GEOG 442 Group Project Guidelines
Biogeography
A major assignment in this class is a group project. The class will
be divided into three- or four-person groups, who will conduct a field or lab
investigation or community service project, analyze the results, and present
them in a presentation and report.
Options:
- Conducting several transects or censuses in the California sage scrub
environment affected by the Woolsey Fire in Fall 2018, ideally with soil
samples
- Doing a community service project by volunteering as a group at a
conservancy in the region, doing whatever the organization wants you to do,
and conducting "ethnographic" research on the experience.
- Finding a biogeographical or palæobiogeographical database and
conducting an original multivariate analysis.
If you're doing a community service project, you will need to contact the
volunteer coördinator for an organization of interest (e.g., the
Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, Palos Verdes Peninsula Land
Conservancy, Friends of the Colorado Lagoon, Amigos de Bolsa Chica, Bolsa
Chica Conservancy, Los Cerritos Wetlands Stewards, the Theodore Payne
Foundation, Friends of Ballona Wetlands) and select a project to which you can
commit yourselves even after the semester ends.
The projects will be presented in a common scientific report format:
- Introduction explaining the problem, situating it in previous work, and
framing a hypothesis or research question or community service goal
- Data and methods, described in enough detail to allow someone else to
duplicate your study
- Results, describing what you got from application of your methods to your
materials
- Discussion, relating your findings back to the problem in the
introduction
- Conclusions: logical next steps for future work (sometimes based on the
problems that came up in your work!)
Your team's work will be presented both as a talk in class, illustrated with
appropriate viewgraphs (e.g.,Impress, PowerPoint, or Prezi), and as a
formal
report turned in. The report should meticulously document all sources used
(in the parenthetical reference system used, for example, by the Annals of
the Association of American Geographers). Writing mechanics are important
in the formal report: I especially look for good organization, spelling,
grammar/syntax, and avoiding sexist usage.
Here are some resources on writing:
With the report, I need a separate statement of who was responsible for which
part(s) of the project and a ranking of yourself and your team-mates. Each
team-member will be given a number from 0 through 10, with the team average
being 5.5 for an even-numbered group or 5.0 for an odd-numbered group. If
the team was harmonious and worked roughly equally, you'd
give a 4, 5, 6, and 7 (with no ties!); if the team was dysfunctional, you'd
give
the slacker a 2 and the others a 6, 7, and 8, so that it averages 5.5; if
there
was one person who did nearly all of it, the scores would be something like 10
for the hero and 3, 4, and 5 for the albatrosses. If there was one hero, one
slacker,
and the other two would get a 5 and 6. Have them sum to 22 for a group of 4.
If you
have an odd-numbered group (3 or 5), center the scale at 5, with a sum of
15 for a group
of 3 and a sum of 20 for a group of 5.
Document maintained by Dr.
Rodrigue
Last revision: 01/20/19