This Research Update with Annotated Bibliography prepares students for a conference early in the drafting of their documented essays and provides opportunity to assess their selected sources.
Before we meet in conference, I'd like you to write me a brief memo reporting on your work in progress. You may use the sample I created below as a model. Begin by stating again the focus/purpose of your project. I ask for that because you may have revised it by now and it's important to keep it foremost in your mind to guide your work.
Then, list each of your sources, using the MLA or APA conventions for format and follow each with a brief annotation: that is, a short description of the contents of the source and your assessment of the nature of the source and how the information may or may not be useful to your project. For Annotated Bibliography, click here.
Indicate what you are finding that is most interesting to you and why.
Finally, indicate any question you have that you'd like to discuss when we consult in conference. Bring this memo to the conference. If you've made xerox copies of your sources, please bring them along also.
Sample Report on Research in Progress
Purpose of the Project:
Charlie Moran and I are to write a chapter for a book on methods of reviewing writing-across-the-curriculum programs. For our chapter, we're to explain the procedures we use at UMass to evaluate our Junior Year Writing Program courses, the writing courses offered by each department for their majors. More important, we're to answer the question: How well do our evaluation procedures work: do they help us identify how well specific courses are working and strengthen courses and the overall program?
Working Bibliography:
Fulwiler, Toby. "How Well Does Writing across the Curriculum Work? College English 46(1984): 113-25. Toby's reflections, on the basis of his work with faculty, on institutional and faculty issues that get in the way of WAC programs. I think we might want to refer to some of his points when we try to answer how well our review procedures work: do our procedures help us identify, let alone change, some of those obstacles?
Herrington, Anne J, and Deborah Cadman. "Peer Review and Revising in an Anthropology Course: Lessons for Learning" College Composition and Communication 42 (May 1991): 184-199. It reports on our ethnographic study in Sylvia Forman's Junior Year Writing course in Anthropology, focusing on both students' and the teacher's views of the function and value of peer review and revising I think we can use this study to compare the knowledge gained from our JYWP program review procedures with the knowledge gained from a research study.
McLeod?, Susan H. Strengthening Programs for Writing across the Curriculum. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1988. McLeod? presents program review procedures that are used by a number of established WAC programs. I think this will be useful as a way of putting our program's efforts in a larger context
What's most interesting?
Well, I don't know that yet. We know our program review procedures and, through years of going through them, we have an informal sense of both their value and limitation. But, we've not systematically addressed that question. Writing this chapter will give us occasion to do so. I think what will be most interesting will be looking at our program review procedures in light of the procedures used at other schools and, perhaps, my own research.
I don't have questions of you related to this specific project. In relation to the more general question about how writing is used for learning in classes other than writing classes, I'd be interested in learning about any classes where you think the teacher is asking you to do interesting writing assignments that contribute to your learning for the course.
