Writing Project 2: Doing a Research Proposal

Write a Research Proposal

This Writing Project is due Wednesday, March 30 for the M-W-F class and Thursday, March 31 for the Tu-Thu class, at the beginning of class!

Effectively communicating your thoughts and ideas regarding research is a key component to getting funding for important projects in the academic and scholarly community. At some point in your academic careers, you may be asked to write a research proposal to fund your own research. 

The task for this writing project is to help your group put together an UNSOLICITED RESEARCH PROPOSAL to "study" your selected conspiracy theory. As part of this writing project, your research group should get together, in person or virtually, and plan out how to accomplish the goal of writing a research proposal and then give each member of your research group a section to write of the actual research proposal. 

Have a gander at the University of Illinois' page on research proposals for help if needed at: http://www.library.illinois.edu/learn/research/proposal.html 

As an example: one person in your group might write the abstract, table of contents, and introduction; while the next person in your research group might write the background on the topic, and the third member of your group might write the description of proposed research. Many of you have already done the #8, a description of resources, which is your annotated bibliography.

How your group splits up the division of labor is up to your group, but each research proposal MUST have numbers 1-6 of the University of Illinois (see above) parts of a proposal covered in your group's written research proposal. 

Then after each person has written their section of the research proposal, combine the various sections in numerical order (parts 1-6) and make ONE complete document that will be handed into me.

The "specs" for this writing project are that each person should write at least two pages, but no more than three pages for their section of the research proposal. Your group's research proposal should be double-spaced, written in 12 pt Times New Roman font with 1" margins. 

The goal of this writing project is to outline your future research as we move ahead in this course with your group's chosen conspiracy theories. This document will act as a guide for your group in the coming research phases of your chosen research topic. Spend some time together, again in person or virtually, going over sources: primary, secondary, and tertiary, and make sure to vet sources for ethos or credibility. Doing some good, solid work on this now will save time later in doing the research needed to write your FINAL research paper!