GoTo

About the Projects

Model Projects

A Word About Teams

Return to Syllabus

About The Projects: A major part of the course involves the creation of  two Team Projects:

• For the purposes of this exercise, the class will be divided into teams of four or five students each.

 
• Each Team will be required to research and design two projects, one of which is due midway through the semester; the second of which due toward the end of classes.

 
• Your project should grow out of one of the assignments, and should address issues raised by the readings, lecture and discussion related to that assignment.

 
• Your presentation must be carefully researched, logically argued, and clearly communicated.  Technology is not a substitute for these fundamental attributes of a good paper. For guides to good usage, see Strunk and White's classic, The Elements of Style, available online through the Bartleby web site.

 
• Your project must draw on both primary (that is to say, on documents such as those reprinted in Major Problems) and secondary sources (such as the scholarly articles reprinted in Major Problems).  (For a discussion of primary and secondary sources and how to evaluate them, see Reading, Writing and Researching for History: A Guide for College Students  by Professor Patrick Rael of Bowdoin College.)

 
• Your project must draw sources from both the AU Library and from the World Wide Web. The Library remains the most important source of information.  Most books, scholarly journals, and documents of all sorts are NOT available in digital format or accessible on the web.  Nor is it likely that they will be soon.  Thus your research should begin with the AU Library and with the rich resources available to you through the Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC). During the week before the projects are do, we will schedule a orientation to the library, focusing on materials that are especially relevant to your projects.  You are also encouraged to integrate new sources into your project paper.  For example, texts, photographs and other materials may be scanned and incorporated into your paper (subject, of course, to copyright restrictions). You are encouraged to embed images (or even sound or video) into your project, and to establish links to other web sites wherever this seems appropriate.  For a list of useful web sites, click on A Guide To Web Sites for the Study of the United States and Vietnam.

 
• Your project must be presented in the form of a mini web site.  It should be prepared in hypertext markup language (HTML), using Page Composer or some other web authoring tool. (For details, click on Help for your Web Project).
• Your web project must be posted on a server prior to the date on which it is due.  You should also bring a disk based version to class on the day when it will be presented (as a backup in case the network or server is down).

• Your paper must represent your work and your work alone.  If you draw ideas and important information from a source, you must identify that source.  If you use language that is not your own, it must be placed in quotes and its source identified.  Failure to do so, plagiarism, is one of the most serious violations of the Academic Integrity Code.

 
•  You must identify all of your sources.  In the text itself, you may use parentheses (containing the name of the author and page number) or footnotes.  In either case, the citation should be hyper-linked to a single annotated bibliography page. (Annotated means that you should include a brief description and evaluation of the source. Your bibliography page should use a standard bibliographical format.  For example, consult the Turabian Style Guide -- a brief online handout based on Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations and The Chicago Style Manual. For citing web-based sources, see A Brief Citation Guide for Internet Sources in History and the Humanities , which is also based on Turabian's, A Manual for Writers.

 
• The rules of copyright must be observed.  While traditional copyright rules permit limited "fair use" for educational purposes, placing materials on the web (& thus "publishing" them) presents special difficulties.  It is especially important that you cite the sources for any materials (including images) that you use.

 
• Above all, web-based materials must be subject to the same rigorous rules used for evaluating printed material.  Indeed, web based materials must be scrutinized even more rigorously.  After all, information that you find in a library has already gone through a rigorous selection process managed by editors, publishers, reviewers and by highly trained professional librarians; but literally anyone can post material on the web.  Thus, you will need to evaluate material by asking:  who "published" the material?  when?  how credible is the source?  what bias or point of view shapes the form and content of the material? etc., etc.

 
• You will be asked to make a very brief (10-15 minute) presentation of your project during class.  Please organize this presentation very carefully.  Your presentation should not be a detailed report, but rather an overview, so that members of the class can visit the site and review it on their own.

 
• For some helpful guidelines on working with groups, click on A Word About Teams.