Teams of four students will be formed to research, write and present a report on the feasibility of a foreign direct investment. Each team works for a major U.S. pharmaceutical company. The Board of Directors of the home company has decided to allocate $200 million and expects a higher rate of return on equities than is available on U.S. projects, but has not specified the different rate of return. Naturally, the Board is cognizant of the tradeoffs between rewards and risks. Foreign direct investment is subject to country risk, currency risk, and industry risk. The team will have to make a convincing case directly to the Board, in the person of the instructor.
The project has three phases. The first phase consists of an assessment of country risk. The team will create a country committee to study differences in country risks. The committee will report to the Team. I will participate as a consultant. In the second phase the Team will formulate a strategy. Again, I will act as a consultant to the team. In the third and final phase a formal business plan is formulated. Future revenues and costs will be projected under a bad scenario, average scenario, and good scenario. The three scenarios will give a distribution of rates of return. The business plan is presented to the Board for approval. The writing for each of the three phases is in the form of a memorandum.
The instructor who assigned this research project makes a number of moves that help change his role from teacher as "gatekeeper of knowledge" to teacher as coach. To begin with, the assignment presents students with a hypothetical rhetorical situation. Teams of students are to research and write a feasibility report for the Board of Directors of a major pharmaceutical company. The team will have to "make a convincing case directly to the Board, in the person of the instructor."
To further emphasize that this research assignment is not just an academic exercise to please the instructor but a project that students might be asked to do in a real workplace situation, the instructor plays the role not only of the Board of Directors but also of a consultant, helping teams formulate a strategy and a business plan. This also puts the instructor in the role of coach rather than evaluator; at least for the initial phases of the project.
The presentation of a rhetorical situation, the emphasis on the students' exploration
of a question or puzzle, the teacher as coach rather than gatekeeper or fact-checker...all
of these are features of the kind of research writing I found in my study. If
students are likely to encounter assignments that are closer in spirit to alternative
research writing than traditional research writing as they move through their
majors, how should this effect the way we teach research writing in freshman
composition? The relevance of my findings
for first-year writing courses is the final issue I discuss.
Research Assignment #1: History of the American West
Research Assignment #2: Introduction to Sociology
Relevance for First-Year Writing