Your Information
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Title of Project: Information Literacy Changes to Course Syllabus/Final Assignment for PAR 115
Your Name: Lenczewska, Olga
Email Address: lenczewskao@uncw.edu
School or College: College of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts
College of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts: Philosophy & Religion

Your Project
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Please describe your project:
I chose to revise and expand the final paper assignment for my PAR115 Intro to Ethics course, which I teach each semester at UNCW. I mostly engaged with the Scholarship as Conversation IL frame.

The goal of this assignment is for students to experience and understand the multi-tiered process of creating information and participating in a scholarly conversation, including choosing a suitably narrow paper focus, understanding the scholarly and topical limitations of this project, situating one’s paper against the background of existing scholarship, evaluating secondary sources used in one’s paper, and inserting oneself within an existing scholarly debate.

The students write a philosophical paper approximately 1,600 words in length. Their work on this paper is a process that involves the following stages (involving multiple grades):
1.	Selection of paper prompt (not graded; see below for prompt ideas);
2.	Submission of an outline, thesis statement, and scholarly sources/“references” (graded);
3.	Submission of a literature review, including your explanation how you will situate yourself within the existing scholarship (graded);
4.	Optional: Submission of a paper draft (not graded);
5.	Submission of the final version of the paper (graded);

Why does the Scholarship as Conversation frame particularly suit my PAR115 course and its final paper assignment?
•	My PAR115 Introduction to Ethics class involves a writing component: students are assigned a final research paper.
•	The process of developing their papers is broken down by me into several stages (most of them graded separately): choosing a paper topic, developing the main thesis of the paper, selecting academic texts that will go into the bibliography and be cited in the paper, creating a literature review and a commentary of one’s position within it, planning and outlining the main sections and arguments of the paper, drafting the paper, and revising the paper into its final version. 
•	This process helps the students understand the multi-tiered process of creating information, including choosing a suitably narrow paper focus, understanding the scholarly and topical limitations of this project, situating one’s paper against the background of existing scholarship, evaluating secondary sources used in one’s paper, and inserting oneself within an existing scholarly debate.

Implementing the Scholarship as Conversation frame into the PAR115 final paper assignment:
•	Students participate in classroom discussions, extending these discussions to informal venues, and reading texts already makes the students participate in the scholarship conversation. 
•	Students see themselves as taking active part in the scholarly conversation – they see themselves as contributors to scholarship rather than only consumers of it.
•	Students understand their point of entrance: what do they already know/have experienced? 
•	Students understand that they are not only summarizing the literature and existing perspectives on the topic, but are adding their own point of view too. 
•	Students are required to make use of a number of academic sources, not just one or two – thereby taking note of the ongoing conversation and existing disagreements. They seek out, and understand, many different perspectives on the issue at question.
•	Students learn to be open to being wrong: in scholarly discourse, participants must suspend judgment on the value of a particular piece of scholarship until the larger context and other points of view is better understood. 
•	Students recognize that the scholarly conversation will not be completed with their paper and their perspective, but will keep going.
•	Students recognize that they will only make a modest, limited contribution. These constrains reflect their relatively introductory knowledge level and the assignment structure.

Assignment stages that reflect the Scholarship as Conversation idea: 
•	Selection of paper prompt.
•	Submission of an outline, thesis statement, and scholarly sources/“references” – graded.
•	Submission of a literature review, including the student’s explanation how they will situate themselves within the existing scholarship – graded.
•	Submission of a paper draft (optional) and the final version of the paper – graded.

Please choose at least one audience: First-year students, Upper-division undergraduates
Please choose at least one project category: Assignment, Syllabus, Course design
Please choose at least one Frame that your project incorporates: Information Creation as a Process, Research as Inquiry, Scholarship as Conversation
File Upload: https://library.uncw.edu/system/files/webform/ilff_final_submission_form/51/Lenczewska%20ILFF%20final%20project.pdf
What does the "U" in UNCW stand for?: university
Submission date: 2022-04-11