RESEARCH PAPER  And Presentation in Class

The assignment is to produce a ten to fifteen page research paper on a topic relevant to freedom and determinism, and to prepare a presentation on that paper for the class. Let me tell you too much about this assignment, to avoid the danger of saying too little:

Research.

• You will select your own topic and materials. From the calendar of classes, in the early days of the course, and from your own interests, you should find it easy to identify some topic you will enjoy studying and writing on. This will be followed by a preliminary review of relevant materials, a skimming of the materials to get a sense of which are both readable and useful for your purposes, a further narrowing of the topic, and then some serious reading.
• After this reading you will be ready to propose a specific theme for the paper, Due Thurs, Mar.9. You will need to spell out this theme in a long sentence (or a brief paragraph). For example: "Given the difficulties of educating people for responsible behavior, it is probably wisest for a society to indoctrinate people into obedience to basic civil behavior rather than try to help them develop greater inner freedom. 
• A theme can still be too vague. The next step is to select from your serious readings the main reference points you will use (or you may have done this prior to step #2, drawing your theme out of some very specific sources). For example: "B. F. Skinner's thought will provide the major description of an indoctrination position. Abraham Maslow will provide the inner freedom description. Critical reviews of both of their works will offer some extra insights." 

• By the time you have identified your major sources and articulated your theme, you should also be in a position to draw up an initial outline. Keep in mind that your eventual audience is the entire class. When a scholar prepares a paper for presentation to a gathering of colleagues, the scholar knows that even when those colleagues have a high level of expertise on the topic, it is still important to review the more important basic pieces of information so that everyone has a chance to recall that information and to check whether the presenter's interpretation of it seems correct. So include in your outline the background basic that form the context of your main point(s). Write to educate your readers. 
• An early draft of the paper will be given to one of your peers in the class for initial review. The purpose of the review is to help one another achieve maximum clarity and coherence. Be sure, however, to proofread and spellcheck even this early draft. Draft due Tuesday, April 3 
• You will each have to read and criticize constructively at least one other person's paper and return it to the person at the beginning of class, April 5.
• The final draft, for grading, is to be handed in on the day of each person's presentation. It should be free of typographical and major grammatical errors. If there are more than 3 such errors on any one page, 1 point will be deducted for each such page, and the paper will be returned for revision. If any page in the revision has more than 3 errors on any page, 2 points will be deducted from the grade for each such page.

• [these points are not meant to limit your creativity, only to set a minimum performance standard] 
• Each person will have up to 20 minutes for presentation and discussion. (An attempt will be made to select papers will common elements or themes for the same day to allow comparisons in discussion at the end.) It would be best to practice the presentation in advance to make sure that it does not take more than 15 minutes.
• If you are not a practiced public speaker, you should either write out the entire presentation you intend to make or, at a minimum, have a very detailed outline which you can put on overhead transparencies.
• The presentation should be carefully prepared. Fifteen minutes is not enough time to read your whole 10-15 page paper. So the presentation should be prepared just for this purpose. The outline should contain the major subtopics as topic sentences and specific points of clarification and/or support for the ideas in the topic sentences. Criticisms of the ideas can be included along with the clarification and/or support; or criticisms can be held for a critical section at the end. 
• Technology: it would be good to provide the class with aids to understanding. Provide a one-page handout outline; or prepare pages to be made into transparencies for the overhead projector; or create a power-point presentation (if it is possible to arrange for the technology support for this); or . . . .   If you want transparencies made for your please deliver the hardcopy for this by the day previous to your presentation.  (That will give you at least a full day to rehearse it.)