[music playing]
Hello, Environmental Management students. [music fades]
Welcome to this short video on how to create an effective summary for your in-class discussions.
Please keep in mind that the idea of writing summaries is
an important skill for your workplace communications in the professional workplace,
where you will be asked to: Summarize and synthesize information from reports and articles.
Where you will report on the work of your teams and task forces.
Where you will present concerns succinctly to management and other stakeholders.
And, of course, where you will often write up the minutes of the many meetings that you will attend.
So, remember, these are just a few of the many examples of the importance and the place of effective summary writing in your future.
So, let’s take a look now at this particular assignment that you’ll be working on in this course.
In the Group Discussion Explanation, an example of a class discussion has been provided on the second page.
In this sample discussion, each student was asked to discuss three concepts that they read about that week.
These are concepts that the student found particularly important and interesting.
Then students were to post a question to engage their classmates in discussion.
If you were tasked with summarizing your group’s discussion, then you would follow these steps.
Step one, make a list of the concepts and ideas discussed during the week.
In this case, the list would contain: Contaminants, Contaminants that are prevalent but not notable until they cause harm,
Pollutants, Pollutants are contaminants that harm humans,
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), No regulation of CO2, Clean Air Act (CAA),
Disagreements about whether EPA has authority to regulate CO2, Clean Power Plan.
After you’ve identified the key concepts and their sources of information,
your next step is to weave the information into a coherent summary for the audience.
Here’s an example summary based on the list about contaminants and pollutants.
The summary starts with a sentence that introduces the overall topic of the discussion.
“During class this week, we discussed the differences between contaminants and pollutants.”
Next, the summary shares the main ideas that the students and the instructor discussed.
These ideas are presented in logical order and in the writer’s own words.
“We agreed that contaminants are prevalent in the environment. However, they go unnoticed until they cause harm to living
creatures (Author, Year).” The placement of the in-text citation makes
it clear which sentence contains information taken directly from a source.
Now come the next two points in the discussion.
Note how the summary paraphrases the original discussion and does not quote from it.
“Chendra pointed out that because water is a universal solvent, and we live on a water planet,
nothing is completely clean and uncontaminated.”
“Another important point was that the designation of pollutant is limited to those contaminants that harm to humans.
These are pollutants such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and CO2.
Currently, carbon dioxide concentrations are 45% above pre-industrial levels.”
Remember, facts and statistics taken from a specific source must be cited.
“These high concentrations are harming humans -- although not directly and immediately.”
To accurately reflect what was discussed during the week,
the summary also identifies when there was agreement and when there was uncertainty. 43 00:04:15,866 --> 00:04:20,699 “Initially, there was some uncertainty concerning whether CO2 was regulated,
until the instructor joined the conversation. The instructor explained that the Clean Air Act (CAA)
does not include a comprehensive list of all pollutants but rather gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
the power to regulate substances that would be classified as pollutants in the future. Citation (Author, Year).
That makes logical sense since there is no way we can know all possible pollutants in the future.”
As always, material statements of fact must be cited.
“This discussion led us to investigate Massachusetts vs EPA,
a Supreme Court case that decided in April of 2007 that the EPA has the power to regulate CO2. Citation (Author, Year).
We were all surprised that there have really been no direct regulations of carbon dioxide.
However, the Clean Power Plan attempted to regulate carbon dioxide. Citation (Author, Year).
Our instructor shared that we would learn more about the process of making regulations
and why it takes so long to produce and implement new regulations in our next graduate course in this program.”
Finally comes the reference list. All in-text citations must correspond with a source on the reference list at the end of the summary.
These reference citations must also in in APA style. [music] We hope this short video has been helpful.
If you have any questions, please post them in the Effective Writing Center Support discussion forum within your assigned week.
The Writing Fellow will be happy to answer your writing and citation questions,
in addition to reviewing a draft of your summary before submission. [music fades]