primary source research

Learning to Incorporate Source Material with a Full Menu of Options: Developing a Discrete Skill in Isolation

Activities, documentation, genre and discourse community, Integrating sources, primary source research, Process, quotations, citations, and style, research, secondary source research /

Stephen David Grover Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Writing assignments often require students to perform a complex array of interrelated tasks all at once. For example, when composing a typical researched argument essay, students must keep their eyes on higher-order concerns like thesis, organization, and finding and evaluating evidence, while at the same time […]

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Fuzzy Logic: How the Fuzzy Definition of Plagiarism is Getting Even Fuzzier

Activities, documentation, Integrating sources, plagiarism, primary source research, Process, quotations, citations, and style, secondary source research /

Steven Engel and Staci Shultz Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Rachel Hall Buck and Silvia Vaccino-Salvadore’s Writing Spaces essay, “‘Doing Research Is Fun; Citing Sources Is Not’: Understanding the Fuzzy Definition of Plagiarism,” suggests ways to help students unpack the complexity of plagiarism. Our activity extends these essential conversations by examining several recent highprofile

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Source Speed Dating: Where Do Research Topics Come From?

Activities, demystifying writing assignments, prewriting and invention, primary source research, research /

Hannah T. Davis Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description The beginning of a research paper assignment might involve a discussion of the goals of the assignment and a short brainstorming activity to help students think about possible topics. When students are asked to quickly choose a topic in this manner, without first conducting preliminary research,

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Unpacking Abstracts: Conventions of Empirical Abstracts in Social Science Papers

Activities, critical thought and analysis, genre and discourse community, primary source research, reading strategies, research, secondary source research, STEM, Style, writing across the curriculum /

Faqryza Ab Latif Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description The goal of the activity is for learners to be able to describe the components that make up the abstract of an empirical social science paper and apply them to other abstracts in the field. This goal is connected to introducing students to the conventions of

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Object Ethnography for the Real-World: Using Objects and Documents for Disciplinary Development

Assignments, Community-engaged writing, critical thought and analysis, genre and discourse community, primary source research, reflection, research, rhetoric /

Meng-Hsien (Neal) Liu Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description As Writing Studies has sought to address multimodal and embodied composition, one area has focused on how objects mediate writing processes and identity formations (Shipka). This assignment represents a final term project for an advanced composition class with the overall objective of complicating students’ thinking regarding

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Emotionally Aware Ethnography

Assignments, Community-engaged writing, critical thought and analysis, genre and discourse community, narrative and storytelling, Place-based Writing, primary source research /

Sarah Bramblett Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description I’ve encountered several jarring writing submissions: an essay describing a student’s family member’s tragic death, an essay detailing a student’s battle with an eating disorder, an essay telling of a student’s loneliness in their first semester of college, and an essay recounting a student’s suicidal thoughts. These

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Engaging Podcasts as a Dynamic Genre for Invention

collaboration and group work, prewriting and invention, primary source research, secondary source research, visual/multimodal rhetorics /

Charles Woods & Devon Ralston Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description Instructors who maintain a robust definition of text “connect our students so much more with the real world of writing. We prepare them for the world […] so that they can participate in that conversation” (Marchetti & O’Dell). Podcasts represent a digital genre that

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At Work in the Archives: Place-Based Research and Writing

Archival Research, drafting and revising, Place-based Writing, primary source research, rhetorical appeals and argument /

Lynée Lewis Gaillet & Jessica Rose Volume 4 Chapter Description This chapter outlines a plan for incorporating primary and archival research into first year writing course designs. Correlating directly with recent college initiatives and composition best practices, archival research asks students to see themselves as experts, engage in rhetorical activism, and take on college-to-career projects.

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How to Analyze Data in a Primary Research Study

primary source research, volume 4 /

Melody Denny & Lindsay Clark Volume 4 Chapter Description This chapter introduces students to the idea of working with primary research data grounded in qualitative inquiry, closed-and open-ended methods, and research ethics (Driscoll; Mackey and Gass; Morse; Scott and Garner). We know this can seem intimidating to students, so we will walk them through the

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Putting Ethnographic Writing in Context

primary source research, Volume 2 /

Seth Kahn Volume 2 Chapter Description The goal of this chapter is to flesh out some of the theoretical underpinnings of enthographic writing–writing that tries to understand what makes people or a culture unique or interesting, how they understand themselves–in order to help students put participation/observation research into a context beyond simply following directions. The

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