Essay #3: Collaborative Research Essay
As a research essay you will be primarily informing your reader about your group's issue based on all of your research. Remember, you are the expert on your topic and your task in this assignment is to inform your reader all about it.
Thesis development: your thesis should be an arguable claim, in response to the following questions: what is significant about your topic? What should we know about it and why?
As a collaborative assignment, the group should be working on the essay together. You may decide to assign sections of the essay to each member and then meet to put them together. Or perhaps your group will work best writing the whole essay together at meetings. Either way, everyone in the group has the responsibility of making sure that the essay is the product of a group effort.
Evaluation of Group Project
You will be asked to fill out an evaluation of each group member when you turn in the essay on 7/19. (You do not need to print this out.)
Evaluating your team members
To help yourself understand both your own participation and that of each partner in the collaborative project, it is important to evaluate each other.
Your name: ______________________________________________________
Your partner's name: _______________________________________________
use the following scale for the evaluation
5 = strongly agree
4 = agree
3 = neither agree nor disagree
2 = disagree
1 = strongly disagree
Evaluating your partner:
1) This team member provided appropriate leadership for our group 1 2 3 4 5
2) This team member completed assigned tasks 1 2 3 4 5
3) This team member arrived promptly at meetings and met the team's deadlines 1 2 3 4 5
4) This team member used facilitative behavior (helping, listening,
encouraging, sharing, providing directions) during cooperative work. 1 2 3 4 5
5) This team member shared information and materials to help others 1 2 3 4 5
6) This team member contributed to the quality and success of the team's project 1 2 3 4 5
I would assign this team member the following grade: ___________ because ____________________
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evaluating yourself:
1) I was prepared to contribute to the group 1 2 3 4 5
2) I contributed my ideas 1 2 3 4 5
3) I asked others for their ideas 1 2 3 4 5
4) I encouraged others to participate in the group 1 2 3 4 5
5) I stayed on task 1 2 3 4 5
6) I helped others stay on task 1 2 3 4 5
7) I did my fair share of the work 1 2 3 4 5
8) I met the group decided deadlines 1 2 3 4 5
I would assign myself the following grade _____________ because ___________________________
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What have you learned about collaboration from this assignment? About writing as a pair as opposed to on your own? _____________________________________________________________________
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