PREREQUISITE: Completion of IDS courses below the 4000 level. 

GOALS:

1. To encourage breadth of vision and sensitivity to interrelationships between different fields of knowledge. 
2. To allow students to pursue a topic in depth by exploring both primary and secondary sources. 
3. To refine thinking skills. 
4. To refine research skills. 
5. To refine writing skills. 
METHODS:

1. Please, meet with your instructor during the first week of class to discuss possible topics and sign the weekly schedule posted on the office door. Full sections will get together at the end of the term to allow participants to share findings. In the intervening weeks, you will generally meet individually with your instructor at the time for which you signed up.

2. By the second week, please bring a proposal of the projected research, or contact me by e-mail (Dr. Shafer: ihs@ionet.net. The proposal should include a concise description of the study, the methods to be used, and a preliminary bibliography. Make sure that you will be able to obtain several recent scholarly sources! If you use the Internet, carefully evaluate the material by making sure the author is an auhority in the field.

3. The remainder of the term will be devoted to research and writing. You must have at least one conference a week with your instructor. Please bring your weekly logs (see #4. below) and your work-in-progress (generally all drafts should be typed or word processed). No final papers will be accepted unless your faculty advisor have been involved in the entire writing process from preliminary outlines and notes to the completed manuscript. Papers should be written in the MLA research documentation style (as presented in James D. Lester's Writing Research Papers) unless another style is clearly more germane to a given project. In the latter case faculty from the appropriate discipline should be consulted. The papers should be addressed to a general, literate audience. Please avoid jargon, narrowly technical vocabulary, use of passive voice, and so forth. Try to write in a clear, simple style. 

4.  Please keep a daily (or at least detailed weekly) log of your activities. Logs should include: 

Kind of research. 
Place where you are doing research. 
Time spent on research. 
Results of research (i.e. none, books and articles found, ideas discovered). 
Time spent writing. 
 
Excellent resource concerning MLA citation style including Internet sources: 
http://www.library.cornell.edu/newhelp/res_strategy/citing/mla.html


Use gender-neutral language:
Please consult the following site:
Guidelines from Australia
 

EVALUATION: You will be evaluated on the basis of originality, breadth and depth of research, and quality of content and style of the final paper/project.