Technology and the Impact of the Social Media Sites on Advertising

Writing Assignment #3 Synthesis Essay (sometimes called a Literature Review)
Writing Assignment #3 will be a synthesis essay, a format that is sometimes referred to as a
literature review. Please click here for a video that briefly describes and outlines this writing
assignment.
Organization:
Your synthesis essay should be organized in the following manner:
•Introduction: Write one or two paragraphs in which you introduce the reader to your topic.
•Body-the categories into which you are dividing the literature: Divide your sources into a
few categories. A suggestion is that you divide them into three to five categories.
•Conclusion: Summarize what the literature says on your topic.
Topics:
Choosing a Technological Transformations Topic
Courses that fulfill the General Education Requirements (GERs) at UMUC all have
a common theme—technological transformations. You will be following this topic
throughout the course, using it to develop a Table of Research Findings assignment,
to create a critical Annotated Bibliography, to synthesize a Literature Review, and
to write a final Niches and Gaps essay.
You have four choices for your research topic for your Literature Review. The
sources you acquire for the Annotated Bibliography will also be the same sources
that you use in the Literature Review.
Please choose one of the four choices as your main topic for your sources for the
Annotated Bibliography and the Literature Review afterward, then focusing more
specifically on one of the subtopics in one of these main areas.
1. Review the literature on the impact of the Internet on information literacy and
library skills.
For example, you might review the literature on one or more of the following. These are
just examples. Many approaches are possible for this topic.
a. The impact of the Internet on plagiarism in student papers.
b. The impact of the Internet on research methods among students.
c. The impact of Wikipedia and other web 2.0 applications on the use of information.
2. Review the literature on the impact of technology on the health care field.
For example, you might review the literature on any one or more of the following. These
are just examples. Many approaches are possible for this topic.
a. The impact of a particular technological development on health care costs.
b. The implications of maintaining a nationwide health care electronic database of every
patient’s medical records.
3. Review the literature on the impact of assessment and measurement on education.
For example, you might review the literature on any one of the following. These are just
examples. Many approaches are possible for this topic.
a. The Race to the Top Program and the use of measurement in its assessments.
b. The use of placement exams for entrance into colleges and universities.
c. The use of placement exams for enrollment into entry-level writing and mathematics
courses in colleges and universities.
d. The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) movement in
education.
4. Review the literature on the impact of technology on a field of study or topic of
your choice.
This option represents a more general approach to the assignment.
Some examples might be the following. These are just examples. Many approaches are
possible for this topic.
a. The impact of mobile devices on cybersecurity
b. The impact of the Internet on the field of advertising
c. The impact of cloud computing on a particular business field
d. The impact of the Internet in an area of communication studies
e. The impact of the Internet on global marketing strategies
f. The impact of a particular type of technology on health care
g. The impact of technology on education in a particular field of study
h. The impact of technology at a particular time in history for a particular country or
region.
Approach:
This semester, you have constructed a table of research findings of four articles that discussed
research studies on your proposed topic. You have also critically evaluated several articles in the
annotated bibliography. In this assignment you will synthesize the ideas of several authors in a
synthesis essay, or literature review.
For your annotated bibliography, you selected a topic based on your interests and, possibly, your
major. You constructed a list of 12 references and summarized and critically analyzed them in
150-200 words each.
Through this process, you may have seen patterns in the scholarly literature in the topic on which
you conducted research. For example, consider the following examples:
•You may have researched studies in criminal justice and found that there are varying opinions
on how to respond to criminal behavior among youth.
•You may have researched studies in psychology and found that counseling strategies for
victims of domestic abuse tend to fall into four categories.
•You may have researched graphic communications and discovered that the integration of
graphics in business report writing has evolved from the 1970s to the present because of
advancements in technology.
•You may have researched articles on gerontology and found studies that answered three basic
questions on how older adults respond to training for physical performance.
In the synthesis essay, you will focus your research efforts in a particular area, perhaps as a
response to what you found while writing the annotated bibliography. You will then conduct
more research and synthesize your findings in this synthesis essay.
Please note that the annotated bibliography was the beginning, not the end, of your research. You
might decide to disregard several of the articles you analyzed in the critical annotated
bibliography because they don’t speak to the specific area on which you have decided to write
your synthesis essay. You might select one article that
you analyzed in the critical annotated bibliography, look up the articles cited in that article, and
“snowball” your research in that way.
In other words, this process is a recursive one. You might find reasons to hone in on and narrow
your topic even further after you have written the annotated bibliography.
How to organize the synthesis essay:
When you have focused on your topic, determine how you will divide the literature. In other
words, consider the following examples we described above:
You may have researched studies in criminal justice and found that there are varying opinions
on how to respond to criminal behavior among youth.