Referencing Styles : APA Assignment 1 Deconstructed Research Report Due Date: Friday, 4th of September, by 5pm. Rationale: One of the best ways to learn something is to explain it to another person. In this assignment, you will break down the sections of a scientific journal article, and explain the research to a layperson. To communicate the complex scientific ideas in simple language requires you to have a thorough understanding of the content – there is no chance to hide behind scientific language here! There will be plenty of time throughout your psychology studies for writing in an academic style, but first you need to have a good understanding of the sort of information that is covered in an academic paper – this assignment will help you get there. Task: Your task is to explain the research that is explored in a scientific article to a layperson. You will create a webpage to communicate this information. We have supplied you with five articles to choose from (these are in the back of your seminar workbook, and also in the DRR folder in CloudDeakin). You are required to explain not only what was done and what was found in the study, but also why this research was undertaken, and what the findings mean. Research is not undertaken just for the sake of researching something – you need to think about how the findings of your chosen study relate to the ‘real world’. Additional sources will be required to cover all of these points, and so it is a requirement to cite four additional academic papers throughout your report. How you incorporate the additional references is up to you. You’ll need to think about how each of them relates to your main article, and how this can be communicated. Be sure to cite recent, relevant research. Research is being undertaken all the time and theories, ideas, and methodologies are being changed and updated constantly. The reason that you need to include recent research is to make sure that you are citing the most up‐to‐date research in the field. The research covered in your chosen study is based on a particular theory. Understanding the underlying theory helps to place an individual experiment within a wider context (i.e., it helps to explain why the research was undertaken). This is why you also need to explain the theory that underlies your chosen study. Each of the five articles we have supplied to you corresponds to a topic covered in HPS111 and so your textbook is a good place to start to understand the basic theories regarding the Biological Bases of Behaviour, Learning, Memory, Intelligence, and Motivation and Emotion. Remember who your target audience is – you are not writing this for academics, psychologists, experts, or even other psychology students. Think of your audience as people who have completed high school, but have not necessarily studied science/psychology. So use simple language, and come up with ways to keep your reader engaged. Pictures, diagrams, graphs, videos... the more creative, the better! It is important to use these extra resources to help explain your points in an interesting way, not just as random additions to your webpage. As you’ll notice when you have a read through the marking rubric, your marker will be looking for how well you communicate the research in your chosen paper, as well as how well the additional academic references and other media are incorporated and integrated into your report. There is a lot of information for you to cover, but the idea is that at the end, you will have a creative, thoughtful presentation that shows how well you understand and can communicate complex information. NOTE: We do not expect you to understand the statistical analyses that are reported in the Results section of some of the articles! We know that you are first year psychology students, and have not had any training in statistics yet. This means that if you come across words like “ANOVA”, or reports of analyses like “F(1, 32) = 2.6, p>.05”, it is absolutely fine at this stage if they don’t carry any meaning for you. The results will also be explained in regular English via the Discussion section of the article, so just stick to that part. Resources: There are lots of resources to help you with this assignment. To access step‐by‐step instructions on how to create and modify a presentation in your Portfolio, from CloudDeakin go to Get Help > CloudDeakin > Portfolio Guide (see below). Seminars in weeks 2 and 3 are all about understanding your articles, so be sure to go along to them prepared. The librarians have made a presentation to show you how to search for relevant academic papers, and you can find this in the DRR folder. Your textbook is also a good resource for understanding the underlying theories of each of the five journal articles. The DRR FAQs cover a lot of the questions that you might think of when you do get started, so be really sure to have a read through. Finally, be sure to have a thorough read of the marking rubric so that you understand the criteria that you will be assessed on. Parameters: ‐ Your DRR must be created as a webpage in your Portfolio in CloudDeakin. ‐ Videos can be no longer than 5 minutes each. ‐ The word limit is 1300‐1500 words. o Included in the wordcount: Main text, in‐text references, subheadings, captions for tables and graphs. o Not included in the wordcount: Reference list at the end, words in videos, tables, graphs, page labels. ‐ Four academic papers in addition to the article we have supplied you with must be cited in your report. ‐ References must be in APA format (the Taines guide that comes with your textbook is a great resource for showing how to format your references). o You must reference *all* material that is someone else’s material or ideas. o YouTube videos are self‐referencing (the reference is included in the frame of the video), so you do not need to provide an additional reference for these. o Images can be referenced by providing the URL and date retrieved in your reference list (numbering or naming the images will make this clearer). Get Started: The first thing to do is choose your article. You’ll be spending up to seven weeks on this, so I recommend choosing whichever sounds the most interesting to you. Read through it really thoroughly – remember that before you can expect to be able to explain the research, you need to understand it yourself! Have a look through the Portfolio step‐by‐step instructions, and start to have a play around in your Portfolio to get used to how everything works. There is also an example webpage for you to have a look at (the “Sample Presentation” in the DRR folder) – this is on a topic outside of psychology, but will give you an idea of what a webpage created in your Portfolio can look like. Read through the DRR FAQs as well. One final tip... I can’t stress enough how important it is to get started early on this assignment. It will take you a few read‐throughs of your paper before you really understand it, and it will take you some time to find additional references to use. You’ve got a tight word‐limit, so aim to have a draft written early to give you time to whittle it down afterwards.