NS3011 Research and Writing for National Security Affairs

This course provides students with the basic tools to understand and produce research in relevant areas of history, social science and policy analysis. The general objectives of the course are to make you a more critical reader and thinker and better writer and researcher. The course is designed to help you with your other classes at NPS, which require you to read and write research papers. The course will also introduce students to basic elements of research design and methodology. In addition, the course will provide information on the thesis process at NPS. By the end of the course, every student should be able to produce a well-designed and well-written research paper or thesis. Graded Pass/Fail. PREREQUISITE: None.

Lecture Hours

Lab Hours

Course Learning Outcomes

· Create an individual, multi-stage approach to writing at NPS based on strategies of active reading, note-taking, research, pre-writing, drafting, revision, and editing.

· Identify your strengths and areas for development as a writer and set writing goals.

· Access support resources for NPS students including peers, professors, the library, and the GWC.

· Select and argue the significance of a topic for research and develop an interesting and appropriate research question about that topic.

· Plan and execute iterative drafts of a research paper. Revise drafts to focus paragraphs, improve paper structure, and refine execution and organization of argument.

· Effectively introduce material from outside sources through quotation, paraphrase, and summary and attribute borrowed information using Chicago Notes & Bibliography footnotes and signal phrases.

· Learn to identify and fix errors in grammar, syntax, punctuation, formatting, and capitalization.

· Identify and evaluate dependent and independent variables, causal mechanisms, hypotheses, measurements, cases, and models within scholarly work in the social science disciplines.