Research+Guidelines+and+Rubrics

=**RESEARCH GUIDELINES:**=

This seminar focuses on research. Research involves inquiry into the unknown. A research paper/report summarizes and documents that inquiry. This seminar is about people and animals. We are the subject and to some extent, the object of our own inquiry, the investigator and the object of investigation. All research is tricky because of the tendency people have to see their values, aspirations, and preferences in the world they encounter. Research, however, is an inquiry into reality, what is, rather than what we believe, hope or assume is the case. As we do research, we do our best to keep our biases from contaminating the inquiry. This is not an easy task, even in chemistry and physics where the subjects and problems engage us emotionally to a very limited extent. We are able to study fractals, the Krebs cycle, and String Theory without having to deal with the issue of aversion that most people studying cockroaches would have to confront to attain accurate results. It is a point of interest to us, in this seminar, that many people have this aversion given that cockroaches are closely related and ecologically similar to crickets, insects that evoke pleasant associations for many. Is this irrational? Is it threatening or humiliating to conclude thus? You see how people investigating humans and cockroaches could arrive at results that reflect distorted perspectives of both. Institutional research seldom avoids the implied problem. Most research centering on cockroaches, for example, is oriented towards eliminating them from our surroundings. The nature of this sort of inquiry contaminates the results. It is our job as researchers to minimize this contamination so as to attain results that better portray the truths of the world we occupy. What we can do in this seminar is to direct our attention towards our own biases. In this way, we will be able to better see if and how we are skewing our results. We can then take steps to minimize the distortion and inform our audience of the possibility of skewed results as we make our reports. As an added bonus, we can learn about our biases, predispositions, and assumptions enhancing our mastery and understanding of our personal world views.
 * Introduction:**

Each student will pick an animal or group of animals as his or her research subject. As noted above, students should chose creatures that arouse fear, disgust, hatred, or ambivalence. Alternately, students can choose an animal that is mainly ignored. Most students will probably rely on the judgments of modern American culture in guiding their choice. Rats, mice, snakes, cockroaches, houseflies, grasshoppers, trash fish such as suckers and carp, many species of spiders, and vermin such as coyotes, skunks, porcupines, opossums, gophers, prairie dogs, crows, vultures, bats, frogs, toads, starlings, and blackbirds are good choices. Other animals such as deer, squirrels, horses, donkeys, dogs, cats, rabbits, lizards and pigs are treated as vermin in some circumstances. Students are welcome, however, to explore other cultural perspectives and choose accordingly. Bat-eared and Cape Foxes, for example, are ruthlessly exterminated in South Africa and dogs are avoided as unclean, loathsome animals in many Muslim countries. Jackals and Hyenas are even worse. Some Native American groups have a particular dread of ants and wasps.
 * Research Topic:**

Research in this seminar involves two goals. First, students should learn as much as they can about the natural history of the animal of choice. Natural history encompasses observable facts such as anatomy, range, life span, variation, reproduction, feeding habits, life cycle, daily round of activities, relation to other animals, social structure, etc. Second, students should learn as much as they can about cultural assessments of the animal, the place of the animal in the human record and consciousness.
 * Research Goals:**

Students need to develop a plan to attain the research goal. Students will inevitably modify this plan as the semester proceeds. Many students, for example, will need to progressively limit their inquiries. A student, for example, who chooses insects as a class of creatures that Americans mercilessly poison, squash, swat, and kill, will probably wish to limit his or her inquiries to a particular species or set of species. Students may also limit their focus to particular social phenomena such as Rattlesnake eradication ‘rodeos,’ mass poisonings of blackbirds, etc. Research design encompasses both the scope of inquiry and specification of the methods the student will be using to generate results and the means the student specifies to document findings.
 * Research Design**:

Students can use a number or methods. Scholarly research at the library or on the web relies on the research carried out by others. To do successful scholarly research, students need to be able to assess the credibility of the research source. We will discuss means of assessing credibility in class. Direct primary research methods, systematic observation (including use of aids such as telescopes, microscopes, magnifying glasses), photography, sound recording, survey, interview, and systematic ethological work can involve students more directly.
 * Research Methods: [[image:http://www.hendrix.edu/uploadedImages/Bailey_Library/LibraryResearch.jpg width="331" height="194" align="right" caption="Scholarly Research"]]**

As students apply research methods, they must develop means of documenting their findings and organizing the facts they gather. Documentation needs to be comprehensive, systematic, and detailed. Notes, sketches, photographs, journals, and checklists are all means of documentation. Student should develop the habit of constantly attending to the situation that forms the background of documentation. Observation notes, for example, should always specify the location and time that the observation was made along with pertinent features of the setting. Observing crows competing for carrion for example, I would note that I observed the situation at 9:00 am in a mowed Alfalfa field a few hundred yards west of the Rio Grande just outside the city limits of Los Lunas, New Mexico. I would note that the animals were competing for the remains of a long dead dog. I would then describe their numbers and their behavior. Doing scholarly research, I would note down the bibliographical information and write a brief synopsis of the content of the article. Reports, both the progress reports and the final paper/presentation, would list the conclusions I drew from the research I was able to accomplish. Reports articulate what the researcher has learned.
 * Documentation**:

There is some overlap between essays and research papers. Essays are designed to persuade, and often use research to bolster credibility. Research papers, while not free of opinions, are more slanted towards the presentation of discovered information than persuasion to a given viewpoint. Choice of a topic is always based in one's values, but the primary purpose of research papers is to inform, analyze, and classify rather than persuade.
 * Research and Opinion:**

These will consist of brief informal presentations to your student peers in class. When students make these presentations, they should provide synopses, a brief summary (1 page) of what you’ve learned to date plus a brief summary (1 page) of what you’ve done to attain this new knowledge and information. If you are doing mainly scholarly research, a two page annotated bibliography would be fine. A Progress Report will be due March 11 and we will have a progress check-in on April 8.
 * Progress Report:**

The paper you write will simply (1) Summarize what you have learned in your research. (2) Document your direct methods (your research strategies and your scholarly sources). The paper should be __around__ 4000 words. In structure, the paper should first identify the topics (the natural history of your chosen animal and the nature of the relationship of the animal to humans). Next, the paper should present the major points, issues, and information you've discovered in your inquiries. Finally, the paper should conclude with an extended statement of the perspective(s) that you attained through the research you've completed. Finally, you document your methods or sources. This can be accomplished within the text in the form of footnotes, in a bibliography which lists the sources you've used, or in an appendix describing direct research methods. The paper is due May 8.
 * Research Paper:**

The research paper is the primary form of professional communication for scientists and scholars. For that reason, style and form are important and often rigidly specified. You should name the style manual (MLA, University of Chicago, etc.) when you submit your research plan/bibliography. You can choose your style manual, just specify it and then use it consistently. In general you should use the style manual that people use for professional papers in your major. Use MLA as default. Here is a pretty good look at the MLA essentials that the Purdue writing lab assembled.
 * Style and Style Manuals**:

Short Presentations (Ten minutes plus five minutes for questions and discussion) based on the research summarized in the research paper will be scheduled in late April/early May. As stated above, this presentation can be a conventional formal presentation of the research, a poster presentation, or a PowerPoint multi-media presentation. Here are some tips. Presentations should both entertain and inform. Bells and whistles are not necessary but do engage your audience, make connections to issues of interest in previous meetings and presentations and pay attention to eye contact and diction. Presentations should be precise. They should not run longer than the allotted time and should not vary in pace (If you have to rush, do so consistently). Using media is taking risks - to minimize the risks, prepare - if possible, do a test run of the video, music, PowerPoint, etc. on the machine you will use. Otherwise, cross your fingers and pray. If you collaborate, work out your “choreography.” To open discussion use open-ended questions that connect to the experiences, opinions, and thoughts of your audience. End discussion explicitly. Be courteous throughout and at the end thank the audience for their attention to your work.
 * Presentations**:

“Each student is expected to maintain the highest standards of honesty and integrity in academic and professional matters. The University reserves the right to take disciplinary action up to and including dismissal against any student who is found guilty of academic dishonesty or otherwise fails to meet the standards. Any student judged to have engaged in academic dishonesty in course work may receive a reduced or failing grade for the work in question.” //Pathfinder, The UNM Student Handbook// p. 58
 * NOTE:** This is the first paragraph of the UNM Policy on Academic Dishonesty:


 * Rubric Summary: Research Paper and Presentation: [[image:http://www-lib.iupui.edu/files/images/OnNotice2.jpg width="399" height="372" align="right"]]**


 * Paper:**
 * //**Length**// – 3200 words of text citations, bibliography


 * **//Stylistic features://**
 * Font - professional (Times New Roman, Arial, Courier), 12 point
 * Spacing – double – long quotes indented and single spaced
 * Margins – 1.25”


 * //**Sources:**//
 * Natural History: two, one of which should be ‘hard.’
 * Animal/Human Issue(s) – five, one of which should be ‘hard.’


 * //**Citations:**// footnote or parenthetical according to your style manual.


 * //**Bibliographic Style:**// consistent, and according to your style manual


 * //**Parameters of Assessment/evaluation**//: clarity, balance, challenge (how much you learned through the research), accuracy, structure, and presentation.


 * Presentation:**


 * **//Length//**:
 * Poster presentations: 10 minutes
 * Other (PowerPoint, media, or oral): 10 minutes

//**Parameters of Assessment/evaluation:**// clarity, professionalism, poise, connection to audience, balance (between entertainment and educational value).