Hello, Music 355 Students! This is Dr. Ewell and this video is on failures in the final paper. I don’t want you to fail in the final paper, that is why I am making this video. But I want to alert you to a number of things. I have already presented quite a few on the website, but let me put this in video form.
Now, there are some very common problems that result in failures of the paper. Usually, it is not just one, but it is an accumulation of several. For instance, some students forget to include their summaries presentation. If you don’t produce a video you will have points off for that. Some students, even this late in the course, do not properly label their files. That again results in points off. Here is an example of how to label a file with your name is Terry Ewell. Some students don’t use the proper templates. There is a template for the summaries and a different template for the solutions, the final paper. Make sure that you use the proper template. Some students delete this ending section. That is a problem too. Don’t do that! Some students place the file in the wrong location. Make sure that the files are placed in the right location in your personal Dropbox folder in the main directory, the one with your name.
Now other problems are that I have had students that don’t read what is required for the final paper. Here we have scenarios for Group 5. Let’s see what it says. Provide a summary of readings and materials presented in the course. So, first and foremost when you meet with your group, of the scenarios what are the readings and materials that were presented? Let’s take a look at this. So, the first scenario is that you are in charge of a Towson University committee, you are going to invite a musical group to campus, and you want to avoid discriminatory hiring practices. So, I suggest that you search the website and do a search of the bibliography. Find out if there is anything that has to do with discrimination. Also, your group should be looking at Towson University. What information is online, what does Towson have available that talks about discrimination and hiring? What about US practices, what about Maryland practices? All of that should be included in your work on this.
Well, let’s read on further here. You are a high school teacher and you have invited a nationally recognized guest. A student asks questions about performance anxiety and the artist recommends Beta Blockers. Oh, wow, you have a lot of issues to deal with now. That’s for sure! So, you will be figuring out what are the issues with Beta Blockers? Has this been presented in the course?
Well, if we go to the course website and click on search, you can actually search for Beta Blockers. Let’s see if anything can be found. Oh, my! I find quite a bit there. What about the course bibliography? There is a way to search in Google Chrome a webpage: find. Let’s type in “Beta.” See all of these lines over here? That indicates that there are references. I find a lot of items with “Beta” here. We find references, and references down here. So, these should be included in your group discussions and summaries.
So, again going back to the scenarios, provide summaries of the materials. You should be looking at those readings and materials and in the summaries portion of your papers provide summaries. Some of the summaries will be in favor of Beta Blockers and some will be against. Put that material together in your paper.
Now, let’s go on and look at a few failing summary papers. Here is the title of this summary paper and here are the very first sentences. First off, “Part 1: Summaries.” What a boring title! You need to come up with something far more imaginative here. After all, this is an academic paper. It should incite interest from the reader, it should show your command of the subject matter, and it should be engaging. This paper starts off,
A local Music Director informed an
elderly gentleman with Alzheimer’s disease that he can no longer
participate in the choir…
Well, this opening sentence is just simply a restatement of the course/assignment requirement. That is not helpful at all. The first sentence needs to engage the reader. The other problem with this opening paragraph here is that it only deals with one of the summaries, not both of them. You need to have an opening paragraph that deals in general with both situations. Often I have selected two situations that are a little bit complementary. You can be thinking about that, how they will work together.
Well, here is another example of a first sentence:
Within in scenario 1, we are put into the role of a manager at a professional regional symphony orchestra.
There are just multiple problems with this. First off, this is single spaced and the paper needs to be double spaced. Microsoft Word is even showing a problem here with the blue-underlines. “Within in” if I click this it says just “Within.” There is a problem over here with an extra space. Here is “we.” There is no reason to interject personal language. In academic writing we try to avoid personal references on the whole. There is no reason for that. This is a poor first sentence. It needs to be restated.
Let me give you an example of what could be a good opening sentence. This particular assignment I just made up. I have something with copyright infringements and something with the work environment health issues. Maybe that is hearing issues or other types of injury. But in any case…
Issues of controversy in music are
broad and diverse. Musicians can suffer financial losses due to
copyright infringements as well as injury in work environments…
So, you can see that I started with a general statement and I am trying to entice the reader: “Oh, I didn’t know that musicians could suffer broadly injuries of some sort. That is interesting. I want to read onward.” So, you try to phrase it in such a way that it will work and entice your reader.
Now, here is another example of poor writing. This person wrote:
The only right thing to do is to allow the man to continue on with his participation in the choir…
This is called moralizing. You want to avoid giving a moral directive in your academic writing. Actually there are many who think that this would be the wrong thing to allow the man to participate in the choir and in fact in your summary you should have been contemplating with your group reasons why that might be a problem. Avoid statements that are accusatory to others. Instead you want to provide a well-reasoned argument and convince your reader of your position.
Now going on, here is another example of problems in the final paper. Here we have no citations:
Other proven methods include exposure therapy that can help to reduce the stress involved with performing by approaching it slowly with the individual,
Well, that is a great statement, but where are the citations? In academic papers you need to demonstrate your authority and expertise. One way of doing that is by citing the works of others, who are authorities: medical doctors, journals, etc. So, we should see a citation here.
I have included as a reference in this course a paper that is given by Owl at Purdue University. The opening of this paper is not strong because of the all of the personal references that could be avoided. However, when you get into the paper itself, there is a good demonstration of how an academic paper can be written. See, for instance, here is a citation. We have other citations that are provided. So, the writer here has demonstrated expertise and provided citations. That has to be done your papers. Needless to say, all of the works you provide in your end references at the end need to be cited in the paper. There is no reason you can’t find ten references with four in print and then include those ten citations in your paper.
Well, last of all I just iterate that the final paper is in two parts. The summaries portion should include material only summarizing the course materials, what your group has found, and additional materials by you. The second part of the paper is the solutions portion. So, don’t include solutions in the first part. The solutions come after you have fully explored all of the different ideas about the topics that have been given. Then you can provide your solutions and how best to approach this.
So, I hope that this has been helpful for you, and that you will not be a failure on this final paper. I don’t want to see that at all. Please follow all of those directions and guidance that I have given so far. All the best, bye!