BIO 220 final report Task 1: choosing an issue guide

The most important thing about this assignment is what it commits you to. The issue you pick here becomes the topic of your course final report, which means every later task builds on it, and the later tasks include finding articles that oppose the position you take today. So the choice is not simply which environmental issue interests you. It is which issue has a genuine two-sided literature that you can find on both sides. Pollution is harmful is not a position, because nothing credible opposes it, and a student who chooses it will discover in Task 2 that there is nothing to argue against. Should the state restrict groundwater withdrawal for agriculture, or should this river be dammed, are positions, because informed people disagree about them and both sides publish. The test to apply before committing is simple: can you name, in one sentence each, two groups who want opposite outcomes and why?

The personal constraint narrows it further and is easy to skim past. Identify one environmental issue that has impacted you or someone you know. That is a requirement, not a suggestion, and it rules out choosing a topic because it is well documented. Work outward from where you live and what has actually happened: water restrictions, a landfill or plant siting, air quality, flooding, a fishery closure, wildfire, a contaminated site, a road or pipeline. Somebody you know counts, so a family member's occupational exposure or a friend's town's water supply is inside the rules. Starting local also solves the two-sided problem, because local environmental disputes almost always have organised parties on each side and a documented record in council minutes, agency filings and local reporting. A national issue gives you more literature and far less of the specific detail this report will need.

State your initial position in one to two paragraphs, and notice the word initial. This is the first of several tasks, and later ones require you to state the opposing case and rebut it, then assemble everything into a final report. A position that is stated too strongly here becomes hard to hold once you have read the other side honestly, and a position that changes is not a failure; it is what happens when you do the reading. So state it clearly but write it in a form you could later qualify. Say what should happen, who should do it, and on what grounds, because a position with an actor and an action in it can be argued about, and one that only expresses concern cannot. Compare we need to protect our water with the county should require metering on agricultural wells: only the second gives an opponent something to disagree with.

The three supporting articles are where most of the work is, and the word articles matters. Look for sources that make an argument or report evidence, not for pages that describe the issue neutrally, because a description cannot support a position. Before you commit, do a quick search for opposing material on the same question and confirm that it exists in reasonable quality. That takes ten minutes now and saves the entire Task 2 later. Check what kind of source each of your three is, since a mix of a peer-reviewed study, an agency report and a serious journalistic investigation is stronger than three of the same kind, and note the date of each, because environmental positions turn on current data and a five-year-old figure may already have been superseded. Record where you found each one as you go, because retracing a search later costs more than noting the link now.

Two mechanical points that are easy to lose. The references go at the end of the report, formatted to the GCU Style Guide rather than to APA, and the two are not interchangeable, so open the guide rather than assuming. And the brief tells you to review the grading rubric before beginning, which is worth doing here specifically because the rubric is what the whole multi-part report will be marked against, not just this task. Reading it now tells you what the final version is expected to contain, which in turn tells you what to collect while you are already reading. Collecting a source twice because you did not know you would need it is the single largest avoidable cost in a multi-part report like this one, and the rubric is free to read before you start.

Finally, keep the material you gather rather than only the three articles you cite. You will need opposing articles in Task 2 and a minimum of six references by the final part, so a research note kept from the start, with each source's claim, source type and date recorded, will save you repeating searches you have already done. Task 1 looks small, and it is the task that determines how much work every subsequent one takes. The students who find Part 4 straightforward are almost always the ones who chose an arguable, local, well-documented issue in Task 1 and kept notes from that point on. The ones who find it hard are usually the ones who chose a topic they agreed with completely and then had to invent an opposition that nobody actually holds.