topic

This week, it's time to choose a topic for your final paper (and, honestly, your only paper). Two requirements for your topic:

1. Must have academic articles on the topic! Articles that can be found through the library's website (use "find articles...") and that are published in academic journals (i.e. the Journal of Politics). No news articles. No blogs. Only academic articles.

2. It should be something that you have an opinion on (you think it's Interesting/important/etc.) but that you can be objective about. Do not choose a topic that you only feel you can talk about in ALL CAPS. Don't be like O'Neill.(great job on the annotations, by the way!)

There is a PowerPoint under "Content" --> "Assignment Guidelines" that should help you out. 

For this activity, I want to see your thought process in choosing a topic. There are several ways to do this: thought web, concept map, list, outline. Whatever helps you start organizing your thoughts. I'll post my own examples if you need some guidance. 

You'll post an image, pdf, list via the discussion forum. However you want to do it.

Example：

Let's say I'm a nursing major, concerned with the U.S. healthcare system. However, it would likely be too difficult to write a paper on all the issue in the healthcare system, so I have decided to focus specifically "maternal mortality rates". Below, you can see how I started listing out my ideas on the topic and then organized them based on which ideas go together. I don't necessarily have to use all of these points, but they are possible jumping off points. 

Using the search term "maternal mortality" AND "United States" on the campus library website, I can see that there are numerous academic articles that talk about this issue. I can also require that the sources be recent (usually within the last 5-years).