Assignment Briefing: Proposal
A Short Proposal for Team or Individual Paper
5% of overall grade for a 1-2 page paper proposal
Geog1101 Human Geography (Summer 2020)
Dr. David Sadoway KPU
Introduction: What is A Short Proposal?
Your final assignment can be done either individually or in a team of fellow
geographers. If you work in teams please do so via internet or telephony (i.e.
video links, web conferencing, chat, shared docs, etc.). Your team consists of
fellow KPU Geog 1101 students interested in a common research topic or
research problem. Your short proposal is due on July 31st and the Final Paper
is due on August 12th. Thus, the short proposal is really a preliminary outline of
your plan for how you will get to writing and researching a Final Paper.
The short proposal is a tight research plan and a timeline and indicates some
of your advanced thinking about how you will research and write a fuller,
more comprehensive paper. As with any university-level writing it is important
that you do the reading, online research and thinking in advance. Your
proposal will demonstrate that you have a clear research topic, research
question (RQ) and have done some preliminary thinking in mind. None of
your ideas are set in stone, but they will serve as a guide.
Paris Chua for Dr. D. Sadoway (‘Cities & Urban Life’) NTU Singapore
What Exactly Am Proposing In 1-2 pgs?
Your short, 1-2 page Team Proposal will sketch a broad vision for a final
human geography research topic and paper. It is up to you to write-up a
proposal about any topic that interested you in this course this semester. You
can expand your research on an area you have already studied, or feel free
to explore any topic / research question related to the Big Five themes in this
class: maps and worldmaking; populations, mobilities, climate change &
disasters; the geographies of decolonization and indigeneity; g/localization
and urbanization processes; and geographic space, politics & geopower.
These of course are quite general, and you will need to propose a much
more narrow, focused and specific topic of study in your proposal.
When narrowing or focusing your topics. I highly encourage all students to
think of local scale projects with a geographic connection to Metro
Vancouver or B.C. (e.g. Indigenous rights; biodiversity losses; local disaster
issues; air quality; car culture and automobility; climate change and B.C.
cities; material poverty; the geography of immigration in cities; housing issues;
gentrification; land grabs; urban liveability; and so forth). You could add all
the many geographic issues that are linked to COVID-19, if you prefer. The
topic and RQ choice are really up to you, either individually or with teammates.
Your job in the proposal is to develop and prepare a plan to research
and write about a topic. That is the challenge of developing a short proposal,
because even though it is short, it requires plenty of advanced thinking.
You need to provide a preliminary outline of your plans, including these six:
1) Indie or Team Participants. List all of the names, student numbers and email
address of all your team members, or if you are doing the proposal and paper
independently, just yours (i.e. on your own). Either approach is acceptable.
2) Topic & RQ Focus. Your selected topic/title and preliminary research
question(s)[RQ] (be more specific than general). This may change somewhat
as your research unfolds.
3) Geographic Focus. As noted above, propose a single or multiple geographic
location, after doing some research to see if these/this may be feasible.
4) Preliminary Literature Review. Refer to the KPU Research Guide (scroll down).
After you have a thought about a topic and an RQ you will demonstrate that
you have done some preliminary research by identifying some good sources
of papers, studies, reports, databases, websites, or technical reports. In the
proposal you will identify at least 5-7 good sources that you may use in your
Final Report. Under “Preliminary References” identify examples of at least 5-7
high quality references of works that you may be using.
5) Basic Outline of your final report table of contents (include a timeline).
6) Key Tasks & Timeline. This is a plan of what and when you expect to do the
key tasks for completing and submitting a Final Paper. If you are in a
team/group this will list a “division of labour” of who in your group, you expect
to be doing/completing what and by when. Tasks could include topic
brainstorming; mind mapping; preliminary research; advanced/intensive
research; writing; synthesizing; editing; paper polishing, etc.
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