UGA: Practice Summarizing an Article

 

Purpose: This discussion activity is meant to help your group put into practice the skills you learned last week about how to read journal articles. Knowing how to do this is vital not only to being able to successfully evaluate the truth (or falsity) behind your group’s myth, but also for the next group assignment: writing an annotated bibliography. Participating as a group in this discussion will allow your group to get ungraded feedback on this task before you have to do it for a grade.

General Instructions:

  1. AS A GROUP, select a peer-reviewed journal article related to your myth that you’d like to discuss. I recommend choosing an article your group has found so far that you think you might use in your Annotated Bibliography. Doing so will benefit your group when it comes time to write & submit that assignment.
  2. Once your group decides on a article, one group member must post that article in the discussion so that I have access to it. To do this, simply click in the Reply box as if you were going to write a response & then click “Attach” at the bottom.
  3. After the article has been selected, each group member should take time to read it over carefully.

Discussion Instructions:

Each group member will need to make their own initial post DUE Thursday, 3/11, containing the following:

  • A summary of the main points/purpose of the work that are most relevant to the group’s myth. For example, you might focus on the study’s goals, methods, findings, limitations, or implications.
    • Try to write a summary that is 100 words or less. So be succinct and mention only what is most important. 
    • Put the ideas from the article into your own words. No quotes allowed!
  • Any questions about a part of the study you had when reading the article. 

The group should then reply to each other, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the summaries that have been posted, trying to help each other find the best way to summarize the chosen article. Again, think of this as a way to ensure the whole group will succeed on the annotated bibliography assignment! 

I will check in on these discussion after Sunday 3/14 and provide feedback to the group as a whole on the summaries provided, so make sure you’ve participated in the discussion by that date in order to earn credit for this activity.