Final Project and Presentation

Due Date

Topic & research questions submission: March 11-18, 2009

Final Report: May 6, 2009

Submission

Email to gned008@ust.hk

Project Description

Each student will choose a research topic and form research questions related to their chosen topic. The topic can be something you are doing for another course, or it can be of personal interest.

Using access tools, searching skills, and evaluation methods learned in the course, you will create:

1. A "Search Strategy and Search History" document describing:

• What access tools you used.
• Why you chose these tools.
• The search strategies you used on each tool.
• The number of results you got, how you modified your search after that.
• Criteria to decide which results to include and which not to include such as (but not limited to) publication date, authors' credentials and biases.

2. A properly formatted bibliography (list of references)

• With at least 25 references.
• The references may include books, book chapters, journal or magazine or news articles, VCDs/DVDs and web-pages.

Project Layout

• Page length of "Search Strategy and Search History" = 5 to 10 pages.
• Font = 11 or 12; 1 inch margins.

Grading

Will be marked 0-10, 60% is the passing grade

A passing project will show:

• Use of at least THREE appropriate access tools
• Good search strategies such as choose relevant keywords, combine keywords with connectors (AND, OR), proper use of truncation/wildcard and advanced features (limit to date range, title or abstract, etc.) to narrow or broaden your search if necessary.
• Retrieved items listed in the bibliography are relevant.
• Search steps and evaluation criteria are clearly documented and explained.
• Consistently formatted bibliography in a standard style.

Consultation (Compulsory)

• Students need to meet with an instructor twice to discuss their final project.
• Each consultation will last about 15 minutes outside normal class time.
• Students can contact any one of the instructors to make an appointment for each of the consultation session.
• First consultaton on research topic and forming related research questions: March 11 - March 18
• Second consultation on choice of assess tools, search strategies, citations, etc: April 8 - April 22.
• Students who choose to do presentation may also seek advice during these consultation sessions.

Final Project Example

A sample final project, "The Life of a Penguin", is availabe for reference. You cannot use the same topic or replace "penguin" with another animal.