Spring Quarter Assignments

1. Assignment 1:
   Memo to Yourself: Research Progress and Analytic Hunches
   Due: 3/26
   This is a "midstream" conversation with yourself (and us) about progress towards your research goal, including initial reactions to fieldwork and data collection, evolution of research questions or framing ideas, and initial hunches about how the findings will turn out. The balance among these topics will depend in part on how far along your study is.
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2. Assignment 2:
   Analytic Memo: How You Are Breaking Up Your Data and What You Are Beginning to See
   Due: 4/23
   This memo will pick up from where your last "Memo to Yourself" left off. Specifically it will discuss your initial attempts to become familiar with your data ("wallowing") and your emergent (or planned) efforts to code the data with an initial, relatively simple coding scheme. Your memo should explain your codes and justify them, as well as offer whatever insights, hunches, or other observations your current stage of research prompts.
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3. Assignment 3:
   Draft Analysis and Methods Section of Your Report
   Due: 5/7
   At this stage of the quarter, you should have a well worked out, tested plan for analyzing data and should already be in the midst of doing the analysis. This assignment will have you write up in 5-8 pages (a rough target) the section of your final write up that explains your methods and analysis approach, rooted in appropriate methodological literature. Include an illustrative claim or assertion and a discussion of the data that support it or details on how you will try to support it. Note: You have already done much of this work, having described your methods in last quarter's proposal; here you will be updating that writing and adding to it a more specific explanation and justification of analytic methods.
   Optional: If you have time to draft them by this point, you may also pass in for comment the first sections of your paper - which introduces the final report, lays out and conceptualizes the research problem in the context of relevant literature, and describes the research question (remember that much of this appears in your proposal). In other words, now might be a good time to see how your paper proceeds from title through Methods/Analysis explanation.
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4. Assignment 4:
   First Draft of Final Research Report
   Due: 5/21 (or earlier)
   You will submit a draft of your final report to your individual project mentor by May 21 or earlier and we will return it to you by the next class session. Your draft should be as complete as you can make it, although in some instances, you may find yourself able only to construct one findings section in addition to methodological and introductory writing you did two weeks earlier. The more you have completed, the better the instructors will be able to give you feedback on your whole effort.
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5. Assignment 5:
   Oral Presentation of Results
   Due: 6/4
   The last class session will be devoted to a student-organized "mini-conference" in which the results of the studies are presented in a format of the participants' choice. The class session as a whole and the presentations themselves are the responsibility of the students.
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6. Assignment 6:
   Final Research Report Manuscript (typed, not handwritten!)
   Due: 6/4
   The final research report is a comprehensive write-up of the study you conducted. It should include an abstract, a conceptualization of the research problem, an explication of method, findings and conclusions, and a methodological appendix. A more detailed description of the assignment and its requirements will be distributed in class.
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7. Assignment 7:
   OPTIONAL: AERA (or other) Conference Proposal
   Due: 6/4
   Based on your final research report you may also produce a brief paper proposal for submission to AERA or a conference of another professional organization of your choice. Instructors will comment on these conference proposals as time permits, after main course papers are graded. The proposal should be written using the appropriate format as detailed by the organization, and if you choose to submit for a conference other than AERA, submit the proposal guidelines for the conference you are submitting to. You are not required to submit this proposal, but should you do so you will have a proposal prepared. We will provide some examples of accepted presentation proposals.