Lesson for Week 6: Day 2
6:2
Set up an interview with someone in your field and generate a list of interview questions and send a copy of the questions (along with a note stating whom you plan to interview and when) to me .
In the next week, you are to conduct the interview, take notes, and send me a copy of the interview transcript with the date and place of the interview; the interviewee's name, title, and affiliation; and summary of the questions and answers. The questions should be numbered and your summary of the interviewee's answers should appear in a paragraph under each question. Here is another example of an interview transcript that you can use as a model. Although I have asked that you include a summary paragraph at the end that explains what you learned from the interview and how you hope to use it in your report, that is a minor element. I'm much more interested in the quality of the data contained in the transcript.
You were to preview Gary Goreham's power point presentation on sociological research he did investigating peoples' reactions to GMOs.
You were to continue reading Dinner at the New Gene Cafe, at least chapter 10.
The primary work for today is to work toward understanding the structure of the paper you are writing and to take Test One for the course.
Review the structure of the empirical research report you are to write for your discourse in your field paper. Compare that structure to Gary Goreham's power point. The report proper is to be structured as below. As you work your way through the power point, try to overlay this pattern on the presentation; in other words, try to figure out where each of these sections begin and what material in the presentation comes under each heading.
The emirical research report structure is common in all sciences. Goreham's report (now published) comes from the world of the social sciences, and your report on the discourse in your field would be at home in the social sciences--indeed you are doing scientific research into the rhetorical practices of a specific discourse community, a research project that some define as sociological. However, the same structure appears in other sciences, such as physics, astronomy, biology. Some times these reports can be long enough that they break down into chapters. Scan this report, titled Gone to Seed, written by the Union of Concerned Scientists, about the problem of maintaining seed populations that keep GMO and non GMO crops separate. (I found this at http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_environment/biotechnology/).
Another variation of a scientific report is a literature review. You should not confuse this kind of literature review, which takes up a whole paper, with the limited lit review that is part of a report's introduction (as required in your present paper project). Literature reviews that are full reports serve the function in science of consolidating findings. Some times the are written by committees of scientists within a field, sometimes by a group of scientists in government. They attempt to describe what research has been done on an issue and what the research seems to indicated so far. Here is a Literature Review Article on the safety of GMO potatoes. I found this report at http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/_srcfiles/TR12.pdf. As you scan the report, notice that there is not a description of research methods performed to write this report; instead, the writers broke the issue down into sub-issues and then reported findings under those sub-issues. This rhetorical technique is called "division" and is closed related to "classification," the topic of the next lesson in this class.
About the Test. The first test for this course serves as a mid term. It is based on your reading and the lessons contained in this website so far. Review each of the lessons in this website to this point.
1. Download the summary of Goreham's report form (it's a Word document). Fill in the spaces under each heading with a summary or bulleted list of the content Goreham put in each section. This does not have to be an exhaustive summary. The purpose is for you to review the structure because it is the same structure you will be using, so a brief summary that shows you understand where the sections begin and end will be sufficient. Save your summary and then send it to me as an email attachment.
2. When you have finished the summary, you should request the web address of the midterm test. You may request it in the same email message as the one you use to send me the Goreham summary, or (if you missed that opportunity), you may send a separate request. When you find the test on the web, copy and paste it into Word, complete it, and send it back as an email attachment. You will have four days to finish the test and return it as an email attachment from the time I send it to you. If it is late, I will subtract ten points of the 10% of your grade for each day it is late.
3. Read chapters 11 and 12 in Dinner at the New Gene Cafe.
4. Make a blog entry on the class blog site.
5. Read "Division and Classification" in HTW, page 138 ff.