Your Unit 8 Assignment should be a formal, academic essay of 5-6 paragraphs, between two and ½ and three pages long, double spaced (excluding title page and References page). The paper should inform your audience about a specific, recent, and researchable change, either positive or negative, in your field of study. Your goal is to explain to your audience either what caused this change to occur or to analyze the effects this change has had on the field, without taking a position, arguing for a change, or offering solutions.
As the final draft version of the paper you began in Unit 5, your Unit 8 Assignment should demonstrate your ability to do the following:
- Focus on a single, specific, relevant, recent, and researchable change, either positive or negative, in your general field of study. Please note that technology is too broad as a topic, but a specific technological change like the increased use of cloud computing is a change; obesity is not a change, but the increase in obesity rates among children is a change.
- Establish a clear thesis about this topic that focuses on either what caused the change or what effect this change has had on the field. You may not analyze both cause and effect.
- Develop your thesis with specific observations, details, analysis, and research information
- Avoid taking a position, making recommendations, or addressing solutions-the paper must be an objective, analytical essay that instead only analyzes the causes or effects of this change.
- Organize your information logically, using clear transitions
- Use appropriate formal third person language, avoiding first and second person language
- Integrate 3-4 relevant and reliable, peer reviewed sources and demonstrate the ability to summarize and paraphrase source information rather than relying on quotes
- Apply current APA citations format to credit any and all uses of source information, both when you use the source information within the paragraphs (in text citations) and in an alphabetically listed References page
- Apply revision, editing, and proofreading strategies to substantially revise your final draft, demonstrating substantial revision of your Unit 6 Assignment and Unit 8 Discussion Board post.
- Apply current APA formatting expectations (title page, double spaced paragraphs, regular one-inch margins, 12-point Times New Roman font, for example)
