Project Plan, Possibilities, and Ideas

Image by aprilzosia via Flickr

On April 6, you will turn in a Prospectus for your project.  It should be specific enough to guide your work, but not long: one well-developed paragraph of less than a page will suffice.  (A single sentence probably will not.)  If you intend to use this course to meet one of the General Education Pathways, you should write a second paragraph identifying how this project will meet the Student Outcomes for that Pathway, and what course indicators are present.  I have updated the Gen Ed page to include information about Philosophy.

What are the requirements for the project / paper?

• Approximately 10 pages in length
• Draws on an appropriate number of external sources (at least 5)
  • Some should be academic: journal articles, books by scholars
  • One may be biographical or autobiographical
  • One or two may be news reports, radio or TV documentaries and the like
• May be in APA format or MLA format
• Has a title page and a bibliography appropriate to the format used
• Is well-structured, so that the development of the ideas and argument is clear.
• Is well-written, without errors of spelling or grammar, easy and pleasant to read.
• Could be understood by a person who had not taken the course
• Appropriately cites the textbook and other materials from the course that are used,
  along with the external sources
• If the course is used to meet a General Education Pathway, the project should clearly contribute to the Student Outcomes for that Pathway.

Google --> Options --> Wonder Wheel

Sources of ideas

• Google searches often pop up topics and ideas you never thought of
  • Options –> Wonder Wheel (see at right) which allows you to see and look at sub-topics of your search.  (The actual links to pages and articles are off to the right)
  • Scholar –> Searches within peer-reviewed journals and scholarly books, as well as reviews of books.
• How to get ideas from a journal database:
  • Find a journal from the academic discipline you want
    (e.g., psychology, theology, philosophy, literature, music)
  • Use Advanced Search to search only from that journal
  • Search for “Death Penalty” or “Capital Punishment”
  • Example: in the journal “Scientific Study of Religion” a search on “death row” or “capital punishment” turns n up articles that focus on religion – to be in that journal – and were about the death penalty
• If there is a course or method or topic that you really liked, no matter what it is, ask yourself:  how could that be related to the death penalty.  You would be surprised at what you might come up with:
  • Love songs about people condemned to die
  • Jokes about execution and death row
  • What inherited traits make a person more likely to end up on death row?
  • Death row inmates as celebrities
  • What events at trial lead to the death penalty? to LWOP
  • Theology of forgiveness and families of death row inmates
  • Death row and Supermax prison guards as career and employment paths: benefits and draw-backs
  • “Last” things (last meals, last words)
  • Religious conversions on death row: who has them? What do they mean?
  • Coping with innocence after death row
  • Serial killers as a sub-type of murderers
  • Community response to murder victims’ families, prisoners’ families.
  • Mental illness and the death penalty
  • The Consistent Ethic of Life approach to the death penalty  (considers euthanasia, war, abortion, and death penalty together)
  • Christianity and support for capital punishment
  • Are some lives worth more than others? Whose?
  • Life on death row – Life in a Supermax prison
  • You can think of dozens more

Related articles by Zemanta

• Mandatory Death Penalty in Africa (slideshare.net)
• China Leads World in Executions, Amnesty Says (nytimes.com)
• Slain child’s mom: Charges bring some relief (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Study: When it Comes to the Death Penalty, Victims aren’t Equal (trueslant.com)