First-Year Seminar Prompt Examples

Final Team Research Presentation

Due: Wednesday, May 8, 2024, 8:00 AM
All presentations must be submitted on Monday, and presentations will be delivered in class on Wednesday and Friday. This is a 20 minute presentation.

Presentation should follow this general order:

1. Overview of topic.
   What question were you asking related to power? What was your thesis? How does this connect to topics we discussed in class? I would strongly recommend choosing a topic that connects both to the overall concept of power (power bases, power and influence definitions, etc.) as well as one or more specific topics.
2. Overview of academic sources
   You should provide a quick summary of the academic sources that you reviewed. In this section you are describing each source, and then providing a lay-person overview. Remember, all sources should be academic sources, prioritizing primary sources, with at least 2 being research-based. You should shoot to have 10+ sources.
3. Conclusions, drawn from multiple sources
   After reviewing all of your sources, you should draw 3-4 conclusions, and seek to prove your thesis. A conclusion cannot be drawn without at least two sources supporting this.

Draft/Final Report
Individual Research Project

Project Objective

Students will demonstrate proficiency in Intended Learning Outcome #2: identify, evaluate, and utilize a variety of academic sources.

Brief Project Overview

For the Individual Project, you will identify a specific topic related to one of the texts in the course. You will locate a primary source the author of the book cited. You will then take this to the next step and find additional popular and academic sources. For the project you may use a variety of sources including at least two peer-reviewed original research which will allow you to explore the topic more deeply.

You may want to reference the library assignment as you will again be required to (1) search for and locate sources as well as (2) evaluate sources. Your final paper should clearly reference/cite the sources you have located, include your evaluation of both the quality and validity of the source, and how each reference contributes to your thesis.

Your report should be a thoughtful, concise, polished, document of no more than 3000 words.

Guidelines

• Clearly provide motivation for your paper, and a statement of your objective/purpose/thesis.
• Explicitly identify a claim/thesis that you will support with evidence and place your work in the greater context of the question you are posing.
• Describe how the sources you have located provide evidence to help answer your research question(s). Here you can draw on your annotated appendix to (1) provide summaries of main points of your sources, (2) evaluate the source’s credibility, reliability, and quality, (3) discuss the relevance of the source to the research topic and (4) explain how the source contributes to the understanding of the subject by providing a unique perspective or valuable insights.
• Discuss possible implications of your research in the context of the research question describing how your references fit into the broader context of the research.
• Make a statement regarding potential omission/alternate views and identify any limitations of your study. Discuss the potential impact of biases and limitations on the conclusions.
• Identify strengths and weaknesses of your research.
• Have a clear conclusion.
• Anticipate questions someone might have after reading your report, and make sure those questions can be answered with information in the body of the text.
• A citation for each reference article (in consistent format – APA format or something similar) you included in your proposal. Also include a link to the full source. Remember that you must have the entire paper and not just an abstract.
• You will cite at least 5 sources – one referenced in a course text, at least two sources must be from peer-reviewed journals.

Project Proposal and Annotated Bibliography

Thesis/Research Question

Your project will build on a topic from one of the class texts. The format of the paper is largely open ended. You can imagine writing a proposal for a research project, in which case what you submit will be the literature review in support of your proposed research. You could write a position paper where you argue for or against a specific perspective. In your proposal you should clearly define the nature and scope of your paper.

Annotated Bibliography

For each source you locate include the following.

Citation: Each entry includes a complete citation. This includes the author’s name, title of the work, publication date, publisher, and other relevant details. You will also include the DOI to the full source or the permalink from Catalyst. (I should be able to locate the source with one click.)

Annotation: A concise paragraph that summarizes, evaluates, and reflects on the content of the source. It may include information on the methodology, main arguments, key findings, and the author’s perspective. The annotation should also address the source’s relevance to the research topic.

• Provided a brief summary of the main points and arguments presented in the source. This summary helps the reader understand the content of the work without having to read the entire source.
• Includes an evaluation of the source’s credibility, reliability, and quality. This may involve assessing the author’s credentials, the publication venue, the research methods used, and the overall objectivity of the work.
• Discusses the relevance of the source to the research topic. Explain how the source contributes to the understanding of the subject and whether it provides a unique perspective or valuable insights.
• Additionally include your thoughts on how the source fits into the broader context of the research, any biases present, and its potential limitations.

Annotated Bibliography for Final Project

This is graded individually and is worth 5% of your total grade

Context:

One of the Intended Learning Outcomes for FYS is to Identify, evaluate, and utilize a variety of academic sources. This Annotated Bibliography (which is part of your larger assignment to create a fictional DTC-GT company) will be assessed for meeting this goal.

Format:

Your bibliography can be in any format (bullet points, written paragraph or spreadsheet) that is shareable with me and that supports including the requirements listed below for three different sources. You may want to choose your format after you annotate at least one source so that you know what will best support your project.

Sources:

As we have done for other assignments in this class, you may use a variety of types of sources. At least one source must be a scholarly source, that is, it should be from a peer-reviewed journal. The other two sources you use, may be anything – interviews, opinion pieces, newspaper articles, podcasts, etc. The important thing for this assignment is that you are able to evaluate each of the three sources for a variety of criteria.

Each of your three entries is required to have:

1. Full citation in APA citation style
2. An evaluation of each source for the following criteria:
   • Is the source scholarly (peer reviewed) or informal?
   • Currency: is the source recent enough to be of value? Has this research been updated more recently?
   • Authority: who wrote the source? What expertise do they draw on?
   • Motivation: what motivation do the authors and the publisher have for providing this information? Who funded this research or publication?
   • Reliability: Do other organizations or researchers use this information (is it cited by others)? Does this information match what other organizations and researchers publish or say?
3. Your notes from a careful reading (or listening or viewing viewing) of the source. There is a huge difference between writing “this source talks about…” and “this source says [these specific things] about.” You want to write “this source says [these specific things] about.” NOTE: long sources do not need to be thoroughly annotated – just annotate what you might use in your research process.
4. After carefully reading and thinking about what you learned from each source, identify concrete information that could relate to your topic, and specify possible ways you might use that
   information in your final project.

Spring 2024 First-Year Seminar — Keep, Quit, Start Essay #2

1. For the final essay, review your Keep, Quit, Start Essay 1 and note changes you’ve made in academics, co-curriculars, and living in community since the start of the semester (Essay #1) or the academic year. As you think about next year, what is something you want to keep or quit and also something to start in each of these areas? This might be based on what you have already articulated or something new.
   • Keep: What did you do this semester that worked? What things did you do, when doing your homework, attending class, discussing in a small group–that you want to be sure to do again? Think about specific (and often small) things that you did that worked and explore WHY it worked for YOU. What are the action steps you will need to take in order to keep this practice/habit?
   • Quit: What do you keep doing which DOES NOT WORK? Think about specific times where you did this action and suffered a negative consequence. What could you do to prevent yourself from doing this going forward? What are the action steps you will need to take in order to quit this practice/habit?
   • Start: What do you see peers around you doing that you want to try? What has prevented you from doing this thus far? What do you think will be the advantage to doing it this way? What are the action steps you will need to take in order to start this practice/habit?
2. Write about how this course may have impacted your “Keep, Quit, or Start” choices in each of these three areas: excelling at academics, participating in co-curriculars, and living in community.

Final Reflective Essay Prompt

Why is reflection important (From Purdue University’s Department of English)

Reflection— a process where students describe their learning, how it changed, and how it might relate to future learning experiences (“Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind,” 2008) —is a skill that often goes undervalued in classrooms that are packed with content. However, reflection is an important practice for students to make sense of and grow from a learning experience, and it is a practice backed by scholarship. A 2014 study by Harvard also confirmed that reflecting on one’s work improves job performance. Although often situated in the humanities and social sciences, reflection is an important practice across academic disciplines including nursing, business, the sciences, and more (see WAC Clearinghouse for a list of disciplinary reflection articles). As a result, reflective writing is one great method for students to reflect on their learning experiences in the English 106/108 classroom. Students, therefore, should be exposed to continuous reflective writing practices so that they become “producers” and not “consumers” of knowledge (Costa and Kallick, 2008).

Final Reflective Essay

Students will write a 2-3 page letter (typed, 12 point font, and single spaced) to a prospective St. Olaf student reflecting back on what they have learned this semester in hopes that the prospective student might be more successful when they arrive on the St. Olaf Campus in the Fall.

This letter should focus on important discoveries during the FYS course in four main areas:

1. academic development
   • Developing time management skills, balancing demands of their classes and homework with other aspects of college life.
   • Experiencing learning moments about overcoming failure and/or developing a growth mindset.
   • Engaging with diverse perspectives through coursework that enhanced learning
2. co-curricular involvement
   • Developing time management skills
   • How participating in specific co-curricular activities helped develop their identities (i.e. athlete) and impacted their first semester
3. living in community here at St. Olaf
   • Making friends and learning to live with others
   • Benefits of being exposed to other perspectives
   • Learning more about their identities as a result of interacting with those who are different from them
4. learning about and experiencing embodiment/movement/dance

Students should use their introductory self-portrait (Short Reflection assignment #1) and the other short reflection assignments throughout the semester to help with this as well as reflecting back on our many class discussions. Students should also reflect back on other class assignments including the readings, video viewings, individual research project, and the Group Creative project and how they approached and completed these assignments.

Your final assignment in this class should help you synthesize your learning and thinking about OLE Question 1: In what ways can I understand the world and my role in it?

In an ~3-4 page reflection, answer these questions:

1. Who is science for?
   • Address the history, current situation, and your ideal vision.
2. Is science for me? In what ways do I think of myself as a scientist? This will be the bulk of the reflection, and in this section you should both reflect on your past experiences and your first semester at St. Olaf, making meaning of these experiences and setting goals for your future at St. Olaf.
   • Reflect on your academic achievements and goals, including the role of science.
   • Reflect on your role as a member of the St. Olaf, Northfield, and broader communities. Consider all the aspects of your identity: to what extent do you see yourself bringing and sharing your science identity compared to other aspects of your identity in these spaces? How can you be an agent of change in this place and in the communities in which you are active?
   • Reflect on your co-curricular experiences and goals-including the role of science. How will you choose to spend your time?
3. How does science need to change to become more inclusive?
   • Address systemic changes as well as your own personal potential to generate this change.