Recently I had to learn APA citation. Oof. It was a heavy lift, after a few decades with MLA. It gave me a refreshed sense of how overwhelming students likely find MLA. I found myself thinking, why can’t I just link my sources in parentheses? Why can’t I just reference the authors who informed my thinking inside my sentences? Why on earth does it matter if I use a comma or a semicolon, put the page first or put the page second? Why does APA even exist?
Yeah, all the things our students probably think when we roll out our 26 page MLA redux, which doesn’t even cover it all.
And that’s only the beginning of student frustration when it comes time for a research paper.
Now, I struggle a little bit in recommending these alternatives to the research paper today, partly because my husband regularly references the research paper he wrote in high school as a landmark in his academic life. He loved it. He was so proud of his work. It set him on a path that eventually led all the way to a PHD program at UPenn. The other night, though, when we were debating the relative merits of 5 paragraph essays and research papers, he did mention that the rest of the class did not exactly excel on that research paper assignment, if the comments his teacher made as she passed back the papers were any sign.
John Warner, in his book, Why They Can’t Write, posits a possible reason for that lack of excelling. “The writing-related tasks we frequently visit upon students would prove difficult for even highly experienced writers. Writing on subjects with which we’re newly familiar, in forms that are foreign, and addressed to audiences that are either undefined or unknown (other than ‘for the teacher’) bears little resemblance to the way we write for the world” (27). In other words, we often ask students to try and make themselves an expert on something they’re not that interested in for a research paper, use a citation format that is next thing to a foreign language for them, tie themselves in knots trying to figure out how to convey what they’ve learned in an orderly way that generally leaves little room for their own voice or opinions, and do it all just to show their teacher, for a grade.
Of course, that is how it has seemingly always been done. And after all, we survived. I remember learning MLA format in 7th grade, and creating my first research notecards. I dutifully scrawled quotation after quotation on those notecards, putting all the source information on the back.
I can’t remember what I wrote about though, for that 7th grade research paper. Literally nothing comes to mind.
The first research assignment that I do remember came in 11th grade, when I participated in Minnesota’s National History Day, making it to the State Finals with my project “The Column: Supporting Architecture through the Ages.” I remember my architectural timeline, supported on a bridge of heavy white dominos across the front of my display board. I remember learning about Ionic, Corinthian, and Doric columns, and I’ve seen them all over the world in my travels since. I remember my virtual explorations of Athens, as I searched through various texts trying to figure out how the column worked, why it was so special, and what it looked like in buildings all over ancient Greece. I remember presenting my project in Duluth, sensing that I barely made it through with so many other great projects on hand, learning from the quality around me, and improving it before heading for Minneapolis. I remember going to Valley Fair, the amusement park I had had my eye on for years, after the state competition, with my Dad.
It. Was. Awesome.
My National History Day Project let me choose any topic of interest to me that fit whatever the general theme was that year. It let me use my love of design, color, lettering, and layout in addition to my research skills. It gave me an authentic audience to consider. I think I still had to use MLA citation format, but I was so busy with everything else that I wasn’t about to let cracking that code stop me. I had a competition to win. (Not that I did, but I sure had fun trying).
When I look back on my academic and professional life so far, research in service of real purpose, in an arena that truly interested me, with the ability to include modes that I enjoy working in, for an audience I truly hoped to impact, made all the difference in igniting my best work.
So what if we warm our students up to research with activities, projects, and shorter writing pieces that focus more on elements like these, and less on notecards? What if, instead of jumping into huge MLA research papers with only one person – us – as the intended audience, we cast a wider net around the area of research and explore ways to give students more agency over topic, mode, and audience?
This introduction is getting out of hand. Thirteen paragraphs in and we haven’t played the music yet. It’s lucky I’m not writing a five paragraph essay. So without further ado, let’s talk about five alternatives to the research paper that help students practice key skills they can draw on later, if and when they choose a path that requires them to write lengthy academic research papers with full citations in APA or MLA.
OK, let’s dive into these five project ideas. You may want to do one of these exactly, or they may help you think of something else your students are interested in where you could apply these concepts of agency over topic and mode and incorporate the possibility of authentic audience.
Option #1: The Nonprofit Funding Fair
Make your copy of this activity in Google Slides
I’m starting small, with a toe dip in the research waters. For this activity, students get to find a nonprofit working in a sector they’re interested in and do some source analysis. They’ll start by reading about the work of the nonprofit right on its site, forming an opinion of how effective the nonprofit is and whether they’re spending money well.
Then, they’ll do some lateral reading and fact-checking, looking up the nonprofit on a nonprofit checking site like Charity Navigator.
Finally, synthesizing what they know from their own analysis and their understanding from Charity Navigator, they’ll write a pitch to their classmates, pushing either to support the charity or not to support it. To finish off the research lesson, hand over game money and let students go around reading the pitches and deciding where to donate.
As students finish the fair, invite them to reflect on what they’ve learned, a writing process step John Warner suggests in his book, and which I like. (How about you?)
What research skills have they just practiced? They’ve analyzed a source, checked it for accuracy, and written an argument based on their synthesis of the two. These are key research skills, though students might not really have noticed they were practicing them.
Option #2: The AI Policy Project
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AI continues to dominate a lot of conversations in educational policy, and plenty of tech companies are investing heavily in its potential.
But what do students think? What role do they want AI to play in their lives and learning?
In the AI PBL research unit (get a free copy here) students will research the role of AI in education, asking and answering the questions they’re truly interested in as they explore readings, create surveys, conduct interviews, and more. Then they’ll pull their research together into a product that can help their target audience, whether that’s preschool teachers, parents, principals, other students, etc.
A relevant, contemporary topic? Check. Multiple modality options? Check. Authentic audience? Check.
Option #3: The Infographic
This version of the infographic project is available in The Lighthouse or here on TPT
An infographic lets students present information visually, using design elements to help strengthen their subtle argumentation.
Start with an infographic scavenger hunt so students see the rainbow of ways to share ideas in this medium.
Next, guide students in choosing an issue they care about and a way to reach an audience on that issue. For example, maybe a student thinks girls’ tennis isn’t getting enough funding at your school, and she’d like to share her research with the principal.
She might go on to research Title IX, the district athletics budget, and the way budget is allocated in nearby districts. She might interview the girls’ tennis coach and the athletic director. Then she might synthesize that research into an infographic that shows how the district budget is allocated, how it compares to similar-sized districts, and how it measures up to Title IX requirements, including a quotation from one of her interviews across the top. Maybe her infographic will be in the shape of a tennis racket. Or maybe it will show up as two rackets, one oversized to represent the budget of the boys’ team, and one smaller for the girls team, to draw attention to budget disparities.
Of course, I’m getting a little ahead of the process. Students can design in Canva, Slides, or on paper. Paying attention to the mentor texts they’ve found, they can approach design with intention, choosing fonts, colors, and graphics that help strengthen the subtle argument behind the information they present.
And yes, they can practice their citations with a works cited section, making it clear that they’ve done the research required to show their intended audience the information can be trusted. Step-by-step practice.
Option #4: The Research Carousel
This version of the project is available in The Lighthouse or on TPT
I spend a lot of time making carousels for Instagram as a way to share ideas, and it’s not just fun, it’s an effective to teach a concept.
A swipeable carousel of 7-10 squares can house a hook, a thesis, and a storyline of supporting evidence in video, audio, text, and/or graphic form, not to mention a sources cited. Students can once again examine mentors, choose topics they’re interested in, research with the intention to teach others about their topic, experiment in the modes they find most exciting, and create a final product akin to what is being published daily on a popular social media platform.
If you’d like to dive deeper on this one, check out episode 163, where educator Jane Wisdom shared her class’s experience with this project.
Option #5: The Research Podcast
This version of the project is available in The Lighthouse or here on TPT
Finally, let’s chat about research podcasts. A podcast can LITERALLY give students a chance to use their voice, teaching on the topic they’ve learned about through their research. And you can easily tailor a short research podcast assignment to be something that will be shared with peers in class, to teach something helpful to the class. As with these other projects, they can explore mentors, do their research with a real audience in mind, experiment with multiple modes by writing outlines or scripts, mixing music and audio, and designing their cover, and include a sources section to give them embedded practice with MLA.
Research Skills Practice, Check
Projects like these will give students practice in the same skills they need for a research paper, building up their ability to understand main ideas from sources, synthesize information across sources, use citation format enough that it stops feeling like alien code (hopefully), embed their argument and voice into their work, experiment with effective modalities, and keep a real audience in mind.
Of course, if you want to culminate their practice in a full research paper, you can. I’m not here to say don’t do it, just to say there are a lot of engaging ways to build up to it so it doesn’t feel like such a heavy lift.
Looking back, I definitely think 7th grade was a little young. And in his book, John Warner suggest that even in his freshmen composition class at the college level, most of his students benefit more from building their skills with agency and audience rather than focusing on extensive research papers. “Academic writing is a genre like any other,” he writes. “We should not pretend it is the only context in which one can learn to communicate effectively. We can determine what kinds of thinking and reasoning academic study requires and have students practice those ways of thinking with significantly greater depth and in many different ways” (140).
Bingo.
Sources Cited
Warner, John. Why They Can’t Write: Killing the 5 Paragraph Essay and other Necessities. John Hopkins University Press: 2020.
