[Student Name]
Instructions: Replace the example wording in brackets below with your wording for each prompt.
IND101 Milestone 3 Template
1.
Thesis statement:
[Example: The US government should increase incentives for the production and consumption of electric cars because they are still too expensive for most consumers, US consumption is falling behind other nations, and electric cars are effective at reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to climate change.]
2.
In-depth evaluation of one source:
Source (not required to be in APA format, but must include author, date, title, and a link):
[Example: Sperling, D. (2018). Electric vehicles: Approaching the tipping point.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
74(1), 11–18.
·
Relevance: This source is very relevant to my topic because it concerns the future of electric vehicle production in the United States. The article also compares government policies on electric and non-electric vehicles in multiple countries, including China, France, and Britain. This will be useful in thinking about the second point of my thesis statement about how the US compares to other nations in electric car production.
·
Authority: The author of this article, Dr. Daniel Sperling, is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis. His area of expertise is in the environmental impact of motor vehicles. He has a considerable number of publications and is a recognized authority on this subject.
·
Currency: This article was published in January of 2018, so it is relatively current, but not the most up to date on the topic. This field is changing quickly, so articles that articles that have come out in the past two years may be more useful.
·
Objectivity: The author is a trained scientist and engineer so although he may have personal biases, his work would be likely to be objective in its use of evidence and conclusions. The article also includes a disclosure statement noting no potential conflict of interest for the author. According to its website, the publication
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is a nonprofit that “informs the public about threats to the survival of humanity from nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies” (
). This means that the publication would be more likely to publish pieces like Sperling’s which advocate for potential solutions to climate change and use non-technical language to communicate to the public.
·
Verifiability: This article is not a typical scientific research study, so it does not contain a Methodology section. However, it does use and cite sources and include a Reference list. The references include both peer-reviewed articles and popular news sources like the
New York Times and
LA Times.
3.
One source to omit and why:
[Example: National Research Council (U.S.). (2015).
Overcoming barriers to deployment of plug-in electric
vehicles. National Academies Press.
After reviewing all of my sources, I have chosen to omit the National Research Council report source because of its lack of currency on a rapidly evolving topic. It was published in 2015 so some of the information in it seems a bit dated compared to my other, more recent sources.]
4.
Reflection:
[Example: I found it somewhat difficult to narrow my thesis statement to a concise, one-sentence statement. I knew I wanted to argue that the government should incentivize EV production and consumption, but I read more about the topic and realized that it already does. So, I changed my argument to be about increasing incentives. I need to find more information about the cost of EVs compared to non-EVs. Although I think all of my remaining sources could work, I will continue to revisit my sources as I go forward because searching the library shows me that there are a lot of relevant articles. My questions about the research process include: Is it ok for my thesis statement to continue to change in the next few weeks? Can a thesis statement ever be longer than one sentence? How can I effectively summarize my thesis statement in the conclusion without restating it verbatim?]
