Research Paper Scientific Research Paper Assignment                Learning Objectives: Demonstrate the ability to use both standard and electronic means

Research Paper

Scientific Research Paper Assignment               

Learning Objectives:

1. Demonstrate the ability to use both standard and electronic means of finding information of various sources
2. Demonstrate the ability to adapt information to a pre-set format (or standard)
3. Demonstrate the ability to evaluate, select and distill information into a thoughtful report

This is a Three (3) part assignment 

Exercise 1:      PROPOSAL (30 point)

Exercise 2:       LIBRARY INFORMATION RETRIEVAL (50 points)

Exercise 3:       RESEARCH PAPER (100 points)

Successful completion of these exercises demands that you demonstrate the ability to use both standard and electronic means of finding information and develop the skills needed to evaluate, select and distill the information into a thoughtful report.  NVCC libraries provide staff who are prepared to demonstrate the use of the library resources and help you interpret the different types of resources requested.   However, if you have access to other libraries with significant holdings of scientific material and information retrieval technology, these libraries may be used to complete this exercise.

You will receive separate grades for each of the three exercises in scientific literature. *NOTE: Research Papers will only be graded upon successful completion of a research proposal

Exercise 1.     RESEARCH PROPOSAL (30 Points)

Before any research can be started, principal investigators (PIs) must often go through several steps of approval.  In the real world this can be a single step of doing a proposal or can be multiple steps where smaller to larger requests of information are conducted prior to the start of research.  A standard practice is for a PI to submit a white paper which is usually around 10 pages, which is evaluated prior to being requested to submit a full proposal (40+ pages).  

For our purposes here, we will do a 250 word abstract which will introduce the topic you are going to do research on.  You do not have to have done much more than a cursory research to put this together.   You should include an overview of the topic you are investigating, why the topic is or should be of interest to anyone.  Discussing why you picked the topic, what is the interesting science, the so what factor, are good ways to complete this assignment. 

The impetus for this is two fold, first to familiarize you with what is often a multi-step approval process prior to receiving any grants or approvals to conduct research.  The second is, over the past few years I have gotten more than a few research papers that were not science based and I would like to avoid this in the future.  It is often a problem that as we begin to study science, the line of where science and pseudoscience is, can be hard to tell.  I would like to give you a chance to ensure that your research paper is going to be in line with grading expectations prior to spending time writing.