Writing an annotated bibliography can help you create a stronger concept in your mind of the current field as you create your project. It is also useful because you can grab your own thoughtfully crafted summaries from it when you are working on your draft. It can help you to think about how you can revise and expand on your outline, which is the other part of this assignment. It is also a place to create some analytical statements about the sources you have found.
Annotated Bibliography
What kind of annotation are you writing? An annotated bibliography is a list of reference citations to books and articles used for researching a topic. Each citation is followed by a summative or evaluative paragraph. Please note that these annotations are different than the ones you created for your outline. In the Unit 5 outline, the annotations each described an element of a source as it related to your project. For the bibliography, each annotation is a summary of the author’s own main points, which are probably somewhat different from yours. You will also want to include some kind of analytical or evaluative statement. Each annotation should be approximately 24 sentences in length.
What should be included in the annotations? Part of each annotation should be a brief analytical or evaluative statement about the source. For instance, you might answer one of the following questions:
Does this source fill a gap for professionals in the field?
Is the usefulness of this source limited to a certain context? For example, it is valuable to academics but less useful to practitioners?
Do the author’s conclusions seem well-informed and relevant?
Who might you recommend this source to? For example, would this source be useful to people interested in a particular topic or IT leaders who struggle with a certain area of their practice?
Why? The purpose of the summative and analytical annotation is to create a statement in your own words of the main arguments, primary points, and the topics covered by the article or book, and about why they matter. Please keep in mind that your annotations are statements you can use in your IT Enterprise Strategy paper. Aim to write summaries that are brief enough to be included inside a paragraph when you are introducing a new source in your course project, while still comprehensive enough to cover the source’s key concepts. This is not easy to do, but it will save you quite a bit of time when you are writing your draft. Remember that you are always welcome to use your own writing from an old assignment to a new one, so long as it suits the project and you are certain the words are your own.
For this portion of the assignment, list 1015 relevant scholarly articles and other professional-level resources, and use these to create an annotated bibliography. You may use the same sources as you have in previous projects; you are also welcome to switch out previous sources for more relevant ones. Include the sources you already found for your Library Research activities in previous units. Also, use the Capella Library and databases to look for additional peer-reviewed journal articles and practitioner articles that relate to your project.
Outline Revision
Using the peer-reviewed articles that you located and annotated, revise your outline from the Unit 5 Project Outline assignment. At this time, you might also want to review the course project description for the expectations and grading criteria of your project when it becomes due in Unit 10. To revise your outline, here are some questions you might ask yourself:
Argument: How might you update or improve your main point, based on the bibliography you have completed and now that you are looking at the project after some time away from it?
Organization: Is this the best structure for your project? The Organizing a Paper section of the Capella Writing Center website, linked in the Resources, can be useful in finding the right way to frame your project.
Supporting evidence: How might the new material you have integrated into your bibliography be used in your project? Remember that you can re-use your own writing, word-for-word, throughout this quarter.
Feedback: Based on what you heard from fellow learners, how might you improve the project?
Requirements
Your annotated bibliography should be approximately 36 double-spaced pages. Your outline should be approximately 23 double-spaced pages, including your reference list. Prior to writing this assignment, please be sure to look at the Project Outline and Annotated Bibliography Scoring Guide to learn how to maximize your score. Your paper is due by the end of this week.
