Welcome to the Modern Studies assignment

What will you be doing in this assignment?

• Researching a topic that interests you from modern studies.

• Collecting some pieces of useful information to help you with your assignment.

• Deciding if these pieces of information are useful to you.

• Choosing how to present your findings and conclusions.

• Making sure you follow advice so that you can pass this assignment.

Researching a topic that interests you from modern studies

You should agree an issue to research with your teacher.

It must be from one or more of the units you studyin modern studies:

Democracy in Scotland and the United KingdomSocial Issues in the United KingdomInternational Issues

You should come up with a hypothesis to test, for example:

The majority of the Scottish people want independence.

The main reason young people get involved in crime is because there are no jobs for them when they leave school.

Collecting some pieces of useful information to help you with your assignment

You need to gather useful knowledge to help you understand what your assignment is about.

You need to keep a note of where you got your information from.

You may have a guest speaker such as an MSP come to visit your class and you can ask them questions to help you with your research.

You will need to find information from at least two different sources, eg the internet, a newspaper, an interview etc.

You need to make your own notes from the information you have collected.

Deciding if these pieces of information are useful to you, ie are they biased?

Are the sources of information going to help you with your research?

You will need to use your modern studies expertise to help you detect exaggeration and bias.

You should make some notes about how useful your sources are.

Choosing how to present your findings and conclusions

You need to think about what your final assignment will look like.

You may decide to use a:• poster• podcast• wiki• blog• report• digital presentation• talkor something else that you have thought of.

Your conclusions should relate to the hypothesis you set yourself at the beginning of this research.

Your teacher will be on hand to advise you as you carry out this exciting piece of work. You must listen to their advice.