About the Background Research Assignment

The Background Research Assignment has four primary goals:

1. to help students prepare to be able to complete their project
2. to help students expand their understanding of their chosen genre and deliverables
3. to help students expand their theoretical understanding of their chosen genre and deliverables
4. to help students expand their technical and material understanding of the chosen genre and deliverables

The assignment is informed by three Course Learning Objectives:

Objective 2. Ethics, Diversity, and Inclusive Design
Students will apply professional ethics, inclusive design and communication skills and practices in the preparation, realization, and publication of your individual project.

Objective 4. Research
Students will conduct and apply the fruits of research to support and enhance individual project goals, preparation, realization, and publication.

Objective 5: Reflection
Students will build on their understanding of the important role of reflection during the preparation, realization, and publication of their project.

Assignment Specifics

To complete this assignment, students will complete a kind of annotated bibliography.

Your background research should contain at least 8 entries relating to your semester project with 3 entries being scholarly sources, and 2 being journalistic sources or popular sources, and 3 being exemplars.

3 Scholarly and Technical Sources

• These sources must be scholarly journal articles, scholarly books, or technical/financial reports that provide studies and/or a theoretical understanding of the genres you are creating and/or the social issues that may be connected to your project.
• At least 1 must be scholarly, which means that you could have 2 technical reports published by the organization that created them (that is, not blog posts or articles about the reports).

2 Journalistic or Popular Sources

• These sources include news shows, magazines, newspapers, blogs, podcasts, videos, and other sources that don’t fit as scholarship. They should help you better understand your chosen genre, deliverables, and/or social issues that may be connected to your project.
• These can include sources writing about technical and/or financial reports, but they should not cover the same reports used in the Scholarly section.

3 Exemplars

• The sources should be particularly wonderful examples of your deliverables that will help inform your own work. These should not be examples you have used in your Pitch or Proposal posts.

Creating the Bibliography

Part 1: Description of the Social Issues Connected to Your Project (150 words)
I’d like you to compose a brief statement in which you consider the social issues that are your related to your project. For some of your projects, these will be obvious. For others, you’ll really have to look deep into your project and consider what those might be. These issues will eventually help shape your project in one way or another.

Part 2: The Bibliography with Annotations
The entries in your bibliography can be chosen to help you with the background/prep work we discussed during your individual conference last week.

When creating your bibliography, group your sources by the above 3 categories.

I do not care which citation method you use, just as long as you are consistent and that your citations include the following:

• author(s) first and last name
• date
• publication title
• URL

Below each citation, compose a 100 – 150 word annotation using two paragraphs:

• paragraph 1: 75 – 100 words that summarizes the source
• Paragraph 2: 50 – 75 words that describes how and why you might use what you have learned in the creation of your own project

These word counts are hard limits. Do not go above or below them. 

The Do-Nots

Please do not list Wikipedia as a source. You may, however, look to the citations on a Wikipedia page if those are useful.

Part 3: Informed Consent (if needed)
For those of you who will need informed consider for your project, please complete the following:

1. Open the sample informed consent document I shared with you for you and make a copy of it so you can make it your own–do not edit the one I shared with you!
   
2. Edit the document to fit your project goals, genres, and other specifics
3. Give Bill edit access to the form so he can edit it, as needed.
4. Paste a link to the document in your background research document so Bill can review it.

Part 4. Surveys (if needed)
If you will be creating a survey for your project, create a draft of it, paste a link to it into the background research document. Make sure to give Bill edit access.

Due Date and Submission Info

2/12: Add your GoogleDoc to the folder Bill shares with you 11:00pm. Make sure your name is on it and name the file: yourlastname-br-s24.

Documents missing your name and containing a misnamed file will have 5pts deducted for lack of professionalism.