Article Review
Overview
Throughout this course, you will be working on a final project that involves summarizing and reviewing a peer-reviewed article related to a topic in forensic psychology. You will be using a class wiki to work on your article review. For an excellent illustration of the utility and function of wikis, view Wikis in Plain Englishby Common Craft. Also, refer to these links for adding and editing a wiki page in Blackboard. You must create your own page in the class wiki for you to work on and post your article review.
While wikis are appropriate for group work, they can also be used by an individual. In an individual wiki, collaboration happens between the student and the instructor (instead of between group members). The wiki eliminates the need for multiple submissions of unique drafts. In effect, the wiki becomes the workspacewhere the student practices and perfects the project until the final submission. For more information about blogs and wikis, please review these tutorials.
Main Elements/Format
Reading the Article
- Allow enough time to understand it.
- Read the article without taking notes to gain an overall idea of its main idea.
- Read the article again analytically highlighting important ideas and making brief notes of main ideas and main topic.
Writing the Article Review
- Provide a synopsis of the article. Make sure to address these questions:
- What is this article specifically addressing?
- How does this article related to your selected topic?
- Did the article contain research? Provide a summary of the research that was discussed, as applicable.
- If applicable: What data was used? What instruments, if any, were used to collect data?
- If applicable: What were some of the conclusions, if any, to the research in this article?
- Your synopsis should end with a review and critique of your article. Make sure to address these questions:
- What references did the author use in this article?
- Was the article reliable and valid? Explain.
- Was this article well-written? Thoughtful and reflective?
- What were the limitations in this article? Any variables?
- What other thoughts or comments do you have related to this article?
There is no minimum number of pages as your article review should live on its own wiki page and should be substantive.
Deliverable Milestones
- Milestone One: Submit Selected Topic and Article (Due in Module Two)
Submit your selected topic in forensic psychology, the citation information of your selected article (which must be related to your selected topic), and as a link to your article. Your selected article must be from a peer-reviewed, professional journal (Journal of Personality Assessment is an example of a peer-reviewed journal; Time, Newsweek, and Psychology Today are NOT peer-reviewed journals). Go to this siteto find out more about what a peer-reviewed article is, and go to this site to learn about getting started with research at Shapiro Library.
If you located your article through Shapiro Library, make sure to note where/how you found it as well. This assignment is not graded, but you will
receive formative feedback from your instructor on whether or not your topic and article are appropriate for this assignment.
- Milestone Two: Complete and Post Final Article Review in Wiki (Due in Module Seven)
Post your completed article review on your page in the class wiki. Your article review should include all of the components described in the “Writing the Article Review” section (under Main Elements/Format) of this document. Your article review will be graded using the rubric on the following pages.
- Milestone Three: Review Classmates’ Article Reviews (Due in Module Eight)
Review at least two of your classmates’ article reviews and provide comments on their reviews. Consider the elements in the rubric (at the end of this document) as well as the following questions when providing a review of your classmates’ work:
o How well did they analyze their article?
o Did they address all of the questions (in the “Writing the Article Review” section of this document) in their article review?
o What new insights or ideas did you learn by reading their article reviews?
This assignment is not graded, but you will receive formative feedback from your instructor.