First Year Seminar 183
Freedom and Openness Everywhere
Term Paper Assignment
Project proposal: due Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Annotated bibliography: due Wednesday, November 18, 2009
First Draft: due Wednesday, December 2, 2009Friday, December 4, 2009
Oral presentation: Wednesday or Friday, December 9 or 11, 2009
Final deliverable: due Wednesday, December 16, 2009, noon
Each step of the paper writing process--from the proposal through the final paper--will
contribute to your grade on the paper.
Over the next several weeks you will be devoting substantial time
to researching and writing a term paper based on a topic of
your choosing. The topic must be clearly related to the subject
and themes of the seminar and it must be approved.
Possible Paper Topics
These topics are meant to be suggestive of the kinds of things you
might research and write about. You should choose an area that you
are interested in and enthusiastic about and propose a topic in that
area.
- Mozilla: Case Study of a Succesfful Open Source Project
- Linux: Case Study of a Succesfful Open Source Project
- Apache: Case Study of a Succesfful Open Source Project
- Commons Based Peer Production: A New Economic Model?
- Intellectual Property and the Creative Commons
- Digital Content: The Case For (Against) Sharing
- Open Source Science (or Argriculture or Education or Publishing or .
- Copyright vs Copyleft
Project proposal.
The project proposal is a one-page, 250 word, summary of your proposed
topic and a justification that it is an important and relevant topic.
The proposal should provide a clear and concise description of the
following points:
- The subject of the paper and its primary thesis.
- A justification of why this subject is relevant and worthwhile
- A preliminary bibliography. That is, a list of references
that you plan to consult in writing the paper. You should have
at least five relevant sources, including at least two peer reviewed
sources on your topic.
Annotated Bibliography.
Your annotated bibliography should consist of at least 10 sources,
including at least two or three peer reviewed articles. For each
annotations should describe how/why that source is relevant to your
topic and how you plan to use that source in your paper or project.
Here is a guide
on how to prepare an annotated bibliography.
First Draft.
The first draft of your paper should be complete draft, including
introduction, exposition, conclusion. It will be reviewed and returned
to you with comments.
Oral presentation.
During the final week of the semester, each student will give a 5-7
minute slide presentation of their paper.