What is an “Internet Research Paper”?
• Instructor provides • a highly structured assignment with a specific topic focused on fact finding; examples: • Investigating a specific social movement (Soc 309) • Investigating a specific social or public policy (GSR 716) • training in necessary Internet skills (varies with type of course and preparedness of students) • feedback on various stages of the paper development (again varies with type of course, more below) • Students use the Internet/Web to • access traditional (quality controlled) library resources online like • the full text (and abstracts) of scholarly journal articles • access government (executive, legislative, and judicial branch) documents • access archives of newspaper articles and other media stories • access quantitative (numerical) information like census and public opinion data — in part using interactive features to customize tables, charts, and maps • access information (of very mixed quality) provided by others online like • position statements, press rel
