Faculty Author: Ann Crigler
Course: Political Science 437
Department or School: Political Science
Student Population: Sophomore and senior Political Science and Political Economy majors
Duration: 4 weeks
Deliverables:
Keywords: writing, data, analysis, essay, research paper, scandal
Summary: Students in teams analyze media data to evaluate a hypothesis about media coverage of political scandals.
Assignment Goals: This is the major written assignment for the course. It is a team project in which 2-‐4 students will work collaboratively to study the coverage of political scandals in different media. To guide your writing, the research project is divided into four assignments: 1) research topic, 2) literature review, 3) hypotheses and methods section, and 4) final research paper and presentation.
Recommended Tools:
Faculty Author Advice: If I were to do this assignment again, I would start the assignment earlier so there is more time for data analysis and refining their report and presentation. It’s hard to teach all these skills on top of the content in a course.
Lynda.com did not work very well for the students; they preferred doing their own searches. Too dry and not focused enough on solving the specific task they were trying to do.