· Your individual paper must be typed in 12pt font.
· Your paper must be spaced with 1.5 line spacing.
· There is no page limit, but a thorough paper will be no less than 4-5 pages (at 1.5 line spacing).
· Your paper must include both in-line citations (when appropriate) and a full bibliography at the end of the paper (formatted at your choice, but must be consistent throughout).
· Your paper must include the following sections (use the following headers to start each section of your paper):
Introduction & Research Question – 5pts
This section is a brief introduction to the rest of your paper. Start by describing the main research question of your group’s project, and follow with sentences on the specific environmental impact being addressed.
Background Information – 10pts
In this section you will provide your background research into the issue. Your goal here is to inform the reader of the very specific explanation of the connections between your topic and the environmental impacts. For example, if you were researching food waste on campus, here is where you would thoroughly explain the specific impacts that food waste has on our environment. You will need to spend some time researching this information and include inline citations when using information obtained online.
Methods – 5pts
In this section you will describe, very specifically, the methods use to collect data and conduct your research. Your goal should be to describe your methods so that another person could read and accurately duplicate your group’s study. This is a significant piece of a scientific paper and allows for research to be duplicated by others to verify results. Be sure to specifically state the where – when – how – what – sample size, with regard to your data collection.
Data Table & Graphs – 10pts
In this section you will attach both a data table and final bar graph with standard errors of your research. The data table and graph must be produced using excel, and include appropriate and descriptive titles, units and all axes labeled on the graph.
Results – 5pts
This section will include your individual analysis of the data your group collected. Start this section with an explanation for what means and standard errors measure in a data set. Your specific results will include the calculated means for each category measured, and list and explain the calculated standard errors for each. The last part of this section is where you will make a statement on the categories that were statistically similar and those ‘significantly’ different. The results section is mostly going to involve summarizing the data and does not include your explanations or opinions on the results. That will be in the Discussion section.
Discussion – 10pts
In a scientific article, the discussion section is where the author(s) have the opportunity to elaborate on the study as a whole and what the results may mean for future researchers. For this assignment, we would like you to include commentary on the following topics for your discussion.
· Propose a realistic solution to lower the specific environmental impact you addressed. If there were no ‘significant’ differences in your results, then propose a way to reduce the overall impact. If there was one or more categories that were ‘significantly’ different, then propose a solution to lower those categories.
· What challenges did you and/or your group encounter during your research?
· How did you solve these problems?
· If you had more resources (money, supplies and time), how would you enhance your research project?
· What recommendations would you give to future groups that might research this specific topic?
