Write a APA-formatted paper, double-spaced 12 font-size on any topic you desire that is related to some aspect biology. The topic submission should be in the form of a question that you will answer in the paper. Each paper should include the following sections: Introduction, Evidence/Data, Discussion and Conclusion.
There are three objectives in this assignment. The first objective is to allow you an opportunity to explore in greater depth a question in biology of direct interest to you. The second objective is to help you understand better how to gather information on a topic from various sources, including the University library system. The final objective is to improve your writing skills, most importantly how to present, cite, and analyze evidence/data from published literature.
The following process for developing and writing this paper is suggested. First, chose a topic of interest to you and one that can be covered in some detail within the page limit of this paper. You should pose this topic as a question. Second, conduct internet and library research on your topic developing a collection of several articles and papers directly related to answering the question posed by your topic.
As we will discuss in the first class, a good first step is to read through potential sources that you find in your searches and copy quotes from those sources – surrounded by quotes – into a digital note system. Also copy the link for the source, and/or the full APA bibliographic information. Keep the quote and reference material together. We will call the quoted material your “evidence”. It can include relevant facts, definitions, and commentary by others. The commentary generally should be from experts, but if the question involves issues about the way some topic in biology is affecting the non-expert public, then of course you can provide some evidence of that as well.
Third, list all the topics and information you want to present in your paper and divide the information under certain subtopics that lead to paragraphs of your paper. This should result in a paper outline. Once you have an outline, you are ready to write a rough draft of your paper. Make sure to edit your draft for grammar, spelling, content, and length. You should use the grammar and spelling check functions in a word processor such as Word, or any of a number of other available tools online (many of which are free) to ensure that your draft has had all spelling most grammatical errors removed.
Therefore, the process is that you will have posed a QUESTION, you will then have done research to gather relevant EVIDENCE, and then you will use your LOGICAL THINKING to try to come to some conclusions.
If you can produce definitive answers to your question, and possibly give recommendations, that is good. But even if all that can be made from the information you’ve gathered is a summary of what is known along with additional questions that you believe need to be asked, that can be an appropriate outcome as well. It all depends on what new information you find.
I will be looking at the qualities of your question (make it as interesting or novel as you can), your research (demonstrate thoroughness in searching), your quotation and citation to the evidence, and your thinking in coming to conclusions (how well did you weigh and synthesize evidence).
References -The purpose of a list of references is to allow the reader to find out where you obtained your information so the reader can refer to the original document if desired. You need at least 7 separate references for your paper.
References fall into different categories: peer-reviewed journals, popular journals, gray literature, and books. You will find the most accurate and technical scientific information in peer-reviewed journals, such as the Journal of Ecology, Science, Nature, etc. Your paper should have at least one reference from a paper in a peer-reviewed journal. The author or authors who wrote the scientific paper sent it to the journal to be published. The journal then sends the paper out to other scientists familiar with the technical material in the paper to review. Only if the other scientists say the research is well done will the journal publish the paper, which is why they are called “peer-reviewed.” Such a paper will tell you how the information it reports was collected and analyzed besides giving the conclusions from the research. Each year millions of scientific papers are published in peer-reviewed journals. The best way to access papers in peer-reviewed journals is to go to the University library webpage. University pays for internet access to hundreds of peer-reviewed journals. Within the text of your paper, you need to reference the source of all the information provided that is not original with you. You then attach to the end of your paper a “References” section that lists all of the references you used. Do not list a source in the references cited section that you did not reference in your paper.
One very common approach is to start with a quick Internet search, e.g. using Google and Google Scholar. (You can use other engines such as DuckDuckGo, and certainly use the assistance of the University research librarians, to find even more useful search methods.) From your search results, you should get a sense of what various experts have published relevant to your question. You should be able to fairly quickly tell by a scan of search engine results (SER) if there is any expert disagreement or controversy. The same should be found in the Introduction of any expert paper.
Since this is a learning experience, for this report, please include after the Bibliography, a list of your search terms. You should precede each term with a carat mark, e.g. “> how do I perform online research in biology”; (no quotes are needed in your list). Also, recall my praise for Wikipedia: everything written in it is not always perfect, but overall, it is an excellent encyclopedia for learning about topics. You should include at least one relevant reference/link to Wikipedia, or some comparable encyclopedic review, to demonstrate that you have tried to obtain an overview of your topic area. There are also many good scientific review papers you can use as well. If there are signs that experts do not agree on any particular point, you should bring that up in the paper and consider the different points of view. If all the expert writings seem to agree, you can note that too, but of course, if you find other information that makes you question the agreed narrative, you should mention it in the report if you believe it is worth questioning.
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