Term Projects

Working with major projects in college means engaging, exploring, and challenging ideas instead of accepting "truth." It also means learning to write for a readership broader than the teacher. Many students may be writing a college-level extended paper for the first time in your class. Others may have written several, though not in a field with standards similar to yours.  Term projects offer a welcome relief to both students and teachers from the traditional research paper, and they can actually anchor a course. 

Advantages of Term Projects

Besides providing an alternative to the library-based research paper, term projects benefit students by affording them opportunity to take authority for their course work in a systematic, scaffolded fashion, and by permitting them to engage in learning as a process while producing a product. Students often enjoy having a capstone project, one that synthesizes the student's course work and his/her thinking about it.

The instructor benefits as well because projects allow teachers to manage time efficiently; that is, after an initial time investment to design the project, teachers have to devote very little time to monitoring student work until the final project is submitted.  Instructors also like the fact that term projects can anchor an entire course curriculum.

Project Types

Although the thesis-support library research paper is the traditional major project, other types of research projects may prove appropriate for specific class goals:

 

	Annotated bibliographies promote a wide exposure to the literature of a field.
	An introduction, concluding essay, or professional statement is a synthesizing activity that can turn a series of microthemes, an annotated bibliography, or a journal into a semester project. With a table of contents and appropriate binding, the student will have a valuable finished product.
	Portfolios may be a job-search booster for students in professional programs, especially if organized with a table of contents and a student statement. Contents will vary by discipline, course, and level of students.
	A poster presentation requires the same research as a major paper. In addition, the student is challenged to grapple with the material in order to present it in the confined space of a poster accurately, clearly, and attractively.

Project Tips

Here are some suggestions to help you design a term project:

1. Like all other assignments, term projects need to be tied to course goals.  These questions may help you determine what type of project will work best for your course:

	What are the course goals?
	How can a project contribute to them?
	What project would contribute to students' academic growth?
	What projects would help students learn about my field?
	What research resources are available for students for the project?
	What type of project do I have the time for and the interest in evaluating?

2. Decide whether you want individual or group projects. 
3. Consider what prior knowledge students need to complete the project. What information will they need? Where will they get it? What resources are available? 
4. Situate the project within your curriculum. How much of the course credit is to be earned through the project? 
5. Segment the project; that is, chunk it out so that students can accomplish portions of it systematically, and so that you can confirm that students are on track. (This strategy also combats plagiarism.) 
6. Build a calendar to confirm that individual segments and your project as a whole can be completed in the time you have allocated. Set deadlines for the students to submit segments of the project for progress credit.
7. Assign the project in written form so that no misunderstandings arise as the semester progresses. 
8. Provide opportunities through checklists and peer review sessions for students and their peers to evaluate portions of the projects as they are in progress. 
9. Provide opportunities for the students to see their peers' final projects so that they can learn from the research of their peers. Students might circulate brief summaries of their projects, or they could present an oral report or give a short demonstration, depending on the nature of the project.
10. Consider incorporating the project into the final exam. An exam question might ask students to summarize their projects or discuss them in some other way. 
11. For future use: ask permission of students to photocopy exemplary projects to share with future classes; keep notes on ways to improve the project and the timeline for subsequent semesters.