Instruction
For your Research Essay, you will be contributing to a specific conversation, current in your professional field. This requires you becoming expert enough in the topic you select to discern those current conversations. The project will be happening in several steps:
Choosing your broad topic, and brainstorming it down
Doing necessary preliminary research, to derive a narrow, challenging, and grounded research question, that does one of the following:
Reports on a current development
Critiques current conventional wisdom
Advocates a solution to a current problem, or a position in a current controversy
Continuing research, to contextualize and in some way answer your question
Write the essay, per scholarly, and professional conventions in your field
Along the way, we will be examining issues of finding good sources, proper use of sources, and appropriate citation of sources, including protecting ourselves against plagiarism.
Specifications
Approximately 1,800 words, not including the Works Cited page
Features a clear, narrow, challenging, and grounded research question, hypothesis, or thesis, fulfilling generic requirements for an academic essay (see “reports, critiques, advocates”) Research Question (or hypothesis, or thesis)
Rigorously cited & properly paraphrased
SafeAssign score of under 25% (there are exceptional situations, which we'll be discussing)
Six scholarly, specialized sources (plus whatever other sources you need)
Current on an issue in your field
Documented per assigned documentation style, including a correctly-formatted bibliography
Self-plagiarism (recycling of your own work) is NOT acceptable. You must get clearance from me if you wish to use any of your own previous research in constructing this essay
Rigorously cited in-text: failure to cite will result in a maximum of 60
Prior deadlines regarding topic, question, and possibly thesis must be met for me to accept your final draft submission