Today’s Plan:
- Roundabout: Discuss Readings
- Annotated Bibliography
- Homework: Read and Annotate an Article
Annotated Bibliography Assignment
We’ve spent the last week and a half exploring potential topics. Now it is time for you to select a particular topic and dig deeper.
For the next several weeks you will produce an annotated bibliography, or a collection of research writing that will provide the bulk of the content for your papers.
My expectation is that you will read 75 pages of research per week for the next several weeks. For each thing you read, you will write up an annotation. I have a sample format that you will be required to use for the annotated bibliography.
These should be peer-reviewed, academic sources. There are a number of ways to locate these sources. My go to is Google Scholar. Another source, obviously, is our library (click the scholarly and peer-review button).
The best way to find sources is to use an effective article you have already read. You can:
- Use a source that is discussed in the article–think of the article’s Reference List as a map to other sources
- Find the source in Google Scholar and use the “related articles” button
- Use any listed keywords in the article as a foundation for searches
I have collected a bunch of articles as starting points for your research.
What is an Annotation? How Do I Write One?
I (morbidly) compare an annotation to a dissection. You want to cut the article into pieces and examine its various parts. Initially, your annotations should have at least five parts:
- Author(s)’ Purpose/Thesis: What does this article “claim” (in the precise academic sense of “what does this article argue/prove/demonstrate, etc). Find the thesis and put it in your own words
- Methods: This can be the tricky part, but your task here is to detail AS PAINFULLY AS FUCKING POSSIBLE what the authors did. Don’t just write”the authors had people play games and work collaboratively to see if games increased their aggression.” Write: “The authors recruited college students to play games for twenty minutes. Players were then teamed with non-players to work collaboratively on a puzzle task. The task consisted of assembling a 100 piece puzzle. The authors monitored sessions and tracked moments of interaction, using a Flitz-Keiber scale to recognize aggressive behavior. These sessions were video recorded, and the evaluations were confirmed by other researchers to ensure validity.”
- How does this compare to other material you’ve read?
- What useful articles and keywords does the article contain?
- What questions does this article raise for you?
As quickly as possible, you want to identify more specific questions that can replace #5. Let me show an example. Here is a collaborative annotated bibliography my ENG 319 Rhetorical Theory class put together last semester concerning course evaluations. Notice how we asked 5 questions of every reading:
- Thesis / Purpose
- Methods:
- On the (non)existence/impact/nature of bias
- On the nature of learning
- On how individual faculty can combat bias / improve evaluations
- On how institutions can combat bias / improve evaluations
- Does this article mention Centra & Gaubatz?
- What other studies are mentioned in the lit review?
Now, we couldn’t have generated those specific questions until we had already read a bunch of this research–we had to learn the commonplaces that people address in these particular conversations.
Homework
So that’s your first task. Read a piece of scholarship, preferably from my “approved” lists, and craft an annotation for it. Put this annotation in your Gaming Journal. Next Wednesday, I will have you revise it and put it somewhere else.
For those that want to get ahead–I will ask you to read another academic article Monday night for homework. We’ll go over strategies for reading academic articles on Monday.
