Rubric: Project Proposal
Description:
Our last research-based project of the semester will invite you to propose an answer for your research question. The proposal genre is a very specific form of writing: it requires a specific format in which you defend your ideas and demonstrate a thoughtful outline for how you plan to conduct your research.
Invention:
A project proposal is not simply about imagining a paper or thinking about your ideas regarding the topic. You need to carefully define your plan, the supporting evidence and expected results. Project Proposals are important for APPLYING FOR GRANTS, getting approval to conduct studies, and to assure the feasibility of your work. Staring with a thesis or hypothesis, develop your plan in four parts:
Introduction and Statement of the Problem: discuss the background and context of your issue and prove that this is an issue in the field and a real problem. Offer a specific thesis, theory or hypothesis and describe what kind of study/research/inquiry will be required to prove your thesis.
Literature Review: Discuss the historical background of the topic, focusing specifically on what other studies have missed or failed to include/consider, putting the discussion in conversation with your own ideas and plans
Methods: Explain your research plan. Will you conduct a study? How and with whom? Will you take an analytic approach using specific theories and definitions? How you will gather the information you need to answer your prove your thesis?
Results/Discussion: Explain what results you expect from your study or research and discuss what will happen if your thesis is not proven right.
Composition:
In 6-7 pages, propose and develop a research plan to support an answer to your research question. Now is the time to make an argument. You should decide what kind of point or intervention you want to make in the conversation and come up with a plan on how to get there. For instance, you may have a theory that Facebook enhances people’s capacity of sincere communication. How could you prove that? You probably would want to gather specific research on the issue, look at how people behaved in the past, and maybe conduct some research on actual Facebook users.
Because you won’t be required to actually follow through on this proposal (not in this class, at least) you should be both realistic and ambitious: you can propose a study that will take a good length of time, a good amount of people, or even a decent amount of money. You will be graded on your ability to realistically explain the steps into the process (how long would this take and why? How would you cope with the passing of time and quick changes in the field? How would you recruit people? Where would you get the money) and your understanding of the relevance and feasibility of your proposal.
This paper can and should be a composite of previous projects. The literature review, especially, should come substantively from our Research Inquiry project (which, if you remember, was an actual lit review of sorts). You should use your own judgment to revise, restructure and edit the paper so that if fits with the length and content requirements of this project. It is not advisable that you change your research question at this point–this would require extra work in rewriting a brand new lit review–you should follow through with your research and ideas and use them now to support your own theories.
Your essay should be clearly divided in the four sections above (Intro, Lit Review, Methods, Results). If you are working in the sciences or social sciences, you’ll probably be proposing some kind of study (with people, plants, animals, cells, etc) and you should be able to outline your plans from beginning to end. If you’re in the humanities, you should focus on describing the kinds of theories or methods you will need to support your research, the kinds of data you may need to gather, and how what your analysis will contribute to the study of your topic. While you shouldn’t feel too restrained by the fact you’re a student with limited access to funds or resources, you should nonetheless show your awareness of what is feasible and what is unrealistic (for instance, planning to raise $1 million dollars in six months is probably unlikely; getting a government or academic grant, however, could happen).
Your results section will be tentative, but you should still be able to discuss what you expect from your study or research. This is also the place to give a strong “so what”: what will your research accomplish? How will it change or shift conversations about this topic? What happens if things don’t go as planned? Can you still move forward with the same hypothesis? Will the study need to be redesigned?
Remember: you will be graded on your ability to offer realistic, objective and detailed plans for research. Proposals are tentative, but they are not vague or generalized thoughts on a topic. The more detail and explanations you can give, the more you’ll be able to prove your project is worthwhile.
Evaluation:
Introduction (20 points): discuss contexts and establish the relevance of your topic. End with a specific thesis or hypothesis that makes a specific argument (that is, it’s time to answer your research question and think about your own intervention the field). This section can (and should) also be a revised version of previous work in this class.
Literature Review (10 points): revise your Research Inquiry project to include in this section. This section should be no longer than 2-3 pages (double-spaced) and should focus not only on the research progression of the topic but more on how that progression applies to your own theories and ideas. Discuss what’s missing from previous works and where your project picks up to take the topic further.
Methods (30 points): describe the steps you will take to discover evidence for your argument. If you are conducting a study, define the specific elements (participants, method, analysis, time span) of the study and what it may reveal about your hypothesis. If you are using theories and data collected by others, describe the specific arguments you will need to include, the kinds of theories you need to consider, and the primary sources you will be using.
Results/Conclusion (20 points): This refers to the expected results of your study. If you get the expected results, how will it prove your hypothesis? If the results are different than expected, or inconclusive, what steps will you take from there? Does your argument stay the same, or will you have to rethink it? What is the specific contribution your work will make in the field? Discuss what you expect to prove and how your argument will make an important contribution to the field (so what factor).
Tone, and clarity (10 points): Use first person, use the future tense, and describe your plan in clear, concrete steps. Use the appropriate academic tone.
Organization and format (10 points): paper includes good transitions between paragraphs, is logical and coherent, and contains a minimum amount of proofreading and grammatical errors.
Total = 100 Points
