Big Idea 5 Overview: Team, Transform, and Transmit

Welcome to the final Big Idea of AP Research! Big Idea 5: Team, Transform and Transmit is not only the last Big Idea but also covers skills you’ll be using towards the end of your research process: revising, working with feedback, and presenting. 

** Research Tip: For a recap of Big Idea 5 in AP Seminar, go here!**

Information comes from the College Board’s AP Research CED.

Let’s begin by looking at the Essential Questions for Big Idea 5. 

Essential Questions for Big Idea 5

1. How can I best appeal to and engage my audience?
2. What is the best medium or genre through which to reach my audience?
3. How might I adapt my written and oral presentations for different audiences and situations?
4. How might my communication choices affect my credibility with my audience?
5. Which revision strategies are most appropriate to developing and refining my project at different stages?
6. How do I provide feedback that is valuable to others? How do I act upon feedback I have received?
7. How can I benefit from reflecting on my own work? Compared to AP Seminar, Big Idea 5 is a lot more about the “transform” and “transmit” parts because you don’t have a group project to do, and the majority of your work will be independent. However, you will need to consider the opinions of others if you get peer feedback and when you present, and you may be working with a faculty mentor or teacher. 

Breaking down these Essential Questions gives us four skills to focus on: engaging an audience, revising our work, giving and receiving feedback, and self-reflection.

Essential Questions 1, 2 and 3: Audience Engagement 

** Learning Objective: Adapting an argument for context, purpose, and/or audience.**

** Learning Objective: Engaging an audience by employing effective techniques of delivery or performance.**

** Learning Objective: Defending inquiry choices and final product with clarity, consistency, and conviction.**

Essential Questions 1, 2 and 3 cover audience engagement. 

After you’re done writing your paper, you will need to present it before, “a panel of trained evaluators and your AP Research teacher.” (Source: College Board.) The aforementioned evaluators and teacher will also ask you questions about your research and research process. You might also be presenting for your classmates or local experts.

Therefore, it’s important to understand how to present — how to adapt a written argument for a (roughly) 15 minute presentation, how to explain the said argument to an audience that won’t know everything about it that you do, and how to defend your choices during the questioning period of your presentation. 

Essential Questions 4 and 5: Revision 

** Learning Objective: Planning and producing a cohesive academic paper, considering audience, context, and purpose.**

** Learning Objective: Adhering to established conventions of grammar, usage, style, and mechanics.**

** Learning Objective: Communicating information through appropriate media using effective techniques of design.**

The ability to revise is one of the best things we have in our toolbox as writers. Revisions allow you to make your paper more clear and more persuasive with each revision. Using the revision process also means that you’re free of the pressure to write a “perfect” first draft. 

During the revision process, you might check for things such as grammatical errors, sentence clarity, proper design choices, and logical errors.

Essential Question 6: Feedback

** Learning Objective: Engaging in peer review to provide constructive responses to one another’s work, appropriate to the stage of a project’s development.**

** Learning Objective: Engaging in peer review to receive and consider responses to their work.**

Although you’re not required to have your research paper peer-reviewed in order to pass the AP test, it’s an option that the College Board highly recommends you take and that your teacher may require you to do. That means it’s important to take it seriously! Your peers may be able to spot errors that you wouldn’t. On the flip side, you could really help your classmates by giving them detailed, thorough peer reviews.

Essential Question 7: Self-Reflection 

** Learning Objective: Reflecting on and revising their own writing, thinking, and creative processes.**

** Learning Objective: Reflecting on the larger significance of engaging in the overall inquiry process and producing a completed scholarly work.**

Just like in AP Seminar, AP Research asks you to reflect on yourself. Specifically, your research process and writing! You may need to answer reflection questions during your presentation’s questioning period, and it will be helpful to have done a little reflection beforehand then. 

One last Big Idea left! Ready to go?