PHL 340 / HMS 410. FREEDOM AND
DETERMINISM. Winter, 2000
RESEARCH PAPER And Presentation
in Class
The assignment is to produce a ten to fifteen page research
paper on a topic relevant to freedom and determinism, and to prepare a
presentation on that paper for the class. Let me tell you too much about
this assignment, to avoid the danger of saying too little:
Research.
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You will select your own topic and materials. From the calendar
of classes, in the early days of the course, and from your own interests,
you should find it easy to identify some topic you will enjoy studying
and writing on. This will be followed by a preliminary review of relevant
materials, a skimming of the materials to get a sense of which are both
readable and useful for your purposes, a further narrowing of the topic,
and then some serious reading.
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After this reading you will be ready to propose a specific
theme for the paper, Due Thurs, Mar.9. You will need to spell
out this theme in a long sentence (or a brief paragraph). For example:
"Given
the difficulties of educating people for responsible behavior, it is probably
wisest for a society to indoctrinate people into obedience to basic civil
behavior rather than try to help them develop greater inner freedom.
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A theme can still be too vague. The next step is to select
from your serious readings the main reference points you will use (or you
may have done this prior to step #2, drawing your theme out of some very
specific sources). For example: "B. F. Skinner's thought will provide
the major description of an indoctrination position. Abraham Maslow will
provide the inner freedom description. Critical reviews of both of their
works will offer some extra insights."
Writing the Paper
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By the time you have identified your major sources and articulated
your theme, you should also be in a position to draw up an initial outline.
Keep in mind that your eventual audience is the entire class. When a scholar
prepares a paper for presentation to a gathering of colleagues, the scholar
knows that even when those colleagues have a high level of expertise on
the topic, it is still important to review the more important basic pieces
of information so that everyone has a chance to recall that information
and to check whether the presenter's interpretation of it seems correct.
So include in your outline the background basic that form the context of
your main point(s). Write to educate your readers.
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An early draft of the paper will be given to one of your
peers in the class for initial review. The purpose of the review is to
help one another achieve maximum clarity and coherence. Be sure, however,
to proofread and spellcheck even this early draft. Draft due Tuesday,
April 3
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You will each have to read and criticize constructively at
least one other person's paper and return it to the person at the beginning
of class, April 5.
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The final draft, for grading, is to be handed in on the
day of each person's presentation. It should be free of typographical
and major grammatical errors. If there are more than 3 such errors on any
one page, 1 point will be deducted for each such page, and the paper will
be returned for revision. If any page in the revision has more than 3 errors
on any page, 2 points will be deducted from the grade for each such page.
PRESENTATION.
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[these points are not meant to limit your creativity, only
to set a minimum performance standard]
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Each person will have up to 20 minutes for presentation and
discussion. (An attempt will be made to select papers will common elements
or themes for the same day to allow comparisons in discussion at the end.)
It would be best to practice the presentation in advance to make sure that
it does not take more than 15 minutes.
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If you are not a practiced public speaker, you should either
write out the entire presentation you intend to make or, at a minimum,
have a very detailed outline which you can put on overhead transparencies.
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The presentation should be carefully prepared. Fifteen minutes
is not enough time to read your whole 10-15 page paper. So the presentation
should be prepared just for this purpose. The outline should contain the
major subtopics as topic sentences and specific points of clarification
and/or support for the ideas in the topic sentences. Criticisms of the
ideas can be included along with the clarification and/or support; or criticisms
can be held for a critical section at the end.
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Technology: it would be good to provide the class with aids
to understanding. Provide a one-page handout outline; or prepare pages
to be made into transparencies for the overhead projector; or create a
power-point presentation (if it is possible to arrange for the technology
support for this); or . . . . If you want transparencies made
for your please deliver the hardcopy for this by the day previous to your
presentation. (That will give you at least a full day to rehearse
it.)
To the list of paper themes
and presentation dates To
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