Assignment 5 (Literature Review)
Length: 750-1000 words (3-4 pages), double-spaced plus a reference page, size 11-12 font (Times New Roman or equivalent academic-style font)
Value: 20%
Context & Preparation
Our fifth assignment sets the foundation for work we will engage in for the remainder of our course: you will prepare an academic document called a literature review, and then adapt your research findings for an oral presentation and blog post later in the course.
Picking up on discussions you’ve had in the class on topic “Disinformation”
Our objectives with the literature review are to:
• read and share academic research findings using the common scholarly genre of a literature review
• learn about and practice key, transferable-to-the-workplace skills such as summarizing, critical reading, citation, analysis, and synthesis
• learn about academic writing and how to differentiate it from workplace writing
• formulate a meaningful perspective on your topic, including what seems to be known and not known about it (according to the academic research you find).
Assignment Schedule
Week 8: Search for information on your topic. In our library session, you will learn some skills to narrow your focus: the topic is broad with many directions you could go in.
Week 8-9: find a minimum of 4 academic (aka “scholarly”) sources on your topic via the UFV library. Bring digital OR print copies of these to our Week 9 class as you will need to work closely with at least one of them.
Week 9-10: Using strategies to be reviewed in class, read your sources carefully, noting gists and other key information. If your sources are lengthy, that’s okay: we will discuss how to manage this.
Week 9-10: Draft a thematically organized literature review, showing areas of both agreement and disagreement between your sources. This review should involve summary but not be purely summary. Limit direct quoting in favour of summarizing/paraphrasing for sake of efficiency and clarity and focus primarily on analysis and synthesis.
Week 10: Bring a hard copy draft of your literature review to our Week 10 class.
Week 11: Submit your literature review. Date TBA.
Assignment Details
Your literature review should include the following features (which we will review in more detail in class):
1. An introduction that announces the topic, provides some background, and orients the readers to your purpose.
2. A body that is organized thematically (e.g., by key ideas your sources commonly
address)
3. A conclusion that identifies significant findings from the literature review and one or more directions for future study.
Your literature review should be 750-1000 words (3-4 pages) in length and double-spaced as is typical in academic writing. This word/page limit does not include your reference list, which should appear on a separate, final page. Your reference list should include all the sources mentioned in your literature review.
Use a conventional academic font such as Times New Roman, and use indented paragraphs and visual features (e.g., headings, bullets, etc.) when/as needed. We will look at one or more samples of literature reviews in class so that you will have a better understanding of how to format this type of writing.
