rough draft For professor Ryan Only

 

Assignment 1: Discussion

By Saturday, August 3, 2013, in this Discussion Area, post the rough draft of your Research Topic and Source Evaluation Essay. In this essay you will present the topic you have selected from the choices you considered in your essay in Week 1 and share your evaluation of the sources you plan to use in that final research essay.

Start by choosing your topic, and then review the lectures “Evaluating Text Sources” and “Evaluating Electronic Sources” from Week 1. Then locate and download at least eight full-text articles from the South University Online Library and save them to your computer, because you will need them for your work this week and every week until you complete the final draft of your final essay. Choose articles that can stand up to the criteria in the guidelines contained in the lectures regarding the evaluation of sources.

For the short essay this week, you will write an introduction that first captures the attention of your readers for the start of your research project and then presents your thesis statement, which shares the goals of this essay:

· to announce the topic of your final essay.

· to verify the credibility of the sources you have located for use in your final essay.

Within the body of this essay, you will present the sources you will use in your final research project, and you will make sure to use APA in-text citation correctly as you refer to the articles you are evaluating. In addition, you will provide a references page at the end of your essay that includes correctly formatted entries for each of the articles you discuss.

The body of the essay should contain four or five paragraphs and needs to be organized logically. You might choose to organize the body of this essay in a few paragraphs, each of which presents sources that take a particular point of view on the topic you will use for your final research essay; you might also choose to organize the essay by the kinds of articles you have located, including research studies, governments sources, analytical articles in scholarly journals, and other sources. Whichever logic you choose for your organizational strategy, you must convince your readers that each article you have selected provides credible information on the topic you are addressing in your final research essay, information which is trustworthy and based on solid research and analysis. If an article cannot stand up to scrutiny, then you should not include it in your essay or use it in your final research project for the course.

Finally you will conclude this short essay in a paragraph that contains an overall assessment of the quality of your sources and reaffirms the choice you have made for your research topic for your final project.

Be sure to realize that you are not taking a position on your topic in this essay, and you are not even sharing the specific information you get from each source. Instead, you are convincing us that you have located sources that are knowledgeable and credible and that these sources are acceptable to be used as evidence in your final essay whose rough draft and final draft you will finally write in Week 5.

Once you compose your rough draft, be sure that you have included a clear thesis statement that presents the topic of your research essay and that the body of the essay evaluates at least eight potential sources of information that you will use in your final essay. Also be sure that your essay has a conclusion to bring your work of evaluating your sources to a satisfying close.

By Saturday, August 3, 2013, post your rough draft of your Final Research Essay Topic and Source Evaluation Essay to the Discussion Area. Before proceeding to W2 Assignment 3, provide feedback to at least two of your peers using the criteria below. 

Peer Review Criteria

1. Evaluate the thesis statement: Note whether the author’s topic and overall assessment of these particular articles are clearly stated. Make suggestions to help with the wording if you think it will help the author’s clarity.

2. Share any concerns you have about the credibility of the author’s sources. You can also suggest other sources or kinds of sources that would help the author to have the most comprehensive understanding of his or her particular topic.

3. Note which articles that the author evaluates seem to be the most credible and authoritative and which seem less reputable.

4. Note whether this short essay convinces you that the author has located sufficient materials to be knowledgeable about his or her topic for the final essay and, therefore, is ready to proceed to the next stage in the process working toward the final essay.

5. Offer corrections to errors in in-text citations and references. We want to have a discussion about how to correctly format citations and references so that this aspect of writing is also made clear in the process of writing.

Grading Criteria	Maximum Points
Quality of initial posting. · Posts a rough draft of at least five paragraphs	16
Frequency of responses to classmates. · Provides thoughtful feedback to at least two peers	16
Quality of responses to classmates: · Uses Feedback Criteria to focus peer feedback and develops responses thoughtfully and fully	16
Reference to supporting readings. · In-text citations and references are provided in the rough draft and in peer feedback correctly and as necessary	16
Language and Grammar:  · All work is appropriately edited	16
Total:	80