Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi. I'm Sid Dobrin. This video is about the Research Project that asks students to write
a proposal offering a solution to inconsistencies between a curricular design within a major
and current trends in career opportunities in that field.
This assignment requires two different research approaches, which we might conveniently characterize
as one local and one more global. The local research asks students to look carefully at
one or two majors they might consider pursuing. This part of the research objective is designed
to help students learn more about their college catalog and specifically about the majors
they wish to pursue. Some colleges and universities require undergraduate students to declare
a major prior to acceptance and enrollment, while others have students declare majors
after they have completed a certain number of courses or requirements, like general education
requirements. No matter when students at your institution declare majors, they should be
able to adapt this segment of the research objective to the institutional practices.
The second research objective asks students to learn more about the requirements of a
specific career or job. For this research, I find it useful to point students in three
directions: to our student career resource center, to the professional publications in
which positions for the specified career are advertised, and to library research to locate
published materials about job trends in the chosen field. I also recommend students conduct
primary research and conduct interviews with several professionals in their field to learn
more about what they see as the necessary requirements for being hired and succeeding
in the field and to learn more about what people in the field actually do on a day-to-day
basis. I take this part of the research approach from a research methodology known as a "career
audit" common in both technical and professional writing as well as student success pedagogies.
Part of the objective of the assignment is to have students identify and articulate the
specific problem for which they will to propose a solution. When I teach this assignment,
I emphasize the fact that in order to answer the assignment, students have to first conduct
the research in order to identify the problem. That is, unlike many assignments that ask
students to use their research to solve a problem identified prior to the research process,
this assignment asks students to conduct research in order to discover whether or not there
really is a problem that needs to be solved or if there is maybe just an opportunity to
improve the alignment between curriculum and career expectations.
With this in mind, I spend a good deal of time talking with students about the importance
of how they identify and define the problem for which their proposal offers a solution.
I tie this part of the proposal to the need to provide a clear scope, as well. Likewise,
I emphasize the importance of how the definition of the problem and scope of the proposal are
connected to how students develop a strong thesis for the proposal. I also use the assessment
rubric I use with this assignment to encourage students to focus on the thesis and purpose
aspects of the rubric. I've included my assessment rubric with the instructor materials for this
chapter. Feel free to use it or modify it as best serves your pedagogical and programmatic
needs. That's just a little bit to help you think
about your approaches to this research assignment. Thanks for using Writing Situations and thanks
for watching.