Voter Guide Project Assignment and Instructions

 

The objective for this project is to create a class-produced voter guide that will help us understand the state and county issues that most of us will be voting on in November and help all of us be better informed voters.  The overall objective is to research and understand an issue in the upcoming election, and do in-depth research that will enable you to come to a conclusion on your own.  You’ll need to complete the following steps:

  1. Join a Voter Guide group--we'll do this in-class.
  2. Informative Research: After the groups are formed,each group member will get a specific research task.  All group members will be required to find 2 credible, substantive sources that inform us about the group’s topic.  You must summarize your sources and include links to the original source.  You will post your summaries to the group’s google document, which will house the research that the group collects.  You will also submit a printed version of this assignment in-class for grading.
  3. Analysis of the Informative Research: After all group members have posted their research, each group member will be tasked with reading the information collected so far by the whole group, analyzing it, and identifying areas for further research.  The idea here is to get beyond sound bites and the partisan bias of much of our media, and investigate these issues in detail.  You will share your ideas with your group members and me in a group meeting.
  4. In-Depth Research: All group members will be assigned a specific research task based on the group’s analysis of the research collected in the Informative Research Assignment.  Again, you will find two sources and produce two summaries.  This will also be submitted both to a shared google doc and in-class for grading.
  5. Final Conclusion:  After reading and synthesizing the additional research compiled by each group member, you will write a 2-page explanation of your final conclusions about the issue at hand.  The idea here is to aid the reader in deciding how to vote, or enabling them to move beyond soundbites when deciding their opinion of a key issue. This will also be submitted to a shared google doc and in-class for grading.

PLEASE NOTE: The specifics of each of these steps will be outlined in further detail as your groups moves through them.  Because each group is covering a different topic, the specifics of your assignments may vary.

Grading

According to the syllabus, this project is worth 15% of your grade and will be 4-6 pages long.  Those numbers will be broken down across the assignments listed above:

  • Informative Research (2 pages) — 2.5 %
  • In-Dept Research (2 pages) — 2.5 %
  • Final Conclusion (2 pages) — 10 %

Other work that you submit to prepare for this project will count as homework assignments.  These elements of the project may include group meetings or written response assignments.

Groups

The only purpose of the topic groups is to share research among group members.  Each group member will be graded for their own individual work.