Hello Researchers:

I hope you are all making progess toward knowing what you wish to find out. This is the purpose of the proposal at this stage. You should have identified a topic and a line of inquiry into that topic, a question you wish to find an answer to. In your proposals give the reader some context for the question you are posing. Try to hype it up a bit in order to get the interest of the audience to learn more. This might help you, too, as you try to get geared up for the research process before you.

I will need you to post your proposals as responses to this announcement. You will then need to go into the forum to respond to as many of these as wish to, but you are required to respond to at least two, using the guidelines I provide below. Make sure that everyone has two responses before you offer anyone a third, three before you offer a fourth, etc. The sooner you get your proposal posted the more responses you will get--and, I believe, the better quality they will be. Peer workshop must occur between today, Sunday, and next Thursday by 5:00 pm. For full credit, all proposals must be posted here by tomorrow morning at 10:00 AT THE LATEST.

Guidelines:

1. Does the proposal meet the expectations of the assignment as you understand them? What could you do to help the writer improve his or her proposal?

2. Does the question (or line of inquiry) seem well enough developed to you? What would you suggest to the writer/researcher about his or her line of inquiry? Does the scope of it seem manageable considering the length of the assignment, the amount of time you have to complete the assignment, etc.? How might you narrow it? How might you broaden it?

3. What are the first two questions you have for the writer now that you have read his or her proposal? State them?

If some of you are still struggling with what to propose, I thought I would transcribe for you an exchange I had with one of the students in our class:

Quote:
Hi Mr. Maxwell,
I am having such a difficult time with the research project. My family has no history whatsoever of opressing people, or of being opressed, in the last century. I was going to focus my paper on the depression, painting the government/economy as the victimizor and my family as the victim. The only people I could interview for that project are my grandparents. All was going well until I realized that my grandparents never felt oppressed. To them "stuff just happens, get over it." I cannot imagine writing a paper about my victmized family, if they, or I for that matter, do not see them as being truly victimized.
I will continue trying to work with the Great Depression theme, but if you could give me any input, I would very much appreciate it.

Dear_______
I'm sorry you're struggling with this assignment. As I mentioned to you in class, I would have faced a similar roadblock if I were taking this on. The thing you will have to do is review an event or period in history and try to bring out the stories they may have. I suggest you ask them about the Cold War period, about how they were asked to prepare, about how they as ordinary Americans dealt with the threat of nuclear holocaust and the tensions between the Eastern Bloc powers. Alternatively, how did they respond to the wars?

You may already have hit on your angle: this attitude of your grandparents, this "stuff happens" attitude. Is this something that is part of the American attitude toward the world and to history? What does it mean? Where does it come from?

I hope that sparks some ideas.