Due Date: Monday, October 21, in class. [Note change in due date.]

The goal of this assignment is to help you work on your ability to find and evaluate source materials. In addition, the assignment should help each team discover areas of common interest to team members.

Step 1:

• Each team must agree on at least one and no more than two secondary sources, i.e., an article in a general periodical (see, Source Categories &Distribution Requirements for a definition) that will be relevant to all team members and a valuable source for all or most of the team members.

  The teams will have about a half hour in class on Friday to reach agreement on the team's article(s). This decision must be made by the end of class on Friday, October 18th.

  At the end of class a designated member of each group will provide me with a copy of the team's article(s).

Step 2:

• Analyze the article using the criteria discussed in class, in Chapter 10, "Trust, Truth and Thoughtful Assumptions" in The Search, and in Asking the Right Questions.

• Write a citation (see, Citation Style Guide ) for the article. The citation should be at the top of the first page of your assignment.

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  • Sample Top of First Page:

    Sally Student
    000-00-000
    Sally@darkwing
    Team: Environmental Policy

    Downdike, John. "Cutting Trees in the Northwest," Forest World October 1996: 27-32.

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• Answer all of the following questions. Your answers must be typed and double-spaced. Answer the questions in the order listed.

1. What is the nature of the publication? Who is the author? Do the answers to these questions raise any significant questions about the credibility or the utility of the article?

2. Does the author have special knowledge of the subject?

3. What causal relationships are asserted or suggested?

4.Write a good one sentence statement of the public policy issue described in the article.

5.List the most important contributory factors identified in the article (maximum of five).

6. List the experts identified (maximum of five) and briefly (one sentence per expert) explain the value of each expert to your research.

7. List the most valuable facts in the article (maximum of five) and briefly (one sentence per fact) explain the value of each one to your research.

A

• No spelling or grammatical errors.
  
• Complete article citation in proper form.
  
• All eight questions answered well.
  
• Good article selection (i.e., an article that will be a good source for your project).

• One spelling or grammatical error or
  
• an incomplete citation or
  
• an improper citation form.
  
• All eight questions answered well.
  
• Good article selection (i.e., an article that will be a good source for your project).
  

• More than one spelling or grammatical error.
  
• Improper citation form
  
• One or more unanswered or poorly answered questions.
  
• Poor article selection
  

• Failure to meet minimal standards in any of the listed categories
  
• Failure to meet the deadline absent prior approval from Professor Gleason.