The Course Project: Final Paper Assignment is designed to familiarize you with the parts of the study that will be in chapter 2 of the dissertation (the literature review). You are basically writing a “mini” very scaled down chapter 2 for the Course Project.

The assignments for the Course Project are broken down throughout the course, so that you will build your project throughout the course and use the assignments to write your Course Project: Final Paper Assignment.

Directions: Identify a Problem

This assignment must be 750-1,000 words.

For this assignment, there must be a title page and a reference page with at least five scholarly references. Scholarly references are peer reviewed journal articles and published professional books that are found in the JFL library. You may have more than five references because you will be looking at the literature to explore your problem to see what has been done in the field of research on the topic or problem. Current APA has very specific guidelines for the title page and reference page. Please consult the current APA manual for the correct formatting for each of these parts.

For this assignment, you are given the topic and you will decide on a problem which affects student motivation and learning.

Topic: Choose a problem that is significant to teaching and learning.

Identify a problem in education regarding this topic. Since the topic is very broad, explore any area that aligns with this topic. The problem should be one that you are very interested in finding out more about because this problem will be the focus of the paper and all of the other parts of the paper will be centered on this problem. A problem needs to be identified that is a problem in the field of education, or the field for the program students are in and not a specific problem just to you or your institution. It must be a problem that others have stated needs further research and can be generalized across the entire field. Do not choose a problem that is specific to one school or one institution.

Write a 750–1,000-word paper (body of the paper) on the problem you have identified. Areas to address that will be the headings for the paper.

  • Problem-In this section, explain what the problem is (how it has been exposed) and why it is something that needs to be further studied and researched (how it has been identified as a problem). Any problem that a researcher wants to study, must be a problem that has been identified in the research as needing further study. This can be found by looking at the existing literature on the topic/problem and see what is missing or what has been identified as needing further study. At the end of every dissertation, and many research-based articles there is a section dedicated to what is needed to further study the topic/problem. These are excellent resources to check and read through for ideas on topics and problems for research studies.
  • Practices, Policies or Procedures That Led to the Problem-In this section, explain what has brought this problem to light causing it to need to be studied. What has happened that has created this problem? Think of this as the “why this is so important to educational research” section of the paper.
  • Importance of the Problem -In this section, discuss how this problem is significant to teaching and learning. Explain previous ways the problem has been addressed in the past. If there is little to no research on the problem (and it is highly unlikely that there will be no literature at all relating to the problem) then explain this in this section. Talk about the missing parts of the research that lead you to explore this problem.
  • Steps Taken to Address Problem-In this section, explain what steps, if any, have already been taken to address the problem. Share your own ideas on possible solutions for the problem. You may use first person in this section only.
  • Biblical Worldview-In this section, offer a biblical worldview perspective on the problem. Explain why the resolution of the problem is important as it relates to scripture and your Biblical worldview.

Format the paper according to current APA format and see the grading rubric for specific grading criteria.