Geography 300

Goals and Objectives

The primary goal of this exercise is to help students learn why a literature review is necessary, to identify its constituent parts, and learn how to create an effective review of relevant literature.

Objectives:

1. Students identify the reasons for constructing a literature review.
2. Students identify the component parts of a literature review.
3. Students construct a viable mock literature review to demonstrate basic mastery of this fundamental research skill.

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Assignment

This lab has two components. In the first, you will review information presented earlier in the semester regarding the logic that necessitates literature reviews to demonstrate your understanding of this logic, then you will read through a hypothetical literature search and from those readings, build a literature review.

Background

Ideally, students would do an actual literature review for this course, but that would surely prove too time consuming because to do so would require that you actually review the literature on a subject. Well done literature reviews are almost always time consuming because they require students familiarize themselves with the existing research on a topic or question. Unless you already have a working knowledge of what has already been written about a topic, it would take too long to get yourself up-to-speed.

Warning: The fact that reviewing a literature on a topic is time consuming is yet another reason to get thinking seriously about your senior thesis NOW.

So, how can we practice running a marathon (literature review) when we only have time to do a few sprints (these labs)?

One is to read about literature reviews and answer questions about their form and purpose.

The other is to write a miniature literature review that functions much like full-blown one, but doesn't require the same volume of reading. We'll do a bit of both.

Part I: Review (there are two parts!....don't forget to do part 2).

To reinforce your understanding of why we do literature reviews and what they should include, please review the suggestions made in the writing lab, part c. Answer the following questions to demonstrate your knowledge.

You may also want to consult the table of links to other university web sites with tips on literature reviews.

Quiz Table

Answer	Letter	Questions and Answer Options
	1.	In your OWN WORDS, list three reasons for producing a literature review.
	1a.	Answer 1a
	1b.	Answer 1b
	1c.	Answer 1c
2. In your own words: What should you endeavor to make transparent in your literature review?. Answer 2
3. Should you organize the literature that you are reviewing chronologically? No? Then how should you organize the literature you are reviewing? Answer 3
4. Why should you "expose the hole in the literature" in your literature review? Answer 4
5. Read through the information on literature reviews from the University of Toronto. Under the heading "Ask yourself questions like these:", they list some good questions to ask yourself. Which of these items suggest the same process of "placing ones research in the context of existing research" Answer 5
6.Read through the information on literature reviews from the University of Toronto. They call the literature review a "piece of discursive prose". Explain what that means. Answer 6
7. Read through the information on literature reviews from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Explain what they mean by "provenance". Answer 7
8 .Read through the information on literature reviews from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Explain what they mean by "Value". Answer 8
9. Read through the information on literature reviews from the University of California at Santa Cruz. What do they suggest a literature review does in terms of prior scholarship and duplication? Answer 9
10. Cut and paste the web address associated with P. McCauley's 2001 paper on literature reviews. Answer 10

Name

E-mail

Code

When you click the button below, you will be directed to a web page that shows your answers. The instructor will get a copy of this email as well, but you may want to keep a copy for your records. If you are curious about the correct answers, please bring your questions to class.

CLICK on the BACK button to return to this page after you have clicked submit or pressed enter so that you may continue with part 2.

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Part II

For the second half of this exercise, you will write a literature review, but instead of reading entire books and entire journal articles, like you would for a class that requires a research paper, you will be reading a series of abstracts and first pages of articles on a topic. After you have read through this hypothetical body of literature, you will organize the things you have read into themes, critically review each piece, deciding the utility of each piece, and present a well reasoned 2 page review of that literature that places your proposed study (described below) into the context of what others have written.

Scenario:

You have decided to write a research paper in which you argue that a Geographic Information System could effectively manage a wastewater recycling program in Los Angeles to reduce fresh water usage to irrigate lawns, parks and highway corridors..

In this research paper, you plan to argue that:

1. A Geographic Information System could do the job.
2. Wastewater is a viable and safe option for urban irrigation.
3. Water policy is a key to development goals of the city of Los Angeles.
4. Nobody has yet applied a GIS based solution to this problem in Los Angeles.

Your literature review will set the stage for this paper, so you need to 1) bring your readers up to speed on the topic 2) establish that you "know your stuff" and have adequately done background research on the topic, 3) establish that there is a need for your study of wastewater recycling in Los Angeles.

Task:

Open the link that contains a Microsoft Word document with a series abstracts and introductions to your topic. It's about 20 pages long, but that's a fraction of the number of pages you'll have to read for a real literature review. As you read through these pages, you should begin to identify themes and sub-themes in this group of research "articles". Your job is to organize these readings into three or four subtopics (maybe more) and then arrangement in a logical fashion. Within each theme, you need to identify, sometimes very briefly, how each of the authors contributed to knowledge on the general topic. Some, you will say, have argued point X, others have contributed in fashion "Y", and still another group of authors have considered "Z", but none of them have done what I'm going to do. Piece it all together and it should form a coherent whole.

A literature review is an argument, like an essay; so I'd like to see good topic sentences (feel free to make them blue again), and a thesis statement in which you make a case for "your" research.

Use parenthetical references to cite your materials. Refer to the Chicago Manual of Style, or an issue of the Professional Geographer or Annals of the Association of American Geographers for examples.

To help get you started, I have written an introduction. It's below. You should copy and paste it into your own document which you will save according to the naming convention established earlier (e.g. Lab_litrev_your name).

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Using a Geographic Information System to Manage A Wastewater Recycling Program for Residential Irrigation: A Los Angeles Case Study

 

Introduction (this would be longer in a real paper).

Los Angeles continues to face acute water shortages as a result of drought and misuse of dwindling water resources by municipal, commercial and residential users. Much of the water applied to lawns in this semi-desert environment is wastefully misused as residents over water grass and direct irrigation water onto sidewalks, driveways, streets and other impermeable surfaces. Misapplied irrigation water in turn finds it way into storm sewers where it is transported to the Pacific Ocean as wastewater. A GIS based management system for urban irrigation runoff could save the City of Los Angeles 754 million gallons of water per year, reduce Los Angeles' dependence on extra regional water resources and contribute to environmentally responsible urban growth. By building strategically placed catchment basins along the course of the Los Angeles river system, water resource managers could supply parks, highway corridors, government owned properties, and select neighborhoods with an estimated 53% of their irrigation needs, and in the process save the city several million dollars per year over a 25 year period.

Background

Read the following paragraph then delete it so that you may replace it with your literature review.

Insert at least four paragraphs here in which you write a literature review. Take care to make a general augment about the overall body of existing literature and the place your proposed research project will have within this body of work. Refer to the criteria 1-4 listed above to help keep you on track.

How to turn this in.

Once you have written the literature review, submit it to me via Moodle's Turnitin portal associated with this assignment.

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Assignment Rubric:

Assignment Rubric Table

Assessment Criteria	Exceeds Expectations 8-9-10 points	Meets Expectations 6-7 points	Fails to Meet Expectations 0-6 points
Student effectively argues that the proposed research is needed or unique
Student organizes existing research into sub topics or sub themes
Student identifies the utility or relationship of each reviewed article to the proposed research
Student cites authors using the Chicago Manual of Style
Student uses topic sentences effectively, uses proper grammar and syntax.