Student Inquiry and Research Program Details
History Investigation Final Report
When writing your History Investigation final report, be aware that historical writing has certain basic conventions you should follow in communicating your findings to an audience; below are the requirements of each.
Title
The title conveys the central point of your research. Be short and direct. If one needs to be creative, such titles should combine your flourish with a more substantive explanation joined by a colon: " A Whale of a Tale: Herman Melville, Cetaceans, and Calvinists in Nineteenth-Century New England."
Abstract
Use the abstract that you submitted for the IMSAloquium abstract book. If you have done significant work after writing that abstract you should revise it to reflect this.
Introduction
The function of the introduction is to orient your reader to the subject and context of your investigation. Explain how your topic has been treated in the past and how you intend to challenge, support, or qualify these interpretations.
Body
This section presents the substance of, and evidence for, the thesis given in the introduction. Written as a narrative in the past tense, you should support your argument with specific historical data, names, dates, and events, as well as quotations from relevant primary or contemporary documents. Be careful here! Use quotation marks for any language that is not not your own. You are free to use other authors' data and ideas if you credit them. However, you may never use their words unless set in quotation marks. In general, do not quote modern authors as evidence. They are presenting opinion just as much as you are.
Conclusion
Review the main points of the paper to refresh the readers' memory and then recapitulate the argument made in your topic paragraph. This recapitulation should include a statement of the importance or novelty of your argument and of the event it explores.
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? 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?
References
Provide sources for the ideas, data, and quotations used in the paper. This permits the reader to check your investigation and facilitates further investigation by others in the field. 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. Plagiarism can result in lawsuits, academic dismissal, and personal disgrace. To avoid this, use both: footnotes in the text to identify both primary and secondary sources; and, a bibliography at the end of the piece to credit other sources.
Appendix/Addendum
Supplementary materials supporting your work should be included in this section, such as maps or timelines. Perhaps you wrote a related paper that broadens your perspective on the overall topic, but was not directly related to your focusing question; such a paper may be included here.