On Thursday, you'll be drafting your reflective essay for your researched project. Here's what the researched project assignment says about the reflective essay:
A Reflective Essay: This is the part that will look like a more traditional “research paper” in that this is where you’ll write about your sources. It’s designed so that you can take much of your plan of inquiry (minus the part about how you actually located your sources since this isn't a research narrative where you tell the story of your "discovery" of your sources) and revise it into your reflective essay (the revision is significant, yes, but it’s better than starting from scratch). So, the audience for the reflective essay is ME. It’s where you can show me what you know about your question and the context of it. This is where you’ll be citing your sources in traditional academic fashion (parenthetical documentation and works cited pages will be required), but more important than that, you’ll be showing me how you’ve synthesized your research, analyzed the information, and come to your own claim in response to all you’ve learned. Please re-read Kantz as you’re writing this final essay as it’s important that you NOT just tell a story of your research process ("First I searched this database using these keywords; then I found this article, which said X) or organize your paper by discussing one source at a time. That’s more what your plan of inquiry is, and that’s an ok place to start. But, what I want to see here is you making a claim based on/in the context of an analysis and synthesis of the conversation surrounding this question. That means including the major ideas/perspectives you came across in your research. I also want you to write about what you made (your “thing”) and why. What choices did you make about audience, purpose, claim, and genre, and why did you make those choices?
I've put up a link to a handout on meaningful incorporation of source material (click the link here or on the right side of our blog or directly through our 1302SII Google Docs folder); it has a lot of helpful hints about the technicalities of quoting and paraphrasing source ideas, but also addresses the philosophy behind when and why you do it. Think of this as an add-on to what you've learned from our course reading this semester, particularly from Kantz. Remember that you don't have any arbitrary guidelines about how many sources to use or how many times to quote people. That is all completely dependent on your own project. But know that I expect you to have done a pretty thorough search of the databases on your subject, so if you're only quoting from internet sources or only referencing 1-2 sources, you can expect me to ask you to justify those choices:). Failing to acknowledge sources would result in a failing grade for your portfolio, but that's something we can address in revision, so it should never get to that point. If you have questions, that's part of what I'll be happy to address.
If you have any questions about the writing of this part of your project, post them here so others can benefit from the responses, ok? Good luck to you!
I've been having trouble because I don't know exactly what you want.. You just want us to write what we learned from the sources in a creative way?? What else?
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