Assignment Notes

Please see screenshots of Jill Biondo's latest assignment, should you get anyone needing help with this. She is asking students to use ASA style guide. We have one at the West Campus, in Ready Reference, even though our online catalog lists it as "unavailable." It's at the Research Help desk. She is also letting ppl use the ASA's online resources, a PDF handout which is not the current edition of ASA style. So she is not picky about citation, clearly. 

From: Stella Beratlis <beratliss@yosemite.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2022 4:19 PM
To: Jill Biondo <biondoj@yosemite.edu>
Subject: Your research essay assignment

Hi Jill,

I helped a student of yours the other day who mentioned that you’re asking the class to use ASA style guide for citations. I just wanted to let you know that the Library & Learning Center is set up to support students with APA, MLA, and Chicago styles, but we don’t have the ASA style guide and don’t usually develop materials for it (handouts etc.).

Looks like the current ASA citation guide is the 7^th edition (2022); the handout your student showed me had examples based on the 4^th edition (2000). I’ll ask Susan Cassidy, our collection development librarian, to order the newest ASA Style Guide so at least your students can have access to it at the library. Unfortunately, it’s not available as an e-book, so students would have to come in to access the book, which isn’t ideal--but better than nothing!

Here's our library web page on citation help: Citing Basics - Learn To Cite - Research Guides at Modesto Junior College Library (mjc.edu). (Under “Other styles,” we have a link to that outdated ASA tip sheet—would be great if ASA had a more current version but I couldn’t find one on their website!)

Thank you so much,

Stella

Spring 2022 UPDATE:

This is the same assignment. I've updated the assignment link below just in case we have an old one linked. Stella brought to my attention the requirement for using primary sources. Unbeknownist to me, this has always been in the assignment. Given the discipline, he must want them to find studies of original research. - IBC

Geoffrey's response about Primary Sources/Secondary Sources:

Yes, to secondary sources as you described. [I described them as those used especially as they conduct their preliminary reading to begin to understand their topic and frame their working thesis].  However, in presentations I gave specific examples.  If one is to refer to a study or survey, cite the survey or study not the newspaper or blog someone wrote about it.  If a Supreme Court case is mentioned, cite the case, rather than someone's interpretation.  I made clear that they are not expected at the national archives to look at original documents, but that anything that has been digitized is OK.  Too often students write "studies show" .  My comment is always which ones, names please.  As far as "how many" my answer is "do a good job, this is college".  One source is clearly insufficient. The students have been alerted to the fact that there are often conflicting conclusions, they are to find and examine them.  Frankly the "as much as possible" is to keep them searching scholarly material. I wanted them to get the difference between primary & secondary sources, so one primary will make me happy.  Far too many cite blogs, news articles, Wikipedia, & their textbook because they have not had ANY research experience.  

SPRING 2019 UPDATE

Topic has expanded to include Sociology of Terrorism and the requirement to include primary sources. Also, the paper is 6-8 pages now.  --SC

Here are Geoffrey's notes giving us advice on helping his students:

Thank you for working with the student.  Your assistance in framing the question is correct.  they should have provided you with a handout of the assignment.  I'll attach one.  The paper is only 3-4 pages.  I am looking for scholarly material.   A couple of articles will do.  I have referred them and shown them the library links, "Noodle" & citation.  In the past I have required a term paper.  But I find that most have no writing experience.  So I have chosen the shorter format.  I give copious feed back on the first paper without harsh grading.  Logical presentation, scholarly sources, citations, spelling, grammar.  Grade criteria includes scholarly source & citations & addressing Sociology v. History.... or later ART.  The underlying concept is that social factors influence everything, including how we view history or art.   Those that have questioned me, focus on the history....I try to get them to think of the why do we interpret the events the way we do.  Steer them away from history and toward its interpretation and social influences that affect it.  Thus your first impression is correct.  Yes there are branches of the American Sociological Association that encompass, the Sociology of History, Medicine, Mathematics, and other subjects.  Given the short nature of the assignment, I don't expect much detail, but I do expect research (even if it isn't dead on point).  I don't expect them to become Sociologists, just learn some usable research skills.

Geoffrey C. Hutcheson

Richard Hanson's 101 students are conducting original qualitative research: surveying students and others on a social institution. The assignment has been really confusing for them for a variety of reasons; Hanson just revised it as of 10/22/18 10/27/18 10/14/19. 

I've done BIs in all 3 of his sections and am available to work with his students. Told them they can make appts with me, too. 

I created an extensive guide for this assignment, and I created a Research module in his Canvas shells as well. Between those 2 resources, students should have enough tools for support, but oftentimes, they want to talk things out with someone because Hanson's instructions are so darn confusing. 

In short: 

• Students are assigned a social realm for which they're conducting interviews with 2 people involved in that social world
• Students need a secondary research article on their topic. I'm collecting possibilities in a Google folder accessible via their Canvas. 
• Students are copying and pasting information from ONE DOCUMENT (Social Uniting for Successful Relationships) into their actual essay. Hanson is scaffolding this assignment such that students are getting most of the INTRO and almost all of the REFERENCES from the aforementioned document. Literally copying & pasting. 
• TELL STUDENTS TO LOOK AT THE LIBGUIDE I MADE FOR THIS CLASS! It has tons of great info. 

Email exchange re: research paper assignment, before the new assignment was handed out: 

Hi Stella,

Thanks for the input. it is good student are coming to you for support and clarifications. 

I touched on the three hypotheses in the format document that will guide the students interviews along with all the questions that needed to be answered in the Introduction section of the research paper. I thought I made it clear that all these questions would be answered in a forthcoming document. 

That document will be handed out and discussed with the Monday classes next week. My hope is that after the students begin their interviews next week they will be able to enrich their Introduction and Analysis sections with relevant materials in the text and perhaps information that you can help them with. 

I spoke with Manroopdeep Kaur today in my office hours and thank you for connecting with her as well. In her case, after her first interview with a Sikh Priest she will meet with me again, and then we will have a better idea what existent secondary research will enrich her Introduction and Analysis sections of the research paper.  

I wish I could get every student to connect with me on this one to one basis. Even though that is not possible, each one of those encounters helps me to communicate  to others more effectively in the classroom.

As I mentioned to you, this is the first time I have tried this particular holistic research approach. Hopefully, next week with this final document handout and more student beginning their interviews things will become more clear as to where we are heading and what the final research paper product will look like.     

Again, thanks for all your support!

Richard 

From: Stella Beratlis
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2018 10:38:31 AM
To: Richard Hanson
Subject: Question about 101 project

Hi Richard,

One of your students, Esmeralda Sanchez, came to me yesterday to ask for help. She’s confused about how to write the core methodology/theoretical perspectives/paradigms section in the abstract. She doesn’t recall going over them in class, etc. I told her that for the abstract, she only had to mention the ones she THOUGHT were being utilized, but to explain them all in full in the body of her research paper. Does that sound correct to you? Where can she get definitions of the core methodology/theoretical frameworks & paradigms? I thought perhaps you presented them during a lecture, but she doesn’t recall that at all. I told her it’s probably fine to look them up in other sociology references so she can familiarize herself with them.

Thanks—and sorry if you’ve explained this before to me!

Stella Beratlis

I am embedded in this class. Here are the two big research assignments.

Susan and I had a student today (2/16/16) who needed to identify an educator born in Mexico; next step--do biographical research on him/her. Biography in Context, though it seemed a logical choice, was not helping us identify a Mexican educator. I ended up in the print Encyclopedia of Mexico, index term Educators. The student had to leave for class, but it looks like he can easily identify the names of some educators from Mexico here and then seek more information in other sources as needed.

Also, this GVRL search yielded three people:

And a GVRL search of mexico education  yielded many, including an article on Mexico in World Education Encyclopedia.

I’ll continue playing with Bio in Context a bit. I really thought that should have helped us find the “type” of person this student was looking for. In fact, both Susan and I think that in the past we’ve been able to search by country of birth and occupation, neither of which we could do today. We did try Browse People, and chose educators, but all we got was a list of names w/no indication of country of origin.

The student told me we may still get more students from his class looking for people born in Mexico to research (I think it’s a history of Mexico class). Some students are searching for educators but others are searching for artists, politicians, or other occupations. The people they research must have been born in Mexico, but they can be working in another country now. The last presentations will be given next week.

Ellen