So why am I asking for a Pitch?

Creating a reasonable project scope is key to successful historical research projects. Project scope includes knowing the boundaries of your research geographically and temporally, having a clearly articulated research question, and a good sense about who you would like to communicate your findings to and how.

It's also best to get ideas out of one's head and written out in some way early to prevent overcomplicating or losing potentially interesting threads. And this allows me to give you some early feedback and help make sure you're on a path to success!

Assignment Specs:

Use the assigned materials throughout the class to help organize your thoughts around project topics. You can include 1-2 different project topic ideas below if you're having trouble deciding between options.

1. Project Topic. Choose the time period, geographic scope, and a fresh water topic. Topics must be within the scope of our class: pre-1400CE.
   1. Review your notes, course slides, and assigned materials: which cultures or civilizations do you want to learn more about? What aspect of water use, access, and/or meaning making is most interesting to you (refer back to the overview videos for help).
2. Preliminary census questions for your topic (at least 3). The goal of the census questions is to figure out the historical information and sources that will help answer your historical research question.
3. Preliminary historical research question. This should be in the form of a reading around question (go back through previous modules for examples that you and classmates have come up with if you get stuck).
4. 1 primary source you think will be important for this topic. List the citation in MLA or Chicago Style formatting and give a 1-2 sentence explanation of why you picked it.
5. 5 keywords you’ve identified for finding additional relevant sources. These can be the names of prominent people, places, events, terms that would help you or another student research this topic further.
6. (Optional)Any questions you might have at this point about the project assignment, doing research, etc.
7. Post your completed Pitch in D2L in the relevant discussion board.

Assessment Criteria:

Complete the write-up as numbered answers. I anticipate 1-2 sentences per answer. Take time to form your responses as clearly and specifically as possible.

This assignment is graded as **Satisfactory, Needs Work, ****or No Credit.

To receive Satisfactory, all of the following must be present:

1. All 5 questions are answered clearly related to your topic idea.
2. Assigned materials and any additional sources consulted are all appropriately cited and attributed throughout.
3. Writing should be carefully spell-checked and use appropriate grammar.

Needs Work means that 1-2 of the assessment criteria are not fully complete. No Credit means that 2+ of the assessment criteria are incomplete or nothing is turned in for the Workshop.