1st assignment
Short Writing Assignment 1
Learning objectives: Thinking critically about research articles is an essential skill for both evaluating and eventually conducting scientific research. Reading and comprehending scientific articles takes practice! I often tell students that it can feel similar to learning a new language. The content in this module offer some good information about how research articles are structured and where you can find certain types of information. Humans also learn by doing! I invite you to dig into one of my favorite research articles and practice summarizing an empirical report for short writing assignment number 1. Summarizing previous research on a topic is an important part of setting the stage for an experiment proposal and therefore it will be a part of our larger writing assignment at the end of the semester so this is a great opportunity to practice that skill.
The research article is called Keep Your Fingers Crossed! How Superstition Improves Performance. The link will take you to a pdf available for you to download. You can read it and mark it up on your computer or other electronic device, or you can print a copy to read and annotate. I’m also sharing the article as it is posted on the publishers’ website. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797610372631
Some people prefer this options so they can utilize a screen reader or other assistive technology. It can also be helpful because the in-text citations are active links that take you to the reference section where there are multiple options for finding the articles mentioned in the paper online (including Metro State’s Library if you’re on the university network!).
This is an approachable article with experiments that use tools and procedures that can be understood whether you have research experience in that domain or not. This assignment will be evaluated based on how well you can accurately communicate about scientific ideas in your own words. Please be careful not to plagiarize! If you have questions about what constitutes plagiarism, please contact me directly. Avoiding plagiarism is important not only for issues around academic integrity but also because summarizing research articles is an important skill! Your challenge is to extract the most relevant information without carrying forward too many specific details that would detract from the main points.
Your paper will likely end up being around 3-4 pages long, double spaced. It is fine to submit fewer than 3 pages is fine as long as you include all the required information. The paper should be written in essay format, which just means you should use paragraphs and topic sentences to introduce new ideas (there will not be any titles or subtitles in your paper). Please submit your paper as a word document or other accessible file on the assignment page. I cannot view/download mac-specific files. All students have access to Microsoft Office as part of their enrollment. If you go to the Metro State homepage and scroll all the way to the bottom, there is a link for “Office 365” (it is under the Metro State Faculty and Staff column, but it also works for students!).
This summary should read differently than a scientific report itself; essentially, you want to tell a short story about the experiment and the findings from that experiment.
Specifics:
Begin with a brief overview of the paper: what was the purpose of the research? What were the authors investigating and why? (Briefly touch on the main topic and write the hypothesis of the research study in your own words.)
The main focus should be discussing the methods – the goal is to find the sweet spot where you give enough information for the reader/audience to understand the main aspects of the design (what were the tools, order of events, and groups or conditions involved) without including unnecessary details like the age range of subjects, or university affiliations of the researchers, etc.
Describe the overall pattern of results. You don’t need to cover every t-test they discussed, rather you should in a few sentences describe the outcome and whether the data supported or disconfirmed the predictions of the hypothesis they were testing. There are four experiments in this study. It will make the most sense to cover the methods and results of each experiment before moving onto the next. If something repeats from a previous study you can say in your paper that “everything was the same except” or the “the researchers adapted the procedure from experiment XX by…” and so on.
What conclusions were made based on the findings? Note that this is separate from reporting the overall pattern of results – what did the authors say about the data? What do the findings mean?
Include a few sentences about what you learned from the article – did something surprise you? Do you agree with the author’s conclusions? Did you notice any potential problems or limitations that weren’t discussed?
You are writing about an APA style article, but you do not need to worry about writing in APA style. I am not looking for a title page or specific heads, etc. Since we are all working on the same article, you do not need to include in-text citations or cite the main paper throughout your summary. There should also not be any additional references or sources needed. Assessment is based on clear communication of ideas and the ability to pull out the most relevant aspects of a scientific paper.
Generative AI: Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) tools, such as ChatGPT, may be used for to help support the comprehension required for this assignment but you may not submit text generated by an AI tool as your own writing. If you find that putting text into a generative AI tool helps you think about it in a different way, that is acceptable. Sometimes it can be useful to use AI tools to get the “gist” of scientific writing you are encountering for the first time. However, AI generated text may not be submitted as your own writing. If you are in doubt as to whether you are using AI language models appropriately in this course, please discuss your situation with the instructor. Any use of GAI tools should be cited appropriately. Examples of citing AI language models are available in a collaborative handout from the Writing Center and Library. Students are responsible for fact checking statements composed by AI language models and for evaluating the validity of sources cited in generated text.
Grading: This small writing assignment is worth 20 points. There is a rubric attached to the assignment that you should review before/after you submit your paper.
2nd assignment
Attached below