Summary of Research Study Findings
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WRTG391
WRTG 391 Writing Assignment 1 Latest-UMUC
Writing Assignment #1
Summary of Research Study Findings
Instructions: In WRTG 391, you will eventually write a
synthesis of sources essay. In writing this essay, you will conduct significant
research for scholarly sources through the UMUC Library and Information
Services interface. In many cases, scholarly articles report the findings of a
research study.
The article will provide an introduction to
the topic, review previous literature on the topic, and then explain the
methodology, findings, and conclusions of the study.
The first assignment for this class, the
Summary of Research Study Findings, helps get you started in finding scholarly
articles and, specifically, research studies. In this assignment, you will find
four articles from scholarly journals. Each of them will report on a research
study.
You will show the findings of your studies in
a format given to you. When you complete the form, the information will provide
a summary of your research in locating the four articles.
Please use the format on the following page.
You can copy and paste the information on the following pages into a Word
document and then fill the information in. Using the guidelines provided by the
video and the template, please post a rough draft of your Summary of Research
Findings as your instructor directs you.
After receiving feedback from your instructor
on your Summary of Research Findings, please use the comments from your
instructor in revising the draft.
Your Topic _________________________
Article #1:
Author(s) and title of the article and the
name of the journal:
Key terms in the article (list at least 5
terms):
Focus of study: This can be 3-4 sentences.
Conclusions of the author(s): This can be 1-2
sentences.
Your observations of what you learned about
your topic from this article and from this research study.
Please write 100-150 words for each article.
Article #2:
Author(s) and title of the article and the
name of the journal:
Key terms in the article (list at least 5
terms):
Focus of study: This can be 3-4 sentences.
Conclusions of the author(s): This can be 1-2
sentences.
Your observations of what you learned about
your topic from this article and from this research study.
Please write 100-150 words for each article.
Article #3:
Author(s) and title of the article and the
name of the journal:
Key terms in the article (list at least 5
terms):
Focus of study: This can be 3-4 sentences.
Conclusions of the author(s): This can be 1-2
sentences.
Your observations of what you learned about
your topic from this article and from this research study.
Please write 100-150 words for each article.
Article #4:
Author(s) and title of the article and the
name of the journal:
Key terms in the article (list at least 5
terms):
Focus of study: This can be 3-4 sentences.
Conclusions of the author(s): This can be 1-2
sentences.
Your observations of what you learned about
your topic from this article and from this research study.
Please write 100-150 words for each article.
WRTG 391 Writing Assignment 2 Latest-UMUC
Writing Assignment #2
Writing Assignment #2 will be a critical
annotated bibliography of 12 scholarly sources.
In this assignment you will write a list of at
least 12 references in alphabetical order in APA format. In addition, each
reference will be followed by a short analytical summary of 150-200 words.
At the end of the short summary, you will
include a sentence or two that critically analyzes the source and that mentions
distinctive features about the article and why it may or may not be useful for
you in writing a literature review.
You will use the topic you proposed and I
approved in the “Thinking About Topics” (“Exercise Can Cut Risk of
Pregnancy-Related Diabetes”) discussion. Keep in mind that your topic should be
a topic on which a number of studies or scholarly articles have been published.
Examples of topics students have chosen in the
past or that would be workable for this assignment are the following:
- The impact of the Internet on research methods of
students and plagiarism in student papers
- The impact of The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act on
primary school education
- The impact of mobile devices on cybersecurity
Overall, in considering a topic, you might
consider your major, topics that will be covered in future classes you plan to
take at UMUC, and your interests.
For example, please examine the following
ideas:
- If your major is criminal justice, you might consider
researching criminal behavior among homeless individuals, criminal
behavior among youth, society’s perception of law enforcement, etc.
- If your major is psychology, you might consider
researching counseling strategies, consumer behavior in online shopping,
decision-making in upper-management positions, etc.
- If your major is history, you might consider
researching theories on the Civil War, studies on labor patterns in the
United States, an aspect of military history, etc.
- If your major is social science, you might consider
researching community responses to health care threats, co-parenting
patterns after divorce, etc.
- If your major is graphic communication, you might
consider researching different categories of graphic communication technology,
trends in graphic communication through the years, etc.
Whatever topic you consider, keep in mind that
it should be a topic on which a number of studies or scholarly articles have
been published. You will conduct all or most of your research using UMUC’s
OneSearch function in finding scholarly articles.
This assignment will be an analytical/critical
annotated bibliography. The difference between the descriptive/informative
annotated bibliography and the analytical/critical annotated bibliography is explained
in the following video:
http://www.umuc.edu/library/tutorials/bibliography/bibliography.shtml
The transcript is at
http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/bibliography_tutorial.cfm#transcript.
The following are some links to sample
Annotated Bibliographies. Some of them give examples in APA format. You may
want to observe these examples and perhaps model your work after them.
- A variety of samples from The University of North
Carolina Writing Center, including these specific examples of APA-style
annotations.
- Some instruction from Cornell University. The website
also provides more information on the process of writing an annotated
bibliography.
- Some samples from Memorial University in Newfoundland.
Some instruction from East Carolina University.
The following is a suggested rubric for this
assignment. Your instructor may modify this rubric.
12 sources are listed in alphabetical order by
last name
5 Sources are articles from scholarly journals
or chapters from scholarly books
20 Summaries are thorough with each source’s
thesis/argument identified
40 Evaluative sentences are clear and
effective
5 Grammar and mechanics are accurate
20 APA format is used
WRTG 391 Writing Assignment 3 Latest-UMUC
Writing Assignment #3
Synthesis Essay
(Sometimes called a Literature Review)
Writing Assignment #3 will be a synthesis
essay, a format that is sometimes referred to as a literature review.
Please click here for a video that briefly
describes and outlines this writing assignment.
Organization:
Your synthesis essay should be organized in
the following manner:
- Introduction: Write one or two paragraphs in which you
introduce the reader to your topic.
- Body-the categories into which you are dividing the
literature: Divide your sources into a few categories. A suggestion is
that you divide them into three to five categories.
- Conclusion: Summarize what the literature says on your
topic.
Approach:
This semester, you have constructed a table of
research findings of four articles that discussed research studies.
You have also critically evaluated several
articles in the annotated bibliography. In this assignment you will synthesize
the ideas of several authors in a synthesis essay, or literature review.
For your annotated bibliography, you selected
a topic based on your interests and, possibly, your major. You constructed a
list of 12 references and summarized and critically analyzed them in 150-200
words each.
Through this process, you may have seen
patterns in the scholarly literature in the topic on which you conducted
research. For example, consider the following examples:
- You may have researched studies in criminal justice and
found that there are varying opinions on how to respond to criminal
behavior among youth.
- You may have researched studies in psychology and found
that counseling strategies for victims of domestic abuse tend to fall into
four categories.
- You may have researched graphic communications and
discovered that the integration of graphics in business report writing has
evolved from the 1970s to the present because of advancements in
technology.
- You may have researched articles on gerontology and
found studies that answered three basic questions on how older adults
respond to training for physical performance.
In the synthesis essay, you will focus your
research efforts in a particular area, perhaps as a response to what you found
while writing the annotated bibliography. You will then conduct more research
and synthesize your findings in this synthesis essay.
Please note that the annotated bibliography
was the beginning, not the end, of your research. You might decide to disregard
several of the articles you analyzed in the critical annotated bibliography
because they don’t speak to the specific area on which you have decided to
write your synthesis essay. You might select one article that you analyzed in
the critical annotated bibliography, look up the articles cited in that
article, and “snowball” your research in that way.
In other words, this process is a recursive
one. You might find reasons to hone in on and narrow your topic even further
after you have written the annotated bibliography.
How to organize the synthesis essay:
When you have focused on your topic, determine
how you will divide the literature. In other words, consider the following
examples we described above:
You may have researched studies in criminal
justice and found that there are varying opinions on how to respond to criminal
behavior among youth.
You might divide the paper as follows:
Introduction Body
- Category 1: “A” view on responding to criminal
behavior.
- Category 2: “B” view on responding to criminal
behavior.
- Category 3: “C” view on responding to criminal
behavior.
- Category 4: “D” view on responding to criminal
behavior.
Conclusion
You may have researched studies in psychology
and found that counseling strategies for victims of domestic abuse tend to fall
into four categories.
You might divide the paper as follows:
Introduction Body
- Category 1: “A” counseling strategy for victims of
child abuse
- Category 2: “B” counseling strategy for victims of child
abuse
- Category 3: “C” counseling strategy for victims of
child abuse
- Category 4: “D” counseling strategy for victims of
child abuse
Conclusion
You may have researched graphic communications
and discovered that the integration of graphics in business report writing has
evolved from the 1970s to the present because of advancements in technology.
You might divide the paper as follows:
Introduction Body
- Category 1: graphics in business report writing in the
1970s
- Category 2: graphics in business report writing in the
1980s
- Category 3: graphics in business report writing in the
1990s
- Category 4: graphics in business report writing from
2000 to the present
Conclusion
You may have researched articles on
gerontology and found studies that answered three basic questions on how older
adults respond to training for physical performance.
You might divide the paper as follows:
Introduction Body
- Question 1
- Question 2
- Question 3
Conclusion
In order for you to see this concept with a
real-life example, you can access a sample synthesis or literature review from
a psychology student by clicking here. The student writes her paper on the
following topic:
Emotional Eating: The Perpetual Cycle of
Mood-Food Influence. She divides her literature into the following categories:
- Influence of Mood on Eating Behavior
- Gender Differences
- Influence of Eating Behavior on Later Moods
- Chronic Stress Response Network
Notice how she synthesizes and integrates the
research into the different categories.
Approach and Requirements
Your synthesis essay, or literature review,
should be 2000-2500 words, not including your “references” pages at the end of
the review. In other words, the text of the paper should be 2000-2500 words.
In addition your synthesis essay should
include at least 10 scholarly sources in the “references” section. As stated
above, this means that you may decide not to use all 12 sources that you
summarized in your annotated bibliography.
You are free to use all 12 of them. However,
it is possible that your experience in writing summaries of the 12 sources led
you to conclude that a few of them will not be as helpful to your topic as you
had originally thought. You may decide not to include such sources in the
synthesis essay. This is totally up to you. Moreover, you might find other
sources that you would like to include in your synthesis essay that were not
included in your annotated bibliography.
You may use such sources in your synthesis
essay as well.
Some helpful tutorials and guides from UMUC’s
Effective Writing Center:
- Click here for a tutorial that features two short
videos on writing a literature review.
- Click here for a tutorial on principles in synthesizing
multiple sources.
In synthesizing your research, you are
analyzing the topic on which you have conducted research. Click here for a
helpful tutorial on analyzing a topic.
Some helpful guides from other universities:
- Some very systematic advice from The University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill can be accessed by clicking here.
- Some helpful advice from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison can be accessed by clicking here.
WRTG 391 Writing Assignment 4 Latest-UMUC
Final Project
Statement of Research Gaps or Unanswered
Questions
The final project for WRTG 391 will be a
statement of research gaps or unanswered questions.
In this assignment you will describe the topic
on which you wrote your synthesis essay, or literature review.
You will then state what gaps you found in the
research on your topic, areas in which further research might be appropriate on
the topic, or any questions have opened up for you or remained unanswered as a
result of having researched this topic.
This paper will be approximately 500-750
words.
Organization of the Paper
Introductory paragraph:
In this paragraph, you will explain the topic
which you researched. The final sentence will be a thesis statement arguing for
further research in specific areas.
Body section of 2-3 paragraphs:
This section would describe any one of, or a
combination of, the following. You would want at least two areas in which you
felt there were gaps, needs for further research, or new or unanswered
questions as a result of your research.
-gaps you saw in the research
For example, let us imagine you wrote a
literature review on the effectiveness of one-on-one laptop programs in high
schools. You may have noticed that little research has been done on how
non-native speakers of English respond to one-on-one laptop programs. No
studies analyzed the effects of such programs on the writing, reading, and
critical thinking development of non-native speakers of English. This could be
a gap in the research that you would point out in your paper.
-areas in which further research could be
conducted that would shed more light on an issue
For example, let us imagine you wrote a literature
review on the effectiveness of one-on-one laptop programs in high schools. You
may have noticed that research has been conducted on the impact of such
programs on the writing skills of non-native speakers of English. However, the
studies did not focus on particular language groups.
You feel that further study specifically on
Chinese speakers and further study specifically on Spanish speakers is
warranted. This could be an example of an area in which further research would
be warranted that you would point out in your paper.
-questions that remained unanswered for you or
new questions that opened up for you as you read the current literature on your
topic
For example, let us imagine you wrote a
literature review on the effectiveness of one-on-one laptop programs in high
schools. You noticed that, as you were reading through the literature, you had
questions on how schools determined what types of laptops to purchase.
Did they purchase Hewlett-Packards computers,
Dell computers, Toshiba computers, Acer computers, or computers from some other
vendor? You found yourself wondering how business decisions with vendors are
made when implementing a one-on-one laptop program. This could be an example of
a question that opened up for you as you read through the literature. You could
note this question in your paper.
Conclusion:
In one paragraph, summarize your points in the
body section. Re-state and succinctly explain any gaps, areas of further
research, or unanswered questions.
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