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COMP 380, Fall 2006 TP-TermProject
TERM PROJECT: Term Paper & Oral Presentation
Due dates:
September 20 / Summary and bibliographySeptember 27 / (Outline should be completed)
October 10-13 / Meeting with professor
October 18 / Status report due
October 27 / (Detailed outline should be completed)
October 30 / (Last day for informal review)
November 3 / Term paper due
November 6 – December 4 / Presentations. Practice talks need to be scheduled with professor at least 24 hours prior to class presentation.
Note: Much time and energy went into creating this document. You will be wise to take full advantage of knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your COMP 380 predecessors, from which much of this content was derived.
Project Overview and Due Dates
Each team member will take a different point of view on a controversial subject, and defend it. Your grade will reflect how you perform individually and as a part of a team.
The term project will consist of several parts, shown below, with due dates shown at right (all paper copies due at START of class). These dates supersede any dates published earlier, should there be a discrepancy. PLEASE TYPE EVERYTHING except, of course, for the two forms: Preferences; Status Reports.
ORAL PRESENTATION DATES. Please let me know ASAP if there is a date or dates during which you definitely cannot give your presentation, and what your important reason is. Kindly do so before I make the assignments. Please try to keep your schedule as flexible as possible in order that the least number of people are affected. Thank you.
Starting early, and other candid advice from your peers
Below is a sampling of actual written student comments from recent semesters.
Question: What would you change about your team dynamics or how you worked, if you could start again?
“I would have started our meetings much earlier—because of our schedules, this wasn’t easy but would really have helped give us direction a little earlier.”
“Don’t let your partner cancel out of meetings and rehearsals. Be firm.”
“...I also would have worked together on the papers more.”
“I would work more ahead of time so that I wouldn’t stress the week before if I had a lot on me.”
“Would have shared more and done more rehearsals (in the room). If time, would have recorded rehearsal and see what it looks like to audience rather than just viewing it subjectively.”
“We got started way too late. Made us rush too much; that was pretty dumb, I know…”
“Meet with my team member way more often, both during research phase and before formulating arguments.”
“We should have done a little more brainstorming. I don’t think we presented some things as well as we could have and I think we left out some important points.”
“I would be less stressed about the presentation.”
“We should have rehearsed together in the real classroom. Things happened that we didn’t expect.”
“Keep making us do progress reports because they helped us to stay on task. We’re great at procrastinating.”
Question: What worked well for your team?
“We worked well together and shared everything (resources and ideas) and rehearsed sufficiently. E-mail and visits were great. Can’t think of anything to change.”
“We really were able to bond. We set up specific times and days when we would meet, and we also set firm due dates that we stuck to.”
“Rehearsal in the classroom was definitely helpful....”
“We played devil’s advocate on nearly every idea/point we wanted to address. This helped us fully consider all possible effects and ultimately made our positions stronger.”
“I liked the level of involvement and the work we both contributed.”
“I finally had a positive group experience. Working with a smaller group helped. I learned a lot.”
“I really improved my ability to work with others… Learning from peers is interesting.”
Question: Did you feel that you learned something valuable from the other presentations (aside from content)?
“Don’t let one team member talk too much at one time; share better or it gets boring to the class.”
“Yeah, I learned the difference between good and bad presentations.”
“I learned that if you need to give a presentation and want people to pay attention and be interested, do not just show power point slides and read them. J”
“The teams that were the most creative were the most fun to watch. You should make everyone have to be creative.”
“The presentations that involved the audience were better than good ones that had no interaction.”
“After watching some of them, I know what NOT to do in a presentation! And don’t read it!”
“Energy makes all the difference.”
“I learned that it is easier to learn when presenters are more enthusiastic about the material they are presenting.”
Question: What advice would you give future COMP 380 students?
“Just be sure to stay steady w/ the project. Don’t let it sit for a long time. The assignment is really good. And working with a partner is a good idea.”
“Don’t procrastinate or you will be really sorry. And rehearse a lot. It was cool to have your peers lead the discussions.”
“Make your partner rehearse with you no matter how busy he says he is. Just make him. I could really tell those teams that rehearsed together and those that didn’t, and we didn’t, and it would have been much better if we had!”
Question: Additional comments?
“It was a lot of fun. Thanks for making us do this!”
“Seemed intimidating at first but turned out to be not so bad. Enjoyed it.”
“I think this project was the highlight of my semester. It was fun and I learned a lot from myself and others.”
“I enjoyed and appreciated the latitude we were given for this project—it allowed us to be creative and create our own presentation style. It was very enjoyable and I made a new friend in the process.”
“This is the best time I’ve had with a presentation at UNC, and I’m a senior…Well structured…Keep everything the same.”
“This project was very challenging but extremely rewarding. I learned so much from this!”
Team Work
Cooperation and the sharing of ideas are an important part of the educational process. You are encouraged to work together in nearly all aspects of your term project—finding and sharing good sources, providing a copy of your outline/paper to your partner; reviewing each others’ drafts of your outlines and written paper; and the oral presentation. You will be asked to evaluate yourself and your team member(s) with regard to your performance throughout.
This is not a competition between you and your partner. It is not your mission to make him/her look bad, or to be the “winner.” It should be a team effort throughout.
FROM THE SYLLABUS: Please note: Because your team member(s) will rely heavily on you, sub-standard performance as a team member will result in an "F" grade for the entire course, no matter what your course average is otherwise.
Much help is allowed. You are encouraged to confer with other current COMP 380 students, as long as they are not signed up for the same controversy/topic. Ask them to read your draft and comment on it, and point out any perceived weaknesses or oversights. Rehearse your presentation in the classroom, and in front of other students if you can—encourage feedback. (Of course, only the presenting team will receive academic credit.) You can learn a lot from your classmates, so take advantage. Consult the Authorized Aid section on page 7 of Written Assignment Guidelines.
TERM PAPER
IN SUM. Each team member will select a different (opposing) point of view on the controversy that your team will cover¾that is, you cannot both argue for the same position. Each team member will write his/her individual term paper that will present his/her stance, with solid, rational arguments that are well supported and developed; he/she will refute at least two or three of the opposing major arguments (you do not have to refute every one; just pick the two or three most critical arguments).
NOTE: Each term paper will be evaluated and graded as a stand-alone document; that is, you may choose to refute different arguments than those your team member might use. In addition, the presentations will be graded completely separately from the term papers (that is, you could theoretically bomb the term paper but do well on the presentation; but it’s easier to start off well). If you coordinate efforts with your partner all along, it will benefit your forthcoming team presentation, at which time your positions, arguments, and refutations will necessarily be judged together.
1. Prioritized Topic Preferences Form (Due September 13)
A list of controversial topics* has been posted. Read each through carefully. Decide which topics look the most interesting to you. Next, DO SOME PRELIMINARY RESEARCH on those topics that look the most interesting to you. Read some of the articles you find, and then decide if you are still happy with the topic. You will spend a lot of time on this project, and it will be worth a large percentage of your course grade, so take the time now. YOU MAY ASSIGN the same priority number to many topics, if they sound equally interesting to you. For example, you may have several #1s, a few #2s, etc.
There will naturally be some overlap among certain topics. Do not be concerned if another team (or material covered during class) covers something that you plan to address in your topic. If it’s important and relevant to your topic, address it.
*Proposing your own topics (encouraged)
Although it is not required, we encourage you to propose one (or more) controversies that do not appear on the list.
In the interest of time: Be as specific and detailed as you can about the controversy that you are proposing—provide a brief write-up. Feel free to drop by to discuss your ideas before you submit them, if you wish.
I will veto your idea only if I believe it does not relate well enough to the course, or if I suspect you may have trouble with it¾but you can certainly appeal the rejection, with supporting evidence, and I will reconsider. J
Later. After teams and topics have been assigned, it is still possible that you and your team member may discover a completely different topic/controversy that you both believe you would prefer. Should that occur, your team may propose the new topic to me via email or in person. Each team member will subsequently submit a new Summary Statement for approval.
Team and Topic assignments
Teams and topic assignments will be announced and posted on the date indicated¾with no more than one team per topic. While we cannot promise you will get your top choice, we will do our best to accommodate. This method is still better than your simply being assigned a topic without having provided any input. To be fair, we will try to schedule later presentation dates for those teams who did not get their top choices (unless your team prefers going early). The more written information you share with us, the better it will be for you.
You may trade your topic with another team, or you may even propose trading team members, as long as everyone is in agreement, and you let us know what is going on.
2. Summary Statement
The provided topics should provide you with some ideas and questions; but notice that some topics may actually have more than one controversy within. We ask you to think about these questions as you identify a particularly interesting and specific controversy, and as you plan out your own thesis statement. Your thesis does not have to cover all the questions posed¾focus on the controversy that you want to address.
Each team member must turn in a typed Summary Statement (only a paper copy is required here). The statement should be fairly brief, and include a problem statement and your thesis, and a brief bibliography (at least two entries), as follows:
Your name
Partner’s name
Brief Topic title (taken from Topics list)
[Problem statement] Describe the issue or the main problem you intend to write about (what is going on, why is it controversial, and why is this worth examining?). [Descriptive]
[Your thesis] Describe what your paper will argue for—what you intend to prove in your paper (your position), and a general idea/plan for how you will accomplish this. [Normative]
[Your brief bibliography here]
An example follows:
The ease with which nearly anyone can be a publisher on the Web has brought with it not only many benefits, but a significant tradeoff. Numerous hate groups (white supremacists, neo-Nazis, etc.) have an inexpensive and convenient way to reach world-wide audiences—including children and young adults—something not a decade ago. The debate continues as to whether or not the most repulsive hate speech (perpetrated by U.S. citizens and stored on U.S. servers) should be censored by the government. Exposure to the most vicious hate speech can compromise a person’s right to feel safe and to pursue happiness. On the other hand, hate speech is protected under the First Amendment in order to preserve a marketplace of ideas; censorship often serves to chill freedom of expression.
Hate speech published on the Internet, no matter how egregious, should enjoy the same First Amendment protections as does the print media. Anything less puts censorship in the hands of government instead of adults and/or parents; goes against the principle of tolerance of opinion, which erodes our “marketplace of ideas”; and it puts us on a very slippery slope.