The Exploratory Plan (4% or 40 points)
Your Exploratory Plan will present key research questions, how you will research them, with what methods, and what impact your research might have. The plan will be at least 900 words (3-5 pages double spaced). Together with the Vision/Mission Statement, the Exploratory Plan will serve as an early draft ( a "hint") of your Prospectus. In this document, you are to present:
Crucial to this plan is articulating your already given understanding of your project and of research that you distinguished in your inventory and the limits you have encountered.
Consequently, your plan ought to push you to explore beyond those limits, extending you out into new territory and into areas you do not already know or have mastery in. You will need to argue for how your plan will help you accomplish this push to explore beyond your current inventory. Toward this end, you will provide a list of of at least 12 texts, artifacts, and experiences.
At least 6 will be already researched items, that is, past explorations of your research questions (even if this is only recognized in retrospect). In order to write this exploratory plan, you must also engage in new research this semester to locate and then list at least 6 texts, artifacts, and experiences you are proposing to dwell in, interact with, study, and write about during this semester.
You also must articulate your method of research: what actions will you take, using what tools and/or approaches, and to accomplish what aims? Why?
Last: you are to spend some time speculating on what impact your research might make for others in a given community.
Criteria for the Exploratory Plan:
•One or several central research questions that will guide you to discover what you will research--this will be given by the disharmonies you are beginning to notice; •the network of controlling values your research question(s) derive from, and/or are in conflict with; •how you will engage in the research, and perhaps what you will do with the research; •your plan ought to push you to explore beyond your inventory, extending you out into new territory and into areas you do not already know or have mastery in; •you will need to argue for how your plan will help you accomplish this push to explore beyond your current inventory; •you are to spend some time speculating on what impact your research might make for others in a given community (what history-making practices might you explore). |