This document provides guidance for a research task that requires students to research and present on an off-syllabus text, writer, or topic. It instructs students to carry out independent research, document their findings in a 750-1000 word report, and create a 5-10 minute electronic presentation to summarize their key findings. Examples are provided of previous student work, including a Storify presentation on Alice Munro and a student's reflection on using Twitter to aid their research. Guidance emphasizes selecting the most valuable research findings for the concise presentation.

1. The Collector
teaching research memory

4. ‘Content Destroyed’
‘The collection replaces history with
classification, with order beyond the realm
of temporality. In the collection, time is not
something to be restored to origin; rather, all
time is made simultaneous or synchronous
within the collection’s world’ (Stewart 2007:
151).

6. The essential gap

7. The research task
You will research, design and produce an electronic
presentation on a relevant topic approved by your tutor.
You will need to produce a brief presentation (on
Powerpoint, Prezi, Storify or as a podcast, for instance)
and a written report giving evidence of your research
practice and findings. Particular credit will be given to
presentations that deal with less well-known (non-
A’level syllabus) texts, writers and topics. You are
required to:
O To carry out independent research on an ‘off-syllabus’
text or writer/s
O To document your research findings effectively in a
report which must be submitted in hard copy
O To successfully complete an electronic presentation
of your work

8. Further guidance
The written report should be concise, and although there is not
a fixed word limit on this, 750-1000 words should be more
than sufficient to show your research practice and comment on
your findings. With the electronic presentation, because
people are using varying formats, it is again difficult to give
exact word limits and timings, but probably a five-minute
podcast, or 10 carefully edited Powerpoint slides or equivalent.
You need to be highly selective about what you include in your
presentation. You can represent all the research you have
done in your report. The presentation is a distillation of your
most valuable and focused findings.
Remember: it is not the word-limit here that is significant,
but the quality of the independent research, and your
ability to organise, document and communicate your
findings.

9. Shannon’s Presentation
O https://storify.com/shannongossage/alice-
munro

10. Shannon’s reflection
‘when researching an author I never even
considered that Twitter would be a good
resource but it turned out to be an amazing
way of finding discussions and quotes which
lead me to another site or another story or
something interesting that I might not have
found in a standard Google search. I kept
stumbling across more stories I wanted to
add …’

11. ‘Overall I think that I found out some absolutely
fantastic information about Munro and have
definitely added a new author to my favourites.
Her work has definitely encouraged me to read
around the modules more and this task will help
me considerably with my dissertation next year
which I am sure was a big objective of this
assessment. For myself, I wanted my
presentation to encourage others to read
Munro's work and I like to think that I have
achieved this.’

12. Nostalgia
Lily stepped back to get her canvas – so – into perspective. It
was an odd road to be walking, this of painting. Out and out
one went, further, until at last one seemed to be on a narrow
plank, perfectly alone, over the sea. And as she dipped into
the blue paint, she dipped too into the past there. Now Mrs.
Ramsay got up, she remembered. It was time to go back to
the house – time for luncheon.

13. Woolf, Memory & Desire
The logic of remembering consists in part of desire to revisit
the past as place; the lighthouse is the place that Mrs
Ramsay knew as the future, as promise, and as an object of
comfort for her son. For Mr Ramsay and the children to
return there years later is to return to an object of Mrs
Ramsay’s anticipation (Mcintire 2012: 179).

14. Maria Popova: Brainpickings

15. Private Eye 27th April 2015

16. Storified
https://storify.com/drlb66/turning-tweets-into-
stories