Position Paper, Research Essay, Annotated Bibliography:

The student must take a position that applies belief and reasoning systems to concepts of ethics and/or knowledge (DBR 200.1) and applies said systems of knowledge and/or ethics to issues in society, history, faith, spirituality, and/or one’s own life from a global perspective (DBR 200.2). In other words, students should choose a chapter from the course textbook and use the beliefs and claims from the chapter for the paper's central argument.

• Position paper (1,000-1,250 words): based on the textbook or preliminary research for the research essay (reliable sources).
• Annotated Bibliography (120-200 words per annotation): include 8 sources: 2 encyclopedia articles, 1 primary source, 5 peer-reviewed articles 
• Research Essay (2,000-2,500 words): use the work from the position paper and annotated bib (but students may change the topic)
  • Minimum 8 sources, including peer-reviewed research articles
  • An intro with an attention-getter and thesis statement (see the tools for finding quotations)
  • Body paragraphs with topic sentences, supporting details/evidence, and transitions
  • Direct and indirect quotes that are well-integrated and correctly cited (in-text and references list)

Panel Presentation Outline:

See the example showing citations in an outline. 

Search for Belief and Reasoning Systems in the library:

Author, A. A. (2020). Entry name in sentence case. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Summer 2023 ed.). Stanford University. URL

• Click "Author and Citation Info" to get the current edition date for the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy

Author, A. A. (n.d.). Entry name in sentence case. In J. Fieser & B. Dowden (Eds.), Internet encyclopedia of philosophy. Retrieved Month Day, Year, from URL

• There are no publication dates for this encyclopedia, so use (n.d.) and a retrieval date

Author, A. A. (2019). Entry name in sentence case. In R. Waithe & M. E. Hagengruber (Eds.), Encyclopedia of concise concepts by women philosophers. URL

• click [DOI] link for the date
• click the [P] for the permanent link

• Site - search by the type of website:
  • add site:.edu to any google search to limit results to university websites. Example: Are teenagers who play video games more violent? site:.edu
  • add site:.gov to limit the results to government websites. Example: Is the constitution still relevant today? site:.gov
  • add site:website name to search a specific website. Example: immigration site:nytimes.com
• File type - add filetype:.pdf or .ppt or .doc to find only those types of documents. Example: greenwashing filetype:.ppt
• Exact phrase - use quote marks to search for an exact phrase. Example: "video games"
• Part of the page - Google automatically searches "anywhere in the page" but if you know the search term is in the title, text, or URL, you can limit the search to the part you want.
  • add "intitle" to search in just the title of the site. Example: intitle:senior driver
  • add "intext" to search just the text of the site
  • add "inURL" to search in just the URL of the site. 

Note. Not every item in a journal that uses the peer-review process is an article. You will also find book reviews, letters to the editor, speeches, and more that are not peer-reviewed. 

Note. The URL at the top of each page in a Lynn University database will break and will not link you back to the article.