The annotated bibliography will be the final assignment for this class. While you’re not going to write a full research paper, this assignment will help you to practice the “moves” that you would need to make which can help you to write research papers in the future.

First, you’ll choose one of the research questions that you began to develop in the Critical Essay. You’ll use the Queens College Library resources to do some additional research using secondary sources.

As you collect and read research, you’ll make 5 entries in an annotated bibliography, which is a tool that researchers commonly use to keep track of what they’ve read, what it said, and how it relates to the development of their research question.

Then, you’ll reflect on your research process (writing a “process log”).

Requirements for this project: 

1. First draft must contain at least 3 entries, final draft must contain at least 5 entries
2. Each entry must be at least 150-250 words (750-1,250 words total)
3. All entries must be scholarly sources (i.e. academic books, journal articles, academic interviews, etc.) that you locate using library databases, Google Scholar, etc.
4. All entries must contain an MLA (or APA, or Chicago)-style citation
5. All entries must contain a summary of the original source that is in your own words without using more than 2 direct quotes. Quotes cannot be more than one line long.
6. All entries must directly state the connection to your research question
7. Must complete a Annotated Bibliography Peer Review for someone else in the class
8. The final draft must contain a process log that answers all or most of the questions in Step 6 below (no shorter than 500 words). You do not also need a reflection for this assignment.
9. The final draft must be in MLA format, or a citation style of your choice (12 pt. font; Arial or Times New Roman; title; page numbers; name at the top)
10. Submitted to your personal Slack channel (i.e. mine would be #lindseyalbracht). You can upload a file or send it as a Google doc link.

✅ Step one: Determine your research question (but be flexible!) 

As part of your Critical Essay, you developed between 3-4 research questions that were related to the topic that you chose to discuss. Ideally, you’ll select one of those questions for this topic. For this to work effectively, this should be a question that has an answer that is unclear to you: you want to do genuine inquiry research rather than to “prove” something that you already know.

For the sake of this example, I’m going to use the research question “Are there different values and norms surrounding plagiarism in countries outside of the US?”  

At this stage, the answer to this question is unclear. But it is also unclear whether I can find an answer to this question at all. I might need to shift my question based on what research I am able to find, and my research might change my mind about whether I think this is a good question to ask in the first place.

👯‍♀️ Step two: Consider your scholarly audience and the “conversation” you want to join

As Elizabeth Wardle reminds us, “there is no such thing as writing in general” (30). Every time we write, we are writing with a purpose and an audience in mind.

In this step, you should consider your scholarly audience for this research. Who can you imagine this research reaching and convincing? Are you taking to teachers or professors? Psychologists? Political scientists and policymakers? Someone else?

Thinking about your audience can help you to think about the persuasiveness of the sources that you’re choosing to communicate your argument. This can also help you to position yourself “in conversation” with a particular scholarly or professional community, just like you were “in conversation” with a particular author in the Critical Essay. In other words, if you’re talking to psychologists, you’re probably going to need to cite psychologists to make your case.

This can also help you determine where to look for your sources. Are you talking to psychologists? You might want to narrow your search to a psychology database. Are you talking to educators? Remember Leila’s advice to check out the ERIC database. Are you not sure yet? You can start with Academic Search Premiere (a more general database), but take note of which field(s) your research question seems to engage.

🔎 Step three: Do some preliminary research. Keep the CRAAP test in mind. 

As we’ve discussed, it’s perfectly fine to start by Googling your question or by looking at Wikipedia entries to get a broad overview of the topic. You just want to keep in mind that, eventually, the sources that you use for this Annotated Bibliography should be sources that are appropriate for convincing the audience who you want to convince. This means, in most cases, that they’ll need to be scholarly sources. For instance, while it’s fine to read a newspaper article that reports on an academic study to get a sense of what the study says, you should then go back and find the study itself. Write an entry on that, rather than citing it from the newspaper article.

Primarily, you’re looking for books or book chapters, journal articles, or scholarly interviews. If a scholar is talking about their work in a more accessible format (i.e. a podcast or a blog), it would be best if you could go to the original source rather than citing the more accessible one.

If you can read in additional languages, please feel free to include sources that appear in the languages that you speak.  

Once you have some keywords in mind, take them to the Queens College library databases. You might want to visit the subject-specific databases and search within those (i.e. if your topic deals with education, you might find it more useful to try searching on a database like ERIC. If your topic might involve multiple disciplines, you might try Academic Search Complete.) Keeping Leila’s library workshop in mind, do some more digging. Remember that you will need to adjust your keywords, the parameters of what you’re looking for, etc. throughout your search process. 

Remember: if you are not finding any good sources, or if you are not finding enough sources, this might be an indication that you need to adjust your research question. This doesn’t mean that you need to totally start over: you might just need to narrow or broaden your search. This is a normal part of the process.

💡 Step four: Find a good source? Look for related sources. 

If you find a good source that meets the criteria that you have set, you might find sources related to that source by looking at the References or Works Cited list. Make sure that you are evaluating each new, related source by the same criteria you used above. 

📝 Step five: Write five annotations. Each annotation should be 150-250 words (750-1,250 words total)

a) Summarize the source in a couple of sentences.

Once you have found a source that you want to use, it’s time to start drafting an annotation for it. The first step is to summarize the main ideas in the source.You have been working on summaries all semester, so this is a familiar skill. But ask yourself: 

• What is the main idea / purpose of this book or journal article? How would I explain the main idea to a friend? 
• What problem does this source attempt to solve or question does it attempt to answer?
• What are the ways that it makes the argument that it is making (i.e. citing other sources? Conducting some kind of primary research)? 
• Are there “findings,” and if so, what are they? 
• What are the implications, or the “so what?” of the findings?   

b) Show the connection to your research question

After you have summarized the key components of your source, say how this helps to address your research question. How would this be useful to a potential research project that you could complete on this topic? 

📝 Step six: Process Log (not fewer than 500 words, but can be longer)

When you have finished drafting your annotations, you should create a process log.

The process log will explain the process that you used to craft this annotated bibliography. You will hand it in with your final draft (it can all be in the same document, or you can turn it in separately — either is fine.)

You might consider: 

• What kind of feedback would you like for me to give you?
• What was your initial research question? How did your question change? Why? Think not only about what you did on the databases, but also where your interest in this topic started. Think about moments from class discussions, annotations, comments that you got on PRJs, feedback that you received, a smart thing that a classmate said, etc. that helped you to think differently about your question.
• What were your initial search terms? How did the terms evolve?
• Which databases did you consult, and why did you choose those?
• Which scholarly conversation do you see this project participating in? In other words, thinking about the classes that you’re taking, what are the discipline(s) represented by your sources? (i.e. Education? Psychology? Applied Linguistics? Policy? Something else?) 
• Who is the audience for your research? Are you talking to teachers? Students? Parents? Academics in this field? Policy makers? Someone else?
• What were the challenges of finding good information?
• Discuss each of your sources: why do you think that each one would pass the CRAAP test for the audience that you’re trying to reach?
• If you were going to use this annotated bibliography to write a research paper, what do you think that your claims would be? 
• How would this evidence support those claims? 
• Who might be interested in your findings? (i.e. teachers, professors, students, the general public, parents, professionals in a particular field, others?) 
• What more would you like to know about this topic? What other kind of research would you need to do?

📬 Step seven: Submit the draft components

First draft due: Wednesday, April 28

Today, you’ll submit the first draft of your Annotated Bibliography to your personal submission channel on Slack and to your peer partner over DM along with a request for feedback. This should happen by 11:59pm.

In class, we will discuss the peer review process and assign partners.

Peer review submission window: Wednesday, April 28 – Monday, May 3

This is the window to submit your peer review form to the website. Just like last time, when your peer reviewer submits their form for your essay, I will send it to you. 

Final revision (don’t forget your process log!): Monday, May 10

Today, you’ll submit the final draft of your Annotated Bibliography along with your process log (described above), which will serve as your reflection for this assignment. I will confirm that it has met requirements on Slack, or let you know which requirements are missing, along with giving you any feedback that you request.

Resubmission deadline: Final Exam Day

If your final draft did not meet requirements and you would still like to try to meet them, you have until the final exam day in this class to resubmit the Annotated Bibliography. Please remember that all other assignments (PRJs, and the Critical Essay) must be resubmitted by Wednesday, May 12th.

Optional conferences:

I will be available during this period to check in with you about your final grade, missing assignments, questions about this assignment or your final portfolio, and any other loose ends that you want to tie up for the semester ends. On the last day of class, I will make a sign-up sheet available.