Introduction
Your group's assignment is to develop
a short (2 page single spaced, size 12 font) draft on your approved topic for
your term project. Your group's work should be focused around one main
hypothesis or question. This main assertion may be partially guided by your
opinions, which you will need to support with relevant examples and findings
from your research.
Pay particular attention to concise wording, logical flow, and the assertion, development, and conclusion of your ideas. Creating an outline will help you organize your thoughts and create structure within your paper. You will need to utilize citations and 3-5 references. Read the handout on citations for guidelines and acceptable formats for citing literature. Please seek out quality references e.g. primary literature, scientific journals and/or professional journals or publications, i.e. avoid lighter sources like popular literature (Time, Newsweek, etc) and encyclopedias.
This paper will be worth 25 points. ALL members of your group should submit this assignment on CTools.
Finding Relevant Sources There are many different individuals and organizations who discuss Global Change. One of the goals of this course is that you should learn to think critically about all of these sources and for you to be able to deal with multiple, sometimes conflicting, notions about the impact and meaning of global change. In order to achieve this goal, we want you to be very careful about the sources that you select for your research paper and your web project. You should be aware of the different classes of sources that you might encounter. The goal for your paper should be to select the most authoritative sources possible. Talk with your GSI if you have any questions. Some of the following types of sources are accessible through the library's Networked Electronic Resources webpage (http://www.lib.umich.edu/eresources/). Newspapers and Mainstream Media (i.e. Detroit News, Ann Arbor News, New York Times, Time, Newsweek, AP, Reuters): Articles in these publications are usually written by journalists with no prior expertise in Global Change. Therefore the articles usually paraphrase their original sources and the authors often have no way to make a serious analysis of the material they are presented with. These sources are therefore, not very authoritative. Peer-reviewed scientific journals (i.e. Science, Nature): These articles are usually written by the individuals doing the original experiments or data collection. Also, these articles must be approved by scientific peers before they can be published. Therefore, while articles in these venues may not be perfect, and should be subjected to a critical reading, they have been "approved" by more than one member of the scientific community and are highly authoritative. To search using the Web of Science:
Scientifically related magazines and journals (i.e. Scientific American): These articles are usually not peer-reviewed, but are typically written by scientists doing original research or by journalists with a high degree of familiarity with the material. Advocacy publications (i.e. Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Political Parties) : These groups have no real motivation to present complete research and tell the "whole story." Therefore, you should use their information with caution and approach it critically. Some of the material (i.e. research articles in Nature Conservancy magazines) is excellent and is written by scientists using the same standards they would use to write a peer-reviewed article, other material is only designed to change minds and uses information highly selectively. Web-based publications: These vary considerably. Many of the peer-reviewed magazines and journals have web-based counterparts (i.e. sciencemag.org, nature.com) that are held to the same high standards. There are also government information web-sites (nasa.gov, un.org, census.gov) that have excellent data. However, you should be careful about using random web pages found during a search with unknown authors and unknown quality. The following links may also be useful for your research: Citing Sources Your citations must meet the following criteria (following MLA format).
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