. You can always add more in later. You’ll have an opportunity to get feedback on your paper from your classmates during peer review.

When you feel like you have a solid draft of your paper, go back and polish it up by checking your spelling, punctuation, grammar and citations. You must cite any information that is not your own and provide both an in-text reference (either a parenthetical reference or a footnote) to indicate which information is borrowed from a source and a full bibliography of your sources at the end. You may use MLA, APA, Chicago or any other commonly recognized citation format in your paper.

Remember, your paper must:

· Be about 5-7 paragraphs long

· Have a clear thesis

· Support that thesis with evidence from your sources

· Cite all of your sources using a recognized citation format