ASSESSMENT TASK: Annotated Bibliography and essay plan
This assessment item is the culminating assessment for module two, which focuses on:
• The act of research: learning to use scholarly reading and writing to synthesise information
• Making your own work credible: argument making and making meaning
• Paragraphing to convey meaning: creating thesis statements and topic sentences
• Using experts to support your own authority
Module two is all about researching ideas, uncovering information, making connections, and evaluating the work of other academics, as these arefundamental skills applicable to all scholarly activity. This is what broadens our understanding of the world and how scholars contribute to functioning societies. Across academic disciplines and professions, we must be critical users of information. The specific aims of this assessment are to contribute to your skills in:
• Locating relevant scholarly information to demonstrate/illustrate response to a set essay question
• Demonstrating your ability to respond to a set essay topic in an autonomous manner
• Evaluating scholarly literature and explain its value to an external audience
• Demonstrating your understanding of the inception and revision stages of drafting an academic product
• Demonstrating your ability to identify corrections needed between drafts and to apply these corrections in a timely manner
Leading up to this assessment (weeks 4-8) we willanalyse the various ways authors construct their arguments and provide support for their position through evidence. We will look at the ways authors incorporate the research and ideas of others into their work to give it validity, and how we can use critical thinking and scholarly attributes to evaluate the worth of these academic products to our own work. We will also utilise peer review in class to support your ability to evaluate your own work and the work of others. Peer review processes have been demonstrated to sharpen student ability to a) recognise when an assessment item is on task, b) develop stronger skills in articulating ideas, and c) use scholarly objectivity to identify weak points within their own work, and develop the knowledge and skills to correct these without supervision
For this assessment you are asked to engage with the inception and revision stages of creating an academic product. The process for completing this task requires you to follow a series of small steps:
Step one: Link ONE of the essay topics (see page 15) to your discipline, or a professional practice within your discipline. For example, if you want to go into psychology you might select essay topic one and narrow this down to the dangers of psychological testing in regard to cultural differences and do some research around this idea.
Step two: Then you might narrow this down to discussing the reasons students entering the field of psychology need to be aware of how psychology interacts with culture and how this might look in clinical practice, and do some more refined research around this notion. Remember, you are exploring the ways scholars have treated the idea and the types of information or data they have worked with, so you can locate your own ideas and support your argument in an informed manner. You should be looking for any patterns in the types of journals that publish the research you are interested in, the types of arguments that are most popular, and any disagreements in the literature (use your critical thinking to look for patterns and critique (not criticise) the work that is out there).
Step three: Develop a ‘working thesis' that will guide your argument (this might change or become more refined over time).
Step four: Return to your literature search to see if you can support your working thesis and locate relevant scholarly research to lend your argument credibility and evidence - remember, your opinion is not enough to support a scholarly product, you need evidence.
Step five: Choose four (4) articles from your search that have the capacity to provide support for your essay topic as it currently stands at the inception stage, we understand this may change as you move through the stages of production. The articles must be directly linked to your emerging argument and working thesis.
Step six: Once you have selected and defined your working thesis, and located four (4) scholarly articles you can use to support your argument, you need to draft an ‘essay plan' that can be used to guide your ongoing research and writing as you move through the stages of developing your final product (this is the inception stage of your final essay). Your essay plan must outline how you plan to argue your case and how the research you have selected for use in the annotated bibliography will contribute to this final product.
Step seven: Once you have created the essay plan which outlines your intended argument, supports, and tentative conclusion: you are required to compile the four (4) sources you have selected into a cohesive and single product - the ‘annotated bibliography'. This will explain what each source says and does, and demonstrate the validity of your source selection and clearly link to your working thesis and narrowed topic. You should aim for articles from 4 different sources. I.e. we strongly recommend you do not select 4 articles from the same journal, or 4 chapters from the same book.
Step eight: You must attach the Review Memo you will complete as homework in the weeks leading up to the assessment due date. This two-part memo is designed to help you better understand and reflect on the process of creating a product. We will provide a template for this in class, and provide support for completing this aspect of the task.
Step nine: Check your product is task oriented (you have written to the rubric) and reader centred (written to explain your ideas and findings to an unknown reader). And check that you have written for an unknown reader and not for yourself. Check your formatting - use the rubric below, the templates and exemplars located in LJCU to check you have completed the assessment properly. Make sure you have submitted the document in order of: annotated bibliography first (with each annotation on its own page), essay plan second, and the two part revision memo last.
Each of the 4 annotations must be between 150-300 words and needs to:
• Summarize the main arguments or ideas presented by the author
• Evaluate the scope of research or the scope of the discussion
• Explain the value of each article in terms of its academic quality, integrity, and rigour
• Evaluate the source's relevance to your topic
• State how the article might be used to support your own emerging argument (link to your thesis)
Your essay plan must:
• Clearly demonstrate your conceptual thinking in terms of developing an argument
• Demonstrate how you plan to use the research you have gathered in the annotated bibliography.