Research Project: Choose a political state or in the vernacular, a country (not one of the United States, please), and think about something you would like to learn about this location. Begin your research with whatever you are questioning or what piqued your interest. You need to determine a research question. Below is a source which does a good job of explains the steps to writing a research project composition. A research project is meant not only to inform your viewer or reader of isolated facts. It is also meant to provide the author with an opportunity to investigate a question and provide an answer. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/658/01/ (In the Lessons section How to Write for this Class, you will find a short power point that will give you some ideas about how to proceed, also.) If you are unsure of your research topic, just send me a Message and I will be glad to help you out. You are expected to use the geographic perspective to structure your research and your Power Point presentation.
For some good examples of Research Projects, go to Resources, Student Power Point Presentations and check out the submissions on Brazil, Belize, and Cyprus. These are excellent submissions. Students might have lost points for poorly constructed bullets (wordy.) So, be careful.

There are three sections to this document. Make sure to read them all.
I. General goals and expectations

This exercise is designed to have each student conduct research, assess and summarize his or her research findings, and present it in PowerPoint format. This will be just like writing a research paper, except that the research findings will be presented in outline form in PowerPoint, rather than as a research paper. Just like a research paper, your presentation should include slides that contain a title, introduction to the topic, main body, summary and conclusions, and bibliography. Creative use of properly cited graphics and photos from the Internet, which are relevant to your topic, is required. Since this is a geography class, please use maps.

Goals of this project include encouraging development of research skills, familiarization with presentation of academic material, and practice in communicating research to an “audience”. If you do not have access to PowerPoint, you may download free compatible software at OpenOffice.org. or a trial version of Power Point from Microsoft.com.

The following suggestions should assist in composing your research assignment.

A. Your presentation should be well organized and show that you are able to synthesize geography concepts.

B. Incorporate creative ideas in your presentation software application.

C. Make sure to cite references to your text if used and other materials. You also need to include references to sites from which you copied graphics. If you use images that you own, cite this also as “Personal Collection.”

D. The writing standards are the same as the ones that you have been using in the Forums.
II. II. Presentation (Power Point) Specific expectations

BASIC POWERPOINT GUIDELINES

Keep your presentation SIMPLE

( I have included some hints about how to make a good Power Point Presentation for your assignment. In addition, since Power Point is a tool that is frequently used for personal presentations, I have also included to tips about those as well.)

Remember that a Power Point presentation should be written in the same manner as a formal paper. This means that you should have an Introductory Slide (This is akin to the title page of a formal paper), an outline of your presentation (this is the same as the Introduction in a formal paper), the body of your presentation (yes, just like the body of the paper), a concluding slide (just like the conclusion of a formal paper), and a bibliography that cites sources for information and images.

a. Use a single background for the complete presentation. A good way of doing this is to make a Master Slide. Using a single background will make your presentation look very professional and cohesive.

b. If you use an image as a background, make sure the contrast on the background is reduced so that it does not interfere with text or imported images.

c. Import pictures that you want to use to illustrate your presentation. You can still include text on an imported image. In addition, if you have reduced the contrast sufficiently on the Master Slide, an imported image will not cause any confusion.

d. If you use music in your presentation, turn it off after the introductory slide unless you are making a presentation on MUSIC and need to provide illustrations.
Continually running music in the background is confusing for your audience.

e. Use only one or two animation effects (Too many effects are confusing.)

f. As a general rule, only include 5 or fewer bullets on a slide. (Make sure that the size of your text is easily readable. I suggest that you try to use comparable to a Times New Roman size 20 size font. This is just to give you an idea; please don’t everyone use Times New Roman font.)

g. Only use phrases not complete sentences and DEFINITELY not paragraphs. If you need more words, either for your use during a presentation or you think that I will not know what you are talking about, place the words in the Notes Section of your slides.
h. As with this presentation, in personal delivery, do not ever read your presentation. Powerpoint provides you, the presenter, and your audience with an outline. It is insulting to your audience to put complete sentences on the screen and then read the screen. This behavior assumes that your audience cannot read.

i. Edit your presentation to make sure that you do not have any misspellings.

j. Test your presentation before you actually submit it or personally give it to verify that your color choices are good. Font colors that are high contrast, deeply saturated colors are better than pastels, unless your background is very dark.) If your background is very dark, remember that you will need to use a light colored font.

k. If you are making a personal presentation, save your presentation to a flash drive and a disk. (Remember that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.)

In a personal presentation, DO NOT INTRODUCE YOUR PRESENTATION SAYING ‘I did my report on Instead, simply announce the title of your report.

III. A Check List to insure an A as a grade
(Use this rubric; I grade from it!)
TASK DESCRIPTION: Research Project: Power Point Presentation – Each student will chose an autonomous political entity or in the vernacular, a country (please do not use one of the United States), and develop a 12 – 20 slide presentation using Power Point as a tool to educate an audience about the chosen topic. The use of the geographic perspective should be apparent and the presentation needs to be more than an Atlas type entry. The presentation should include appropriate photographs, maps, and graphs. If you are not aware or need reminding, the following is a good site for a refresher on composing research projects. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/658/01/

The following outline describes the elements necessary for an excellent presentation.

Organization / Structure (15%)
Title
INTRODUCTION OR OVERVIEW
Body
Conclusion
Bibliography or Works Cited
Knowledge /Content (20%) Demonstrated knowledge beyond Text andCIAWorldfact Book – Greater than an Atlas entry. May include additional information in the Notes Section.
Sufficient sources for a research project (the number of sources is dependent on the quality of the sources.)
Visual Aids (20%)
Maps, multiple – macro and micro scale
Photographs that illustrate topography and culture
Graphs if appropriate
Mechanics (no more than one spelling or grammar error) (10%)
Grammar
Spelling errors
Bullet length (limited to 4 -5 words per bullet, no more than 5 bullets per slide
Communication (15%)
Imaginative presentation that holds the audience’s interest
Thinking / Inquiry (15%)
In depth exploration of sub topic – may be environmental, political, or cultural
Slide Design / Layout / Consistency (5%)
Excellent visual composition

For some good examples of Research Projects, go to Resources, Student Power Point Presentations and check out the submissions on Brazil, Belize. and Cyprus. These are all excellent submissions. Students might have lost points for poorly constructed bullets (wordy.) So, be careful.

Here is an example from one of my past classes. I have permission to post this for you to view.
https://edge.apus.edu/access/content/group/255144/Student%20Power%20Point%20Presentations/BRAZIL.ppt
The grading rubric that I use above is the one that you should use to compose your presentation.

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