Technology Transforming Education

Literature Review 1. Choose a Technological Transformation Topic to research. a. Most students find it useful to choose a topic that fits within their major. b. You can choose to use the same Technological Transformation Topic for all 4 core assignments; this becomes most helpful when you can reuse the sources throughout the course. 2. Review 10-12 credible sources related to the chosen Technological Transformation Topic. a. If you keep the same topic, your sources can be the same as the ones you used for the Annotated Bibliography. b. Use UMUC's databases or other reliable search engines to locate your sources. c. Try to identify overarching connections or categories to sort your sources, this will make the writing process easier. 3. Discuss each source in an 6+ page paper (try categorizing or grouping the sources for ease of reading) that draws a conclusion about the available research at the end of the paper. a. Should be standard format: 1” margins, 10 or 12 point Times new Roman or Arial font, double-spaced. b. Be sure to include a Reference or Works Cited page. c. Try to organize your discussion of each source by using the categories you sorted each into previously; this allows for ease of reading. d. The last section of your literature review should discuss the conclusions that can be drawn about your topic from the available research. Approach and Requirements 1. You have written an annotated bibliography of 12+ sources on a topic. Now, in writing a literature review, you will be asked to synthesize and summarize at least 10 scholarly articles on the topic. You may have more than 10 scholarly articles if you would like to, but the minimum number is 10. 2. Your literature review should be 6-10 pages long, not including your “references” pages at the end of the review. In other words, the text of the paper should be 6-10 pages. 3. In addition, as stated above, your literature review should include at least 10 sources in the “references” section. This means that you may decide not to use all 12 sources that you summarized in your annotated bibliography. You are free to use all 12 of them. However, it is possible that your experience in writing summaries of the 12 sources led you to conclude that a few of them will not be as helpful to your topic as you had originally thought. You may decide not to include such sources in the literature review. This is totally up to you. Moreover, you might find other sources that you would like to include in your literature review that were not included in your annotated bibliography. You may use such sources in your literature review as well. 4. Please keep in mind that it is possible that, in writing your annotated bibliography, you wrote on a fairly broad topic. You may have written annotations of texts that covered a wide spectrum of issues in, for example, the impact of the Internet on education. However, you may have noticed that your best articles are on a particular issue on this topic—the use of multimedia in online classes, the workload of the instructor in online classes, or something of this nature. If this is the case, you might find additional articles on that one particular issue and write your literature review on that issue. 5. In other words, this process is a recursive one. You might find reasons to hone in on and narrow your topic even further after you have written the annotated bibliography. Organization Your literature review should be organized in the following manner: Introduction: Write one or two paragraphs in which you introduce the reader to your topic. Categories: Divide your sources into a few categories. A suggestion is that you divide them into three to five categories. Writer's Help has some sample literature review papers. You might find these samples helpful in seeing how writers organize the literature on a topic into categories. Conclusion: Summarize what the literature says on your topic. Rubric for Literature Review Introduces the literature review by identifying the topic in a clear and specific manner. 10 Divides the research into categories 10 Discusses the research in each category with adequate support from the sources, integrating the sources skillfully throughout the paragraphs. 20 Maintains unity among the paragraphs and themes. 10 Maintains coherence among the paragraphs and themes. 10 Employs a fluid writing style and an appropriate vocabulary 10 Follows APA format in both the citations and in the reference list 15 Maintains accurate grammar and punctuation. 15 Total: 100