OVERVIEW:
The Research Project will focus on a local environmental problem or challenge that puts the relationship of the human place in nature at the heart of the inquiry. The group's aim is to create an interdisciplinary scholarly understanding of the general issue, apply it to an understanding of the local issue, and create a multimedia presentation that informs the viewer of the group's findings. The group will also write a short report and bibliography explaining its findings, and post it on a blog site so that others can benefit from their findings.

The basis of understanding the scholarship will be essays by individual group members using two conflicting viewpoints within a discipline. This essay will be explained more fully as a Composition Assignment. This essay will also include a bibliography with three additional scholarly citations of sources that engage this debate. Group members will read (and re-read) their group members' essays both to provide a peer review each paper and two gain interdisciplinary knowledge of the problem.

Group members will also be bringing in additional primary source material from local newspapers, web sites (including government at various levels, activist and business organizations, and informational groups), and images, and reporting on them.

This is a limited research project intended to get you familiar with some of the basic tools of doing and communicating research. As I will explain in class, we will limit the project in several ways. You will then be positioned to do more extensive research projects, drawing on what you have learned here.

SPECIFICS OF THE PROJECT:
What We Have Accomplished:
We have already taken several steps forward in this endeavor. We have generated a wide range of possible issues based on initial "informed brainstorming," then formed groups based on your choices. Then, each group member researched and wrote a background report, which was to include both general and local sources, on the group's issue. Group members then were to comment on the differences and similarities of the material in the report as the basis for a discussion on the specific focus the group would take. The strength of your group's position at this point is based on how well group members have followed instructions up to this point. In order to be successful, your group may have to make up for any problems in the past by doing additional work in the future.

Steps to Take:

1. Participate in online discussion about the focus of your project and possible keywords. See Oct. 31 Composition and Online Assignments.
2. Attend library workshop on Tuesday, Nov. 7, and begin exploring your database and identifying your scholarly articles.
3. Complete Nov. 7 Composition Assignment describing the main arguments, areas of disagreement, and reasons for choosing your scholarly argument.

Additional steps will follow.

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