Each group should produce one paper and submit this electronically to Professor Tyson by midnight on October 5th. The target length is about 500 words excluding diagrams and references. The document should contain about 7 - 10 links to other useful websites. I will post the reports on our website. The goal is to create a website that will be useful for anyone interested in arsenic. Remember our site is in the public domain.
The target audience is the other new members of the research group. The goal is to explain what the issues related to arsenic are in regard to the topic, with particular attention to the health risks. Some of the issues may still be uncertain; you should highlight conflicting views or evidence.
You should back up your statements with references, in this case links to sources that can be accessed via the web. Anticipate two questions that your readers might ask about the material you include: ÒWho says so?Ó and ÒWhatÕs the evidence?Ó Break the text into paragraphs and consider the use of sub-headings to help the reader. Try to avoid the passive voice and use the names of persons or organizations.
Copying and pasting diagrams or pictures from other sources is fine; just acknowledge the creator and indicate from where the picture or diagram came. Copying and pasting long pieces of text from other sources is not considered good scientific writing, even if you put quotation marks around the text and give a reference to where you got the material. However, if you donÕt put quotations marks and give information about the source, you have committed plagiarism, which is considered to be a serious act of academic dishonesty for which most organizations, including UMass, have zero tolerance!
You should try to present the information from the different sources in your own words at a level appropriate for your readers. This is a skill that professional scientists and engineers need to be successful, and the way to be good at it is to practice a lot.
A collaborative piece of writing can be tricky to organize. It helps if everyone is able to use the same word processing software (Microsoft Word?) and is familiar with the Òtrack changesÓ (Tools menu) and Òinsert commentÓ (Insert menu) features. Both features are accessible from the Reviewing Toolbar (select from the View menu). Be careful if your material is viewed on both PC and Macintosh computers as not every font, formatting and symbol crosses the platforms without change.
The material that is already up on the wesbite created by previous members of the program is available, but you should be careful about uncritical acceptance of material obtained from the internet, especially material you know has been created by novice or inexperienced researchers.
Give your report a title and provide the names of all the group members who contributed. Make sure the links to other url are active and save the document as a webpage. Then send it to me (tyson@chem.umass.edu) as an attachment.