Purposes

The purposes of this journal activity are to:

• recognise the relevance and inter-relatedness of content written by your peers for collection in a mini-journal
• gain expertise in using your peers as resources
• work effectively as a member of a team, focussing on common goals
• create an academic journal to be published on-line

Editorial Board

A team of 3 members will form an Editorial Board whose mandate is to plan, prepare and submit for publication an on-line academic journal. The Editorial Board decides upon a theme and article topics, and develops a workplan for individuals to carry out research. The Board assigns individual roles to all members. Members act as peer reviewers and all members take equal responsibility for group decisions and actions.

Thoughout the project, teams maintain an accurate and detailed record of the process. This record will be presented in a portfolio, and includes a clear and attainable work plan, detailed meeting minutes, rough drafts, peer reviews, annotated bibliographies for each article, and outlines. The final product, the Journal, will be presented to the instructor in both paper and electronic form - a word document or html. Teams will also be required to present aspects of their work in a group Oral Presentation. Editorial Boards assign individual tasks after considering the requirements of the portfolio.

Grading

Activity	Description	Grade	Points
Project proposal	1 - 2 pages outlining what the three paper topics are and how they interrelate, along with a project plan indicating time frames and goals for completing the project	individual	10
Annotated Bibliography	a selection of 5 to 7 academic sources, fully referenced, with a short summary of the utility of the source to the selected topic	individual	20
Introduction	a introductory comment on goals and objectives of the journal, describing the content and the theme.	team	10
The Journal	the collected papers in electronic form (word or html documents) and on paper, included in portfolio; submitted to Turnitin.com	team	40
Portfolio	document folder containing a complete and accurate record of the project process	team	10
TOTAL			30% of final grade

Project Planning

Teams of three students will form to create Editorial Boards. The Editorial Board will define the general area of research for acceptable articles. After consultation, the Board will decide the topics for the individual articles. They submit their team project proposal to the instructor.

Individual writers collect outside sources and produce individual annotated bibliographies. They review these for group approval. They submit these annotated bibliographies to the instructor.

Individuals then write drafts of their papers, using peer review, drafting and revision techniques they have learned. Writers may seek consultation on their drafts with the instructor only if they have been to the Writing Center with the same draft. Articles must be between 7and 8 pages in length and follow APA documentation.

Final drafts of articles are printed and collected in the journal, along with an introduction to the journal, a table of contents and a cover page appropriate to an academic journal. The journal will be part of the entire portfolio, which is a record of the steps, drafts, notes, and planning documents used to develop this journal. Teams submit this project portfolio to the instructor on May 4.

Teams then plan for an oral presentation on the group project, which will take place in class on May 9 and 11. All teams must condense their findings on the group project to explain to their classmates how their research gave them new insights into the theme they studied.

Components of the journal are described as follows:

• Annotated Bibliography
• Peer Review
• Introduction
• Individual Articles
• Portfolios

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Annotated Bibliograpy

An annotated bibliography is a collection of sources used for an academic article, with complete reference information and a summary of how the content of the source is relevant to the article. Each annotated bibliography is assigned an individual grade.

For a sample of an annotated bibliography, see here

Peer Review Process

The peer review process is probably the single most important element of this project. It is included to encourage team interaction - discussion, debate, constructive criticism and suggestions. It is a process which can be adopted for any writing assignment in any course. You don't need to be part of a team to request assistance from fellow students.

As your instructor may only inspect one draft of the introduction, individual articles and the annotated bibliography, the peer review process is essential to the project. It requires serious consideration of work done by your group. Before an article is accepted by the Board all members must agree that the work is ready for publication.

Each member of the Editorial Board will individually produce the following:

• one review of the group project proposal
• one review of a draft of an individual paper written by a member of the Board. (this draft must be reviewed and corrected before your instructor will provide comments)
• one review of an annotated bibliography written by a member of the Board
• all members of the board must sign a declaration stating that they have read all articles to be published and agree that the Journal is ready for publication.

Individual Articles

• are between 7 and 8 pages in length
• are related to both the Journal theme and course content
• are argumentative with an arguable thesis statement
• contain all the elements of the previous assignments - summarization, critical analysis, comparing and contrasting
• contain a minimum of five references which are cited in-text and documented on the reference page
• are peer reviewed and corrected at least once prior to submission
• are read by the Editorial Board
• use vocabulary appropriate to the discourse of the reseach area
• follow APA documentation: page format, in-text citations and a reference page

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Portfolio

The portfolio is a record of all elements of the project related to process. This includes the following:

• a work plan for the project
• proposals for individual articles
• meeting minutes - these should contain dates (time and place) of each meeting, who attended, who did not attend, the meeting agenda, summary of discussion, tasks assigned with due dates and the name of the person responsible
• a record of work not completed according to the project time frame
• a report of problems that may have occurred during the project, along with action taken to solve the problem
• all drafts of the introduction, annotated bibliographies, and individual articles
• all reviews of the introduction, annotated bibliography and individual articles

Oral Presentation

The oral presentation will take place in the final week of class, with teams presenting the results of their projects together. Ideally, one member will introduce the overall topic, making a biref summary of the three papers. Another member might focus on a partcular theme or mutually significant result. The third member might take the three topics and show how they differed in treatments by authors they have read. This presentation is meant to show how the three papers inter-relate.

Full explanation for the oral presentation is here.

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