Michael,
What has worked well for my classes is to assign a term
paper/experimental research study at the beginning of the semester with a
specific outline of what is expected and when. They must submit a "topic
statement" within three weeks with at least three annotated sources. This
gets them started on their research and also allows them ample time to
switch topics if when conducting their preliminary research, it is not
quite what they expected it to be. It seems to work for most of my
students. Good luck.
Janice Swartz
