20.2: Scenario: The Research Paper

Madison and Dakota are first-year students at a community college. Their professor, Dr. Gonzales, has asked them to collaborate on a 12–15 page research paper on a “hot button issue” of their choice. Dr. Gonzales has asked them to cite at least eight different sources and include a Works Cited page using MLA format.

Unfortunately, Madison and Dakota are commuters from different towns, and their full-time job schedules prevent their meeting in person outside of class. However, both of them have computers at home with Internet access.

When Dakota gets home late that evening, he logs into his Twitter account and begins to micro-blog on the topic. During the drive home he was listening to National Public Radio (NPR) and heard an interesting discussion about health care reform. His first post, or Tweet on the topic goes something like this: “All this talk about health care on the news—great topic for paper.” Since Dakota is using Twitter, his messages must be short—only 140 characters! However, he can Tweet as often as he likes, so just before bed he adds another post: “I work full time and go to school. I am uninsured.”

Fig. 1. Twitter is a great way to send brief messages to friends and colleagues. Many students use it to share information with their friends and classmates about their hobbies, social activities, classes, and assignments.

The next morning, Madison checks her email and finds an invitation from Dakota to join Twitter. Madison completes the registration process and selects the option to “follow” Dakota, so she will be notified when Dakota posts any more Tweets. She also notices the RSS logo on Dakota’s Twitter homepage, so she adds the feed to her Google Reader account. Now Dakota’s Tweets will show up alongside her daily dose of news and blog posts. Since she has to go to work soon, Madison downloads the Twitter application for her mobile phone so that she can respond to Dakota during her breaks. For now, though, she replies to Dakota’s Tweet with, “That sounds great! My mom has breast cancer and the family is really struggling.”

Later that day Dakota sees Madison’s response to his Tweet and also several replies from his other friends. One of them is Brittney, a friend at another school who plans to apply to medical school next year. Brittney tells him that the topic is very controversial and sends him a link to her blog that discusses the pros and cons of the “public option.”

Dakota logs into his Facebook account and updates his status to read, “I am doing a paper on health care reform. Please help!” One of his friends, Darrin, is also online at the moment and pages him through Facebook chat. “Try Google Scholar to find sources for it! Here’s a link.” Dakota clicks on the link and finds all sorts of articles from academic journals about health care reform—and also how many times each of them has been cited. There are over a million and a half links! He soon realizes that he will need to narrow his topic.

However, Madison is one step ahead of him. She is now on break and finds time to send Dakota another Tweet: “Let’s do it on why the bill needs a public option.” Dakota tries another Google Scholar search using “public option” and finds fewer, yet more relevant articles. He replies, “Sounds good. I will work on finding articles.”

Now Dakota needs a way to share articles with Madison. He could email the links or put them in his Tweets, but he wants a better way to organize them. He remembers Dr. Gonzales telling him about a Firefox extension called Zotero, which is designed for precisely that purpose. It will even generate a Works Cited page when they are done! Dakota installs the application. Now he is able to save the articles he finds on Google Scholar into Zotero and share them with whomever he wants. Dakota creates a public group on Zotero called “health care reform” and gives everyone permission to join it. This way, anyone on Zotero interested in the topic can add items to the group’s library of citations.

Even though they’ve only talked face-to-face a few times, Dakota and Madison’s research into public options is going well. The sheer number of Tweets Dakota sends out is, unfortunately, starting to overwhelm Madison. Madison sends Dakota a Tweet that says, “Overwhelmed need to meet driving past your town thurs. U use doodle?”

Fig. 2. Google Scholar is a lot like Google, but it searches academic, government, and legal documents. Some of the links it finds are freely or cheaply available online, but others are available only to paying members or subscribers. Before paying for access to an article, you should check to see if it is available at your school’s library.

Dakota hasn’t used Doodle before, but discovers that this site is able to accomplish two things Dakota needs to do. First, Doodle helps people administer polls. Dakota has been looking for a way to set up polls at school for his disc golf league. He found a park between himself and campus that could fit a 12-hole disc golf course, but without any statistics to back up his claim that the area needs a disc golf course, the local park and recreational department won’t even discuss the idea. Dakota also finds that Doodle connects to Microsoft Outlook, an email and calendar management tool used at many colleges. Dakota isn’t a big fan of expensive software, but perhaps the Outlook connectivity will come in handy.

Outside of the polling option within Doodle, Dakota discovers where Madison was going with that last Tweet. Doodle offers a daily and weekly scheduler that can be accessed by many people. This is great because Dakota doesn’t really want classmates to view his Outlook schedule. Up until this point, most of Madison and Dakota’s interaction has been online and asynchronous. Asynchronous just means that they are communicating, but not at the same moment. Also, Madison’s mom has started cancer treatment, and the hospital is near Dakota’s apartment. Madison will be driving her mom to treatments at least once a week, but the appointments won’t always be at the same time. Even though their school has a really nice course management system (such as Blackboard, D2L, Sakai, or Moodle), a synchronous Facebook chat helps Madison and Dakota decide to use Doodle to schedule meetings. This works wonderfully for both of them because they are able to share each other’s schedule in detail. In short, Dakota was worried he might have to miss his Thursday night disc golf league, but he’s able to show his league on the schedule. This eases his mind a bit.

Dakota and Madison now have a good idea of what they want to write about, but how will they draft their document? Dakota decides to open a Google Document. Google Docs is a tool that makes it easy to draft and collaborate online. Dakota shares the new file with Madison, and now they can draft and edit the document together. However, Dakota tries drafting an introduction and thesis statement, but ends up with a case of writer’s block. He sends out another Tweet asking for help organizing his thoughts.

Fig. 3. Google Docs is a free, easy-to-use word processor that stores your documents online. You can then share them with friends and classmates. It’s a much better solution for collaborative writing than emailing documents back and forth between group members.

Darrin sees the Tweet and suggests that Dakota use Mindomo, a free online mind-mapping tool. Mind maps will allow Dakota to see how his ideas are connected, and possibly find new ways they are related. Furthermore, he will be able to share his map with whomever he wants, and get feedback too. For the next few hours, Dakota works on a map, making topics and subtopics. He’s having lots of fun, and eventually gets an idea—the debate over the public option seems to have a lot to do with business and politics. Some of the articles Dakota read argued that such a move would amount to socialism, with the government interfering in free trade. However, his research showed that similar arguments were made about Medicare and Social Security, which turned out to be very popular programs.

Dakota sends a link to his map to Madison. Later, Madison looks at the map and agrees with Dakota. Madison pulls up the Google Doc and drafts the thesis statement: “Congress should include a public option in its health care reform plan because similar policies worked out well in the past.” She then expands the introduction by talking about the reform plan in general, then focuses on the arguments about the public option. She sets up the paper by mentioning Medicare and Social Security and how they faced similar opposition in Congress.

Madison needs some facts and quotations to support these arguments, so she pulls up Zotero and syncs with Dakota’s links. When she logs in to Zotero, though, she finds that someone from Washington, D.C. has been there and suggested several new articles for the group to consider. The links all seem to be against the public option, but Madison still finds a few that may be useful for the project. She drafts long into the night.

When Dakota looks at the document the next morning, Madison has already drafted six pages. Now that they have a definite direction and good research, Dakota is easily able to finish up the draft. Using Zotero, he is able to add a correctly formatted MLA Works Cited page in just a few clicks.

After Madison and Dakota have gone through the draft to correct errors and smooth out the style, they decide to see if anyone else will review their paper. A few more eyes, after all, can only help iron out hidden issues they may have overlooked. Darrin replies to a Tweet that says, “Editing help wanted. Fresh eyes needed.” He directs Madison and Dakota to the school’s writing center. Neither had been aware of this, but the writing center’s webpage lists online consultations as a type of service provided to students. Excited about this oportunity, Madison calls the writing center. She asks if she can email the paper to a tutor for review. Following writing center practices, the tutor explains that the staff won’t necessarily correct a paper, but if Madison is willing to set up an online meeting, the tutor is willing to discuss the paper (and any errors they find) while talking. Also, this writing center uses an online document system that combines all the communication techniques found in both Google Docs and Skype. Though many different programs like this exist, this writing center is using Wimba.

While at the hospital, during one of her mom’s appointments, Madison meets with Dakota so they can both sit in on the tutorial session. Besides allowing them to talk with the tutor, Wimba also allows the tutor, Dakota, and Madison to make marks, highlights, and changes to the paper. Though the tutor didn’t correct the paper, useful comments are offered that cover everything from organization to grammar. Also, the tutor has been trained to refrain from giving compliments about student papers (tutors are taught to not pass judgment), but only minor stylistic and grammatical changes show up during the tutorial. In the beginning, both Dakota and Madison had doubts about working online to construct this paper. Now, all those worries are gone.

While online with the writing center tutor, Dakota checks Doodle and notices that Madison will be driving her mom to four more medical appointments this week. He tells Madison he will make the needed changes and submit the final draft. Their instructor, Dr. Gonzales, has set up a dropbox using the college’s course management system, so after considering the tutor’s suggestions, and giving the paper one last edit and proofread, Dakota submits the file.

A week later, Dr. Gonzales returns their now graded paper through the course management system. Madison and Dakota have earned an A on their paper! It wasn’t easy, but taking the time to learn so many useful tools made the difference. Dakota couldn’t wait to get home and send a Tweet out about their achievement.

Now let’s break down the tools Madison and Dakota used at each stage of their writing process.