Formal Assignment 2: Annotated Bibliography and Research Proposal

Background/Rationale:

In our first assignment we focused on developing our voices through making arguments in the relatively flexible format of an op-ed aimed at a popular audience. This assignment asks you to do some initial research to identify various positions within an academic debate in order to identify a narrowly focused research question. We do this for several reasons: 1) to ensure we get a sense of various perspectives/arguments/evidence that have been put forward about our topics, and 2) asking narrowed questions helps us appropriately scope for an 8-10 page research paper. Your next assignment will be the 8-10 page research paper, and the thesis of that paper will answer the narrowly focused question that you develop in this assignment.

As we work towards writing for academic rather than popular audiences, I’d like you to continue to focus on what claims and arguments you want to make, and how to bring your voice into your research. Put another way, I’d like you to continue to think about what transfers from what you learned in your first assignment to these next assignments.

The purpose of annotated bibliographies is to help researchers (you!) organize and evaluate sources for a paper. This involves finding sources that represent various positions about a debate to learn about what we know, what we don’t know, and where there’s agreement or disagreement.

The purpose of the proposal is to make an argument for the importance of the next specific research question in this debate that we should investigate. It is NOT the goal of the proposal to have a thesis statement or defend it (that’s the next project). The major goal is to work from a broad topic/question (such as “What is the role of uncertainty in academic research”) to a question narrowed by the perspectives you’re gaining about what is already known and unknown in the research (for instance you might narrow to “To what extent is the uncertainty that social media companies point to in order to cast doubt on research suggesting social media is harmful similar to or different from big tobacco’s reliance on uncertainty about the harmfulness of smoking?”).

Please note, your topic can involve uncertainty, but it does not in any direct way need to be about uncertainty. Uncertainty is inherent in our research, so we’ll continue to talk about how it impacts our writing, but your research topic is open, and up to you. Please pursue something you are genuinely interested in. 

(continue to next page for assignment description)

Assignment:

Annotated bibliography

Researchers use annotations to 1) develop their own understanding of the main arguments/findings of the sources they are reading, 2) clearly state what the argument is or the findings are, and 3) analyze sources by articulating critiques, limitations, relationships between sources, new applications, etc. 

A strong annotation tends to include a very concise and detailed account of these elements:

1. Brief background/context

2. Question or purpose of research

3. Thesis or hypothesis

4. Theories or Methods 

5. Reasoning/argument/findings

6. Evaluation/analysis/limitations/possibilities/connections to other sources/etc. 

In order to complete this assignment, you will identify a related body of scholarly research in your topic area that provides different perspectives on a focused issue – in other words, you will identify a live debate. The goal of this process is to create a body of research that you can use to understand what is known and unknown so that you can ask new, more focused research questions about your research topic. 

Your bibliography should include 5-10 sources, at least four of which must be peer-reviewed articles from scholarly journals.

The bibliography should consist of:

· A bibliographic citation in the scholarly style of your discipline

· A detailed yet concise summary of the main argument within the source for longer works including their motivating question, their answer, how their answer is defended as well as any objections or limitations they consider

· An assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the source.

· An assessment of the usefulness of the source to your project.

· Each annotation should be approximately 200-350 words.

Grading criteria for annotated bibliography portion of the assignment

· Citations are complete and in the style of your academic audience (for instance, if your audience is research psychologists you’re using APA, if it’s computer science you’re using IEEE, etc.)

· Annotations give concise, accurate, and detailed accounts in your own words of the central arguments/findings of your sources

· Annotations go beyond summary to develop analysis and articulation of limitations of the sources

· At least 4 sources are scholarly, and the bibliography includes a total of 5-10 sources

Research Proposal

For this portion of the assignment, you will organize your research into a cohesive discussion of what is known, what is not known, and what new questions arise from your research.

This proposal should be 3-4 double-spaced pages with 1” margins and be organized as follows: 

1. Brief introduction to topic area/broad question and statement of the purpose of the paper, which is to give an overview of the current scholarly debate and articulate new/focused research questions based on what we currently know and don’t know from the research

2. Paragraphs organized around ideas (not individual sources) that emerge from the literature, and how they relate to each other to give us a sense of what we do and do not know about this issue

3. A conclusion that articulates a central question or questions that emerge from these uncertainties – these should be more focused than the broad topic area and motivated by your synthesis of the existing research

Grading criteria for research proposal portion:

· Research proposal gives a detailed, yet concise, overview of what is known and unknown about your topic area

· Sources are summarized accurately and in your own words to demonstrate your knowledge of the sources

· Use of direct quotes is minimized in order to make sure you are clearly summarizing and explaining the sources’ arguments and findings

· Sources are synthesized to tell a clear story of what is known and not known based on your sources

· What is known and unknown is used to directly motivate the focused research question you end the proposal with

· The research proposal starts by introducing your topic area, gives an account of what is known and what is not known, and concludes with a focused research question or questions, that is/are motivated and directly explained by the synthesis of the research in the sections about what is known and not known

· Research proposal uses in-text citations to make clear what ideas are from sources and what the author is adding in developing synthesis, explanation, evaluating, and generating new questions (the annotated bibliography is the bibliography for this project)

Audience:

Your audience in this assignment is the academic research community that investigates your topic. This will be identified mainly by understanding what academic audiences your source constitute.