BIS 300F

Interdisciplinary Inquiry:

The Aims of Education

David S. Goldstein, Ph.D.

Article Abstract Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to practice the important skills of reading and summarizing scholarly articles and to help you and your cluster members learn about your chosen topic.

Each member of your research cluster will post one article abstract. To do that, follow these steps:

• First, select the one scholarly article you have found in a peer-reviewed journal that you think would be of most interest to your cluster members. (If you are unsure how to identify a scholarly article, read the Campus Library's guide at <http://www.bothell.washington.edu/library/guides/sources.html>, which you also can get to from the "External Links" area in Blackboard.) It is o.k. if more than one group member chooses the same article to abstract.  If your article includes its own abstract, or you have found an abstract of your article somewhere else, I strongly recommend that you do not read it!  It is difficult not to be influenced by an abstract written by someone else, and it makes it harder to produce your own based only on your own critical reading and thinking.  Moreover, you run the risk of using too much of the original abstract, either intentionally or unintentionally, which can lead to academic integrity problems.  It is important to avoid the appearance of using someone else's intellectual property without attribution.
  
• Then, read "Writing Abstracts" at <http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/bizwrite/abstracts.html>, which you also can get to from the "External Links" area of Blackboard.
• Then, write an informative abstract of 200 to 300 words, following the "Writing Abstracts" guide. Please write your document in Microsoft Word.  Although the "Writing Abstracts" web site example is single-spaced and does not contain full publication information, please make sure that your abstract is double-spaced and contains, anywhere in the document, the article's full publication information: full title, author, journal title, and publication date, and full information about the database from which it was retrieved, if any (e.g., ProQuest. Retrieved 23 Jan. 2006.).  Please use a standard academic header as shown in item #20 in "Tips for Better Prose" at <http://faculty.washington.edu/davidgs/Prose.html> (which does not count toward the word count).
  
• Finally, no later than 5:35 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 9, post your abstract in Blackboard. To do so, log onto Blackboard and click on "Communication," then on "Group Pages."  Click on your research cluster link, and then on "Discussion Board."  Then click on the "Article Abstracts" link and then on my message. Click on the "Reply" button and add your abstract, which must be a Word document, to your message as an attachment.
  

Your abstract will be graded on the following criteria:

Completeness and accuracy	80 percent
Conventions	20 percent
TOTAL	5 percent of course grade

This page last updated October 24, 2006.

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