Research Essay Rubric. We looked at the assignment sheet for the research project with special attention to the criteria for the essay. I talked a little about what I want to teach by assigning this project, and how it is those teaching goals that provide my basis for defining criteria and weighting different features that count toward the grade. On the assignment sheet we note the following criteria, and discussed the moves the writer would need to make in the essay to meet those criteria.
20 points: background & relevance to WS
Presentation of relevant background + discussion of relevance of your project to writing studies
Include:1 or 2 writing studies references relevant to your research question; use those references to define your niche and the categories of analysis.
20 points: research question
Clear statement of a research question to focus your analysis=what the analysis will show
A good research question is relevant to writing studies, is "doable" in terms of your data set
A good research question is relevant to writing studies, is "doable" in terms of your data set
10 points: methods
Clear identification & explanation of methods to conduct your research
This should include discussion of how you will collect + analyze your data, and it should set up your categories of analysis and their connection to the research (if relevant)Clear identification & explanation of methods to conduct your research
20 points: presentation & analysis of data
Presentation and analysis of data or information (see requirements for short analysis essay)
This should include: identification of your analytic categories, examples to illustrate patterns from data; direct statements of what the analysis shows re the research question.
10 points: discussion
Discussion should point out relationships between patterns in the data and findings from WS research, direct statements of what in particular your research adds to WS10 points: conclusions
Sums up findings, indicates limitations, applications, possible new questions raised, etc
10 points: organization & correctness
We used this rubric to assess the two sample research projects and found that in general, the rubric posed grades that were slightly different from the "wholistic" grades (gut grades) we would give to the essays. (My rubric grades were lower, some groups gave higher, and some lower).
The most important outcomes of this discussion was to think about how these evaluations might help these (very good) writers write stronger essays. Both these papers were very good in terms of exploring important questions in terms of questions raised by writing studies research, making particular references to that research, and using their data to add to (or raise more questions) for writing studies. We noticed that important areas to work on were:
stating the research question explicitly and in detail;
announcing or setting up the categories for analysis somewhere BEFORE the actual analysis section;
selecting/including appropriate examples from the data;
providing detailed discussions of the data examples (paper 1),
providing enough examples (paper 2)
organization and development.
providing enough examples (paper 2)
organization and development.
Workshop on research projects
You are just about ready to start collecting data. A number of you turned in the consent form, and all of you spent class working on your research instruments (for example, the interview protocol, plan for observation, reflective writing => what every you tool or material you will use to gather/create data), developing a more in-depth research question, planning for data collection (identifying what you will look for/notice/ask about).
For next class:Turn in signed consent forms.
Blog 12: Grade for Short Analysis (posted in class)
Blog 12: Grade for Short Analysis (posted in class)
Blog 13: Whatever you worked on in class and during the week. This is one place where you accumulate credit for writing process for your project.
During first part of class we will work on writing the literature review (bring the research essay you used to frame your project) and the methods section.
During the second part of class we will work on data analysis. I will talk about how to create and analyze transcripts, so bring any transcription you may have started + any other data you might have.
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