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Environmental Studies 490: Senior Seminar
PROGRESS REPORTS
Five weekly progress reports
Approximately two to three pages each.
See syllabus for schedule.
See samples on course website.
Each report counts approximately 2.5% of final grade.
Submit electronic copy as email attachment.
To ensure that consistent progress is being made and that appropriate activities are undertaken for each research project, students will prepare a word-processed summary, approximately two pages, of the week’s research activities. These reviews should do the following.
- Restate the topic and major issues. Highlight in bold the issues you focused on the past week. For new issues, put a + sign before them and put them in italics. This way I can see what you are focusing on and what you have added.
- As you get further into your research, your issues should have "depth." By this I mean that you should have major issues, and then sub-issues within each major issue. This should be reflected in your list.
- Organize your issues logically, as if you were outlining your paper. You will be creating an outline as you go on, and one that is focused on issues.
- Do at least one new scholarly internet search (e.g., Lexis-Nexus, Social Science Full Text).
- List (in the style of a proper bibliography entry) the research done during the week (e.g., articles read, interviews done, etc.); do NOT include entries that appeared in previous reports. Indicate in what way and where that item was found (e.g., in a Social Science Full Text search or a Library of Congress subject search).
- Very briefly and informally list the most important information gathered during the week. This is just the barest sketch, to give me a sense of what you are learning.
- Choose two or three (or more) readings that you read closely and were most important, and write one-paragraph precis or abstracts of them plus a brief (one to three sentence) evaluation of the source. For a description and examples of abstracts (“precis”), see course website for information on a précis. For this do NOT use readings that give you an abstract at the beginning of the article . Part of this assignment is to give you practice writing abstracts.
- Note problems (if any) you are facing in your research (obstacles, disputes over evidence, conflicting perspectives, etc.).
- Summarize very briefly and informally plans for next week’s research (e.g., abbreviated list of articles or types of research you plan to do).
So here is a template for the reports:
Topic
Issues (complete list in logical groupings and order)
Bibliography of research done since the last update (including citation format and source for locating the article)
List of most important information gathered since the last update
Precis/abstracs & evaluations of at least two important readings since the last update
Problems
Plans for next week
These reports must be turned in on time; late reports will not be accepted.
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