HON301K Project Expectations

Project Description:

Most authentic learning involves incorporating concepts and ideas that you read and hear into new models that you incorporate into your pre-existing mental models about yourself and the world in which you live. You should thus view the course project as a way to take some germ of an idea that you get from the class, the reading, or from pre-existing ideas and increase the depth of your knowledge in that area until you have a new model in your mind that you think is important, and you also think would be of interest to others around you. The project is worth 30% of your course grade, so should involve significant effort and quality.

Project Common Requirements:

Topic - The project topic must be related to an examination of science, technology, and the pursuit of truth in a way that the completion of the project fulfills one or more of the course or category objectives as stated on the syllabus. You may choose a specific concept, a specific technology, a comparison of viewpoints, a theoretical or applied concept, or any number of other topic areas.

Participation - All course members must complete a project with similar levels of effort and participation. One of you may choose to do a project on a topic of personal interest. Another pair of students may choose to do a joint project. In the 2-person group, the expectation would be that each member would do the equivalent of the person in the single-person group. If for example they both chose to do a "paper", if the single person did a 10 page paper for their project, the 2-person group should do a 20 page paper and should clearly delineate the contributions of each group member to the project. Thus while I encourage cooperative work, you will be graded on an individual basis and so I must be able to see and distinguish the individual components of your work.

Format - You may choose to do your project in any presentation format/medium including, but not limited to: paper, powerpoint, web pages, oral, visual, multimedia....

Minimum research background: You must have a minimum of 12 quality background sources for your project. I would prefer that at least one-half of these be primary sources from reputable journals published in the field in which your topic lies.

Project Schedule and Deadlines:

Project Synopsis (Due October 1) One page project synopsis submitted by Oct. 1

Briefly describe your topic, how you propose to approach the topic, and why you think the topic is pertinent to the theme of the course. (This portion of the synopsis should be about 500 words and should use/list at least 5 of the sources you hope to use for the project). In the synopsis you are showing us that you have thought about what you are trying to do and have done some preliminary research to know that the project is possible.

Write out Goals & Objectives for your specific project. Be sure to state how your project will help you fulfill one or more of the Course/Category objectives as stated on the syllabus.

Describe Project and Presentation Medium - What format would you prefer? What will best present your information and your learning. Why?

All presentations will be "public" in some way. Papers will be published to the web, presentations given in class, other visual media put on virtual or real display depending on medium, etc. with brief oral summaries if needed for the class.

Describe the criteria you want your peers and your instructor to use to evaluate your project. What criteria would distinguish clearly Excellent A level work, Above average B level work, Average C level work etc. in our examination of your project.

For groups, please clearly delineate the roles of each group member.

Project Preliminary Submission (November 7) - The project should be essentially completed and ready for presentation at this point. The author's, the class, and/or the instructor will review each project and make suggestions for further development/change. These refinements will then be used in a revision prior to the final submission of the project.

What should your Preliminary Project Submission include (minimum)

Correctly cited references for all of the sources you are using in your project. In science writing we use the Chicago Manual of Style (Turabian) and I created a page with the main citation formats. You can also use the New RefWorks Demo that you can type in your references and then select your output format and it formats them all correctly. RefWorks and the other major citation formats (MLA, APA) have links from the Library Home Page

At least a well filled out "annotated outline" of your project complete with all major topics and ideas. If you are still "dwelling" at the generic level of your synopsis, then you have not progressed in your project as expected. All of your major ideas should be pretty much presented at least in a basic way.

At least the basic presentation format should be completed. Thus if you are planning on a powerpoint, then your powerpoint should have all the above components and be turned in as a powerpoint. If you are doing another visual format then you should be submitting an example that shows (maybe with a paper attachment) how all the required components are present and that you have progressed, even though you may have more to do yet.

You should be dealing with the themes of the course - Science, Technology, and the Pursuit of Truth. Your research should take you beyond the generic level we are taking in class into a more indepth pursuit of a specific topic. Even if we have covered some of your "theme" in class, you should be able to take a facet that will still be of interest to you and the rest of the class.

You should complete and achieve the goals and objectives that you set forth in your synopsis, at least in a preliminary way.

You should be ready to present your project to the class beginning Nov. 11 (unless someone wants to volunteer for Nov. 7 - maybe one of the biotech projects?), so you should be far enough along to feel comfortable if you are one of the first presenters selected.

This preliminary submission of your project will also be worth 25 points, as will be the presentation, and the final submission, giving 100 points total for your project that will count for as stated in the syllabus, 30 % of your course grade.

Project Presentations ( November 11 (or 7?) - December 10 - as needed) (<20 minutes/person)

Presentation of your project in the format you have chosen.

Examples

If you write a paper, then maybe a short oral overview of the paper and then we will link the paper to the web site where we can go for further review.

If you are doing a visual presentation, then you should show your media or multimedia that you have done so far, again with a short oral explanation. Then we will "post" these somehow as well.

If you are planning on oral media, then you need to think both about your presentation and the submission of your final project. For Powerpoint, you might want to embed the audio clips for each page for the final and just summarize for the in class presentation?

All projects will be posted and members of the class will be expected to provide feedback on one or more projects so that the project can be "finalized" for the final submission at the end of the semester.

Project Final Submission (December 10) Revisions to the project, ideas, concepts, or further required research must be completed by this date and the final project submitted in the media selected for the project (e.g. paper (word document as attachment or on disk), powerpoint.(.ppt as attachment or on disk), visual media (we will figure out a way - digital photograph etc- to best present your media), oral (digital sound or movie file, .mp3 or .mov etc.) I can help with the technical aspects (hey that's my job!).