This page describes the objectives, project details, recommended approaches, hints and tips, submission guidelines, and evaluation standards for the Scholarly Project.
The Scholarly Project reports original research focused on a topic or issue relevant to the health industry, directing that work to a professional or scholarly audience.
Document type: memo, variable (see below)
Document length: 150 words (memo), 2000 words (research document)
Project value: 250 points (50, draft; 200 final)
Evaluation rubric: _RPW520_Eval_ScholarlyProject.pdf
The Scholarly Project (SP) results in a research document (e.g., article, white paper, internal research report, thesis proposal) that presents an original study relevant to your expertise and goals in the health industry. Design your study, and plan your document with a scholarly or professional audience in mind. The SP challenges you to consider what it means to join a conversation in your field.
Your project submission will include the following elements:
A memo of transmittal introduces the accompanying document to its audience(s). Your memo should be addressed from you to me, and should introduce the accompanying project. Your memo should incorporate the following content elements.
This project offers you an opportunity to investigate, and contribute knowledge regarding an issue or topic relevant to your area of professional or scholarly expertise. Your document should report on an original study (see Recommended Approaches). More, your work should demonstrate understanding of professional or scholarly conversation(s) connected to the study's subject matter, and contribute new understanding to that exchange.
Your document should include the following content sections or elements.
Recommended tool(s): Microsoft Word
This section offers guidance for how to interpret the project, and for how to proceed with your work on it. Therefore, as you work, consider the following strategies:
Peers contribute new knowledge to professional and scholarly conversations. Your challenge is to do that here. Even if the conversation you join is local, your expertise with the issue or topic you investigate should be the driving force behind your work. Your goal is to impact the conversation about the topic.
Graduate degrees carry with them the expectation that are capable of designing and executing appropriate investigations into the problems on which your profession and discipline focus. If you struggle to identify a conversation you find meaningful, consider how you might inverstgate an issue tied to the Public Health Project, and thus consolidate your effort for the two projects.
Once you have identified an appropriate topic, consider what methods are appropriate to your professional and scholarly goals. What kind of questions are framed in other courses in the program? How are those questions investigated? The best way for you to approach your study may be to model your work on a study you encounter during your work in the program.
The timeframe for this course does not allow you the opportunity to conduct an in-depth, multi-trial study. However, you have ample time to conduct a small-scale study that employs one or more of the following investigatory methods:
Your work on the Resource Analysis project for this course should help make you more aware of the publishing opportunities in your area of study and expertise. Prepare your Scholarly Project for one of the venues you have examined for that assignment. Study the presentation of research in those venues. Identify the standard and expectations of publishing there. Barring that, identify other appropriate venues and standards that might offer useful guidance to you as you prepare your manuscript for submission here in class. Remind yourself of reader expectations frequently during your work.
This section is designed to help you anticipate and avoid problems as you work on this project. Therefore, as you work, consider the following hints and tips:
Do not wait to begin. Identify problems you have the expertise and authority to address. Begin designing an approach to studying one or more of those problems. Execute a study, and gather your data.
Examine your data as you go. Are you getting from your study what you need? Are your methods delivering appropriate data? Note that I do not mean by such questions that you should craft your investigatory methods to deliver specific results. Rather, are your methods resulting in data that helps you answer the question(s) you have posed? If not, then make adjustments, and recommence your investigation.
As you draft your first submission, read studies like yours to maintain focus on the style of writing expected in your discipline and profession.
Read and attend carefully to these submission guidelines. Failure to do so may result in delays in receiving feedback on the draft of your project, or in points lost on the final evaluation of your project.
Create a project folder inside your shared class folder on Dropbox.com. Remember, I can only view files that you place inside the shared folder. Until you place files in that space, you have not in practice submitted them.
Name the folder Scholarly Project.
Make sure the files listed below are available to me in the project folder by the draft deadline. Model your filenames on the listed examples:
Make sure the files listed below are available to me in the project folder by the final deadline. Model your filenames on the listed examples:
Note that the Feedback file is one you receive from me in response to your draft submission. Move it into your project folder when you assemble your final submission.
This section describes the standards by which your draft and final submissions will be evaluated.
There are 50 possible points for this project draft. I will award points according to the following standard.
There are 200 possible points for the final project. You will earn points according to the standard described on the policies page (40% content development, 20% design execution, and 20% professionalism & attention to detail, and 20% impact of revision; see Policies). The specific areas of emphasis for this project are drawn from the description and discussion of the project, and are detailed in the evaluation rubric (_RPW520_Eval_ScholarlyProject.pdf).
Remember that I will only post the point values for projects on the Grades page in SVSU Canvas. I will post the details relevant to that evaluation in your class folder in a project-specific file.
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