Project 1 Guidelines
PROJECT ONE: Writing About Resources in Your Discipline: Report on Authoritative, Trade, and Popular Resources
What are resources? This assignment asks you to report on certain kinds of periodical resources (not articles or “sources”) used in your discipline. In the context of this assignment, resources are collections of sources/articles from which information comes, but not all resources are the same. Understanding the differences in types of resources is key to using them correctly and successfully throughout your coursework and beyond.
Resources that you will write about for this assignment can generally be described as one of the following:
• authoritative (most peer-reviewed academic journals),
• trade-related (industry magazines, trade publications, professional organization websites),
• popular (aggregated media sites, popular interest magazines, news magazines and news websites),
Other resources that many readers/students/scholars/professionals find helpful—although you are not writing about them for this assignment—will generally fall into one of these categories:
• reliable (public media/radio/television, research university websites, some government/nonprofit websites),
• commercial (business/organization websites or blogs engaged in commerce or promotion/advocacy, for-profit media sites/broadcasts/publications),
• social (social media threads/posts, some blogs, personal websites, many YouTube channels).
Assignment. For this project you will select
• two current peer-reviewed authoritative resources (academic journals),
• one current trade resource, and
• one current popular resource used in the discipline affiliated with your major or future career and write a report about these resources.
Your report should describe the characteristics of the four resources: What makes the authoritative resources credible for scholars and professionals in your discipline? What are the characteristics of the trade resource and popular resource, and how are they different from the authoritative resources?
For all four resources you choose:
• Who creates/assembles/edits the resource?
• What are the purposes of the resource and who are its intended audience(s)?
• How are they published (made available to readers)?
• Why did you choose these specific resources for your report?
• How might these resources each contribute to your work in your field, both as a student/scholar and as a professional?
The information you provide in your report should include summary/paraphrase/quotation of information gathered as well as examples from articles within the resources, so be sure to properly cite all ideas/information/material/examples. Your report should inform your audience about authoritative, trade, and popular resources affiliated with your discipline.
Remember that, as a report, this assignment is not an essay, and thus will not have a traditional introduction and conclusion
Audience. Write this report for your peers in this class, who may be in your same discipline or in other disciplines. This means your audience should be familiar with the different categories of resources—since, after all, they have access to this assignment sheet. Your report, therefore, should not explain the differences in the kinds of published resources; but it should clearly explain why specific resources fall into the category they do.
Reading to prepare for this assignment and completing this report can allow you to become familiar with authoritative resources from your discipline that you can go back to for future assignments (in this course and others), to learn about trade/industry resources that you can explore as part of building a professional identity, and to see the role popular resources play in the general public’s understanding of issues related to your discipline.
Format. Your project should follow MLA formatting (LS pp.150-200). It will probably require three to five double-spaced pages (plus a Works Cited or References page) to report the information this assignment asks for. Focus on writing a complete report that meets this assignment’s goals, not on a page requirement, and the page length will take care of itself.
Drafting. Do not wait until the last minute to begin the writing for your assignment. You should allow time to revise and edit your writing. Please remember that the University Writing Center is a great resource for all kinds of writing projects in every discipline.
Due Dates: Your Project One Weekly Schedule gives dates for all the readings/activities/posts from January 10-February 4. These readings/activities/posts provide the instruction for completing each part of this project; the project described here is just the culmination assessment of all you have learned during those weeks, so please make sure that you complete each reading/activity/posting by the assigned date.
You will post a hard copy of a complete draft of Project 1 by 5 pm.
2/02: Peer Review. Following Peer Review instructions, completed Peer Review should be attached in replies to two students you will be assigned to peer review. You will read and provide feedback on two of your peers’ projects. In addition to the comments you make on the drafts, you will include a brief 50-100-word general comment for your peers specifying what worked well in their essays and what didn’t work so well. More details about Peer Review will be given before this date.
2/03: Reflective Response to Peer Review. After reading through all your Peer Review feedback, write 50-100 words reflecting on specific revisions and edits you need to make to your Project 1 to make it a more complete and polished draft.
2/04: Polished Draft. You will upload your revised, polished draft