Cruising Along Through Module III

July 23, 2007

Grades It has been a little quiet lately, so this is just a short reminder of what needs to be accomplished for this module.

Ass. #7: Primary Research Assignment (Survey or Interview)- 30 pts

Ass. #8: Summary of two articles - 30 pts

Ass. #9: Odyssey #4 (scholarly journals) - 30 pts

Paper 3: Defining the Problem (2 pages)- 75 pts

Assignment #7 is probably one of the most important types of research you can do for your essay. It adds the most credibility and helps you build ethos in your paper. I hope you did a good job on this one. Assignment #8 is there to get you started in reading what you’ve been finding. It’s time to start thinking about how you will use some of this stuff in your final paper. Writing summaries during the research process helps with that.

When I was working on my Master’s thesis and Doctoral dissertation, 80% of my research was done looking for scholarly journals. It’s really an important step in the research process. If you learn or remember anything about this course, I hope this is part of it. Every database is different though, but most will allow you to separate out the good from the rest. I’ve found recently that certain databases are just better than others when looking for scholarly peer reviewed periodicals. The GCC library does a great job of pointing them out for you: JSTOR and Project Muse are two.

I’m just finishing up the grading from module 2, and I will begin to post the scores and graded assignments in Blackboard today. You should all have yours by tonight. You have to remember that there are 15 of you left, and it’s almost impossible for me to get 75 assignments (15×5) graded in a day or two. I usually take a week in the regular semester and about 5 days in summer if I’m lucky. So please be patient with me. I am only one person. Too bad I can’t get Sam to grade papers.