Paper 4

Paper #4: Regional or Historical Search

Choose a either a regional topic or a historical era to research online. Possiblities for a regional topic would be investigating business and industries, regional health trends, regional science breakthroughs, or travel to a specific country. Possiblities for a historical era to research would include an aspect (art, land ownership, or other topic of historical significance) of the Middle Ages, Renaissance Rome, the life and times of a religious figure (Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Mother Teresa, etc.), the Civil War, etc.

To complete the paper for this unit, go to the Paper Submittal Form link. You will be asked for research information and results, including:

your topic name
initial search engine used
initial search string used
number of hits
a comparison of search engines for general search on the topic (20 points)
rating of specialized resources available and whether any sites used animation or audio (10 points)
a list of the five best URLs (results) for your topic (50 points)
community building exploration finding (20 points)

These answers can be worked out ahead of time and copied and pasted from your word processing package into the form fields.

The paper will be completed online by filling out an online form with the general information, and emailing the substance of the paper (your findings...which should be presented as a research paper on your topic about 3-4 double-spaced pages). Use MLA or APA as a style guide and be sure to cite your references. Remember that this is worth half the grade for the paper. This is where you will write your findings on your subject in comprehensive detail. Remember, this is a course about doing research on the internet. For each topic, you should exhaust every available internet lead you can find, to really research a subject so thoroughly that you can describe the subject in detail in the paper based on the information you found either informative and/or repetitious.

If you're not an expert on the topic when you finish, you should at least be an expert about the types of places to look for information about a topic, and which places you found to be the most useful.