Team Assignment
DUE: February 28, 2019 by 11:59pm
Purpose: Annotated bibliographies help us process what we’ve read, summarize it, and explain why it matters. Learning how to complete an annotated bibliography well teaches us to read carefully and critically, identify authors’ arguments and essential evidence, define a source’s significance, and present this information in a concise way. These skills will serve you well when you prepare reports and presentations, not only in the classroom, but also in your future job.
Task: Write annotations for 12-18 scholarly sources (2 non-class readings per person) related to your research questions. If you are doing a historical project, 5 of your annotations should be on materials you have read for class. Your annotations should consist of the following information:
- 1 sentence that describes the topic of this source.
- 1 sentence that describes the author’s argument.
- 1 sentence that lists the sources used for this study.
- > 2 sentences that describe the evidence the author uses to support his/her argument.
- 1 sentence critique of the work that explains how successful you think the author has been at supporting their argument based on what you’ve read.
- > 1 sentence that describes how this source informs your research
What is a scholarly source?
When you’re writing different kinds of papers, you might operate with different standards for what constitutes an “acceptable source.” For this project, I want to challenge you to adhere to this definition of an acceptable secondary source:
The sources contained in your annotated bibliography must be published in peer-reviewed journals or books from a major or university press.
This doesn’t mean that other sources, like newspaper articles and websites aren’t useful; just that I want you to dig into the scholarly literature for this particular project.
If you’re not sure whether a journal is peer-reviewed, you can ask a librarian. But in general, anything indexed in Academic Search Complete will qualify. If you’re having trouble figuring out how to find these sources, good news! There’s plenty of help available at the library, and the librarians are eager to help you! Just remember that a librarian’s job isn’t to do the research for you; it’s to show you how to do it yourself.
Resource: UCLA’s library has a great research guide on citations and a link to more information on annotated bibliographies at http://guides.library.ucla.edu/start/citing.
Criteria for Success:
| CATEGORY | A | B | C | D | F |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quantity of sources (20 pts) | Document cites the number of sources outlined in the assignment. | Document is either one source over or under the required number of sources. | Document is two to three sources over or under the required number of sources. | Document is four to five sources over or under the required number of sources. | Document is more than five sources over or under the number of required sources. |
| Chicago style citations (20 pts) | Citations are formatted correctly in the document. | There are a few formatting errors in the documentÕs citations. | There are some formatting errors in the documentÕs citations. | There are many and/or frequent formatting errors in the documentÕs citations. | There is little or no adherence to APA format in the document. |
| Quality /Reliability of Sources (30 pts) | All sources cited can be considered reliable and/or trustworthy. | Most sources cited can be considered reliable and/or trustworthy. | Some sources can be considered reliable and/or trustworthy. | Few sources cited can be considered reliable and/or trustworthy. | Little or no reliable and/or trustworthy sources cited. |
| Significance of Sources (50 pts) | All annotations clearly state how the source informs your research. | The majority of your annotations state how the source informs your research. | Some of your annotations state how the source informs your research. | Few annotations state how the source informs your research. | Your explanations are not clear enough to show how the source informs your research. |
| Writing fluency of annotations (70 pts) | All annotations are thoughtful, complete, and well written. | Most annotations are thoughtful, complete, and well written. | Some annotations are well written but some are lacking in completeness, thought, and /or writing quality. | Most annotations are lacking in completeness, thought, and/or writing quality. | All annotations are lacking in completeness, thought, and/or writing quality. |