Group Inquiry Assignment FAQ

As we delve farther into the writing process surrounding our current assignment, as well as two additional papers we'll be writing this semester, confusion will abound. In response, our blog will collect frequently asked questions (in an anonymous fashion) and provide answers that can probably benefit everyone. See if your question about group inquiry can be answered below, then, before creating a new one via e-mail.

Question on Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 4:10 PM:

Our group is wondering if the 1,000 word requirement for the introduction is in effect for our group as well, because we only have two people. It seems that we may have trouble reaching that limit, would we be deducted significant points if we had less? What do you think would be an acceptable length for a group of two?

Response:

It's a good question, but I am looking for at least 1,000 words in the introduction (not counting the bibliography) from each group. The harder task will (or should) be for groups of three to condense their "best answers" into less than 1,200 words. Hopefully it shouldn't be too hard for your group to reach 1,000 words, as you have 10 sources to work with. Remember that some sources should get more attention in the introduction than others.

Question on Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 2:12 PM:

With our wiki's works cited, do we just use the annotations and citations from the individual annotations for the wiki's works cited?

Response:

That's right, although the works cited will need to be alphabetized by the name or title that appears first in each citation. In taking ownership of each member's work, the group may also decide some annotations or citations need to be strengthened. The quality of the annotated bibliography will be reflected in the group's grade.

Question on Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 12:41 PM:

I need a little help with my citations. This is the first one I really tried to get right, the article is located at this address. If you could let me know if I'm on the right track it would be very helpful. Thank you and hope to hear from you soon.

University of Minnesota. "Cellulosic Ethanol May Benefit Human Health And Help Slow Climate Change." Science Daily. Science Daily, 3 Feb. 2009. Web. 14 Oct. 2009.

Response:

Your rough draft on the citation is almost correct. Here are a couple of revisions. First, even though ScienceDaily suggests including "University of Minnesota" in the citation, it doesn't belong there because the the university didn't author the report. Rather, it provided source material to a writer at ScienceDaily who isn't mentioned. So the citation would simply begin with the article title. Secondly, the organization behind the publication can be found at the bottom of the page, ScienceDaily LLC. Thus the citation would look like this:

"Cellulosic Ethanol May Benefit Human Health And Help Slow Climate Change." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily LLC, 3 Feb. 2009. Web. 14 Oct. 2009.


Question on Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 5:07 PM:

Are The Anthropological Quarterly and Environmental Science and Technology scholarly sources?

Response:

Both of those sources would likely count as academic or scholarly. If you were to rate them on our scale of popular (1) to academic (4), Anthropological Quarterly (no "The") would probably rate about a four while Environmental Science and Technology, because it contains some "magazine" content, would rate about a three. Again, both would count as scholarly, and here's more information on their credibility:

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/anthropological_quarterly

http://pubs.acs.org/page/esthag/about.html


Question on Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 1:38 PM:

Are we allowed to use some of the articles we have already received through our prior activities in the class for our annotations?

Response:

That's also a good question. Let's limit the use of readings already assigned to one per person. And keep in mind that most of the texts we've read would count as popular (not academic) sources. There are also a number of climate-related texts at drop.io (tagged "text") that have not been assigned as class readings. As long as they're relevant to your inquiry, there's no limit on using those texts.

Question on Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 11:51 AM:

While finding articles to do my annotations on, the most relevant seem to be those that tend to be more academic than popular. While I have found both, is it OK to have more than two academic sources?

Response:

Good question: yes, it's fine to include more than two academic sources. Try then to include just one quality popular source, if you can.


Question on Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 8:22 PM:

We are confused on what a "more specific" question means. Are we supposed to break our inquiry question down even further and choose different sub topics of it?

Response:

As for the "more specific" question: yes, you should break down your overall question into smaller aspects, so that one of you tackles, say, gasoline and the other diesel, or car racing and human athletes. First decide exactly what your research should properly cover (think significance, manageability and scope of the question, occasion, exigence), and then decide who will find sources about what.