Student Inquiry and Research Program Details
Fine Arts Investigation Final Report
The creative work that you have accomplished during your Inquiry is the major and most important piece of your investigation. However, reflecting on your work in the context of others and reviewing the impact that your work has had on yourself and others is important to your learning, both to bring closure to what you have done and to serve as a jumping off point for future work. Your Fine Arts investigation final report should contain the following elements plus representative examples of your work.
Title
The function of the title is to succinctly convey the important points uncovered by your investigation. The title should be short and unambiguous. Creative titles may be interesting, but often fail to communicate what you have accomplished.
Abstract
Your abstract may be the same one that you submitted for the IMSAloquium abstract book. Occasionally, significant work on the investigation remains after the IMSAloquium so you may need to update your abstract for your final report.
Introduction
The function of the introduction is to provide background and rationale for your work, to place it into the context of what others have done, and to discuss why you wanted to pursue this particular investigation. What was the driving impulse? Reasons? It is important to give credit to specific background sources and others' work in the field, to acknowledge the ideas and information that they have provided to you. It is helpful for those who are exposed to your creative work to know all of the resources that you have used and to understand your inspiration and method.
Methods
Of significance for the fine arts presenter are the issues of methods and/or procedures and materials. People want to know not only what you did, but also why you did what you did, and how you did it. Make your explanations brief, yet detailed enough for the reader to get a sense of the "beef" of your work. Explain what materials you used and any related technology that was needed to impact the final outcome of your work. You might give a brief example of what worked (and what did not) and what you did to alter the procedures or materials or processes in order to inform that your creation "worked." Why did you select the materials that you used in your investigation? What procedures or processes were most important in your success?
Discussion
Interpretation of your work is done in this section. What has your work contributed to the field? What more could you do? What are your future plans for this work? For additional work?
Investigation Process
This should be a personal statement about your journey through the investigation using inquiry standards. What did you learn about how to learn and how to direct your own learning? How did the SIR investigation help you grow? Did you accomplish the task you set out to do? What path of investigation did you choose? Why did you choose that path? How did your path change? What misconceptions or problems did you overcome? When did you know that you were done? What did you learn by having engaged in this experience?
Annotated Bibliography
Taking credit for somebody else's work, ideas, or findings (e.g. deliberately using someone else's work without providing proper references for it) is called plagiarism; doing so is unethical under all circumstances - even if you feel that the other person wouldn't mind. For a humanities project (English, writing, visual arts, and so forth) a brief, annotated bibliography is required; it should begin with a summary statement (one to two sentences) about the kind of works you consulted. You may want to break this into categories. Who else is doing the type of work that you are doing?
Appendix/Addendum
Supplemental materials are those that support the work that you accomplished. These might include some brief examples of writing that you revised and how a specific piece or passage changed, examples of preliminary sketches or music, copies of query letters to publishers or presentation venues.