This document outlines an exploratory research project for an English course. Students will research an issue in education by creating an annotated bibliography of at least 15 sources and conducting interviews to produce a 3-5 minute documentary. The annotated bibliography must summarize and evaluate 10 required sources on the topic. Students will then use their research and interviews to create a documentary that both informs about the issue and persuades the audience of the need to address it. The project aims to develop students' research, critical thinking, and rhetorical skills.

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Exploratory Research Project
Overview:
For this unit, you will explore an issue/problem in education through academic research and
interacting with a community through action research. This project will coincide with discussions
and analysis of our course text Educated: A Memoir. The goal of this project is to develop and push
your research skills, in addition to creating a rhetorically effective deliverable. In order to do this,
you will be creating two deliverables in the form of an annotated bibliography and a 3-5 minute
documentary in which you will interview others about the issue/problem you are investigating.
In this case, your deliverables will contextualize and emphasize your research rhetorically.
What you will need to do:
In this unit, you will focus on developing research questions, topics, and subtopics related to
education. As you begin to explore an issue, you will work towards a why/how question to be the
focus of your research rather than a yes/no question, but the initial process may begin with
yes/no questions and continually develop as you research your topic and subsequent subtopics.
As you research, you develop an annotated bibliography of at least 15 total sources, 10 of which
will come from a required list below. After completing your annotated bibliography, you will
contextualize your research in the form of an action research documentary.
Necessary Steps of the Annotated Bibliography:
• Compile at least 10 sources of the 15 needed for your research from the following:
o 2 articles from Academic Search Premier database
o 1 published book or eBook
o 2 major newspaper articles
o 1 credible web site
o 2 online media sources, such as a Ted talk, a podcast, or an interactive
presentation (YouTube videos must be okayed by me prior to their inclusion)
o 2 sources that include information that disagrees with your position on the issue
• After collecting your sources, you will write a summary of each source that covers all of
the following components:
o The author’s argument/thesis, evidence, and justification (when applicable)
o The target audience of the source,
o The exigency of the source,
o The rhetorical strategies the author uses.
• After writing a summary of each source, you will evaluate each source by writing a short
paragraph that explains how each source will be used for the construction of your project
by using specific examples from your summary and/or the article itself. In addition, you
are required to explain each source’s effectiveness for investigating your research question
with supporting details and examples.
• Lastly, you will write a synthesis statement that will explain how your sources address
your research question in conversation with one another. This paragraph should be 250-
300 words, and it will address how the various perspectives address your research
question and topic. In addition, you will need to detail what you will investigate further in
your action research documentary based on the sources and perspectives you have found.

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Necessary Rhetorical Steps of the Documentary:
• After completing your annotated bibliography, you will be tasked with creating an action
research based documentary. The purpose of this documentary is to provide first hand
accounts and perspectives from individuals related to the issue/problem you are
investigating while contextualizing the research you have already done. For this
deliverable, you will need to interview/interact with other individuals to gain more
perspectives on your research question(s). You can interview people in your program,
department, classes, campus, or even people from your hometown as long as you ask
individuals questions to gain more insight about the issue/problem you are investigating.
You are also free to include your own perspective on the issue, but you are required to
interview and interact with others for this deliverable.
• In addition to including research from your annotated bibliography and the perspectives
of those you interview, your documentary should address the following elements:
o Detail and Describe what the issue/problem is (causes of the problem, and other
relevant information for context). This is the informative portion of your
deliverable.
o Persuade your audience as to why the issue/problem needs to be solved (why
should your audience do something about this problem? How should the audience
think and feel about this problem?)
• Your documentary will be a total of 3-5 minutes, and we will present them as a class
during our last week. Because the file of your deliverable will be too large to post on
BBLearn, you will need to use a host site such as YouTube or Vimeo. There will also be
several resources available on BBLearn for constructing your deliverable.
Through this unit, students will be able to:
1. Demonstrate awareness and application of rhetorical strategies in the writing produced by
others and yourself:
• Use rhetoric yourself:
o Accurately assess and effectively respond to a wide variety of audiences and
rhetorical situations and articulate your rhetorical purpose for writing, who
you are writing for, what you are saying, and how you’ve decided to present it
(genre and modality).
o Use evidence for a rhetorical purpose in writing a research paper.
2. Demonstrate critical thinking:
• Productively incorporate a variety of perspectives when considering or composing an
argument.
• Present ideas as related to, but clearly distinguished from, the ideas of others.
• Write critical analyses and syntheses of college-level and professional prose.
3. Demonstrate your understanding that writing is a process.
• Apply a variety of strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading.
4. Compose arguments that meet college-level expectations for academic compositions.
• Compose a focused claim supported with logical and clear reasons and evidence.
• Synthesize arguments made by other rhetors to develop and support your own claim.
• Apply current citation rules in situations like paraphrasing, summarizing, citing and
documenting borrowed material.

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Due Dates:
• Annotated Bibliography Rough Draft: Friday, November 16th at midnight
• Annotated Bibliography Final Draft: Tuesday, December 4th before class
• Research Documentary: Tuesday, December 4th before class
• Rhetorical Reflection: Wednesday, December 12th at midnight