General Instructions:
Using the current web soil survey for the US County you discussed in Weeks 5 & 6, create a 20-25 slide PowerPoint presentation (you must get your Instructor’s permission for any format other than PowerPoint). In this presentation you should summarize the important points of the soil survey (e.g., soil series, associations, orders, and other important classifications dependent on site selection), integrating course vocabulary (e.g. cation exchange capacity, pH, soil polarity, and more) and important course topics (e.g. the five factors of soil formation as they specifically relate to your site, etc.) into your project. You can’t include them all, but make sure you present some of the scientific content of the soil survey. Part of your challenge is figuring out what to present, and what not to present and how to summarize and synthesize information. For example, if you pick an area with lots and lots of complex soil associations you might want to create some sort of summary table with soils down the side and soil traits across the top so you can easily compare and contrast, then do a slide or 2 for the most important or abundant of them to really get into the details of those couple.

Be sure to introduce your area of interest by presenting current demographic, economic, and land use data as well an any information (geological, climatic, landuse, or historical) that might influence the soil composition of the area. At the end you will need at least one slide titled “Future Impacts” where you postulate the future impacts to soils in that area, the agricultural usefulness of area soils, or other ideas that you find compelling, as well as a summary slide highlighting the most important points.

You should include images and maps in such a presentation for visual appeal, but remember to ALWAYS give proper credit where credit is due for the work (be it images or words). Images can be cited in the same way as text using standard APA citation style. Use appropriate citations throughout the presentation for each fact or figure shown. Information sources should be cited on each slide next to the information, just like you’d do in a paper. Then have a “References” slide at the end using the full APA style reference for each, these should be alphabetized. Image sources can be cited on the slide itself or at the end on a separate “Image Sources” slide – where they would be organized by slide number. Follow APA format for the reference citations both within your writing and in your references section at the end of your presentation. If you do not have a copy of the APA style manual, be sure to review guidance in the APUS library writing center or other reputable sources.

In our contents for Week 7 have included a pdf of wonderful PowerPoint presentation done by one of our students (with her permission) but be sure to just use it for inspiration rather than use it as a template. It is excellent, but it isn’t perfect so keep all that in mind when looking at it. In general when doing presentations you want to use bulleted or numbered lists and a good general rule of thumb is 5 bullets/numbers per slide and 5 words on each of those bullets/numbers. This is just an example, but you get my point. Avoid wordy slides and be sure each slide has an appropriate title that links back to the important requirements of the Assignments. I have also included a tips file in the Weekly Contents area.

Important Submission Instructions: Your attachment will automatically be sent to Turnitin.com directly from the Assignment window so you do not need a class ID or PW and you do not have to visit Turnitin.com. It normally takes about 15-20 minutes for Turnitin to return a similarity score to you (unless you wait until Sunday evening when there are 1000s of submissions – then it might take a LOT longer so give yourself plenty of time for resubmission). Your score is important, please see the explanations and requirements below. You have 3 submission opportunities before the due date/time of the Assignment and before grading in order to review your score and make changes such that it will be acceptable. PLEASE give yourself enough time to do this.

Your Turnitin score tells you one thing, the similarity of your work to that of others or yourself from other work. It doesn’t indicate whether that similarity has been cited properly, nor does it indicate whether that similarity is appropriate in some other way (e.g. an APA source citation on your References slide will come up as a similarity). Unproperly cited similarities are plagiarism and can result in academic integrity violations. Please be aware that self-plagiarism is also a type of academic integrity violation. If you don’t understand what items constitute academic integrity violations or what self-plagiarism means then please review the APUS Student Academic Integrity Policy here. Properly cited similarities are fine as long as there aren’t too many of them, more than about 25% of properly cited similarity means that less than 3/4 of the work you are submitting is your own which isn’t enough for your Instructor to assess your understanding of the material. The graphic below shows you how the percentage of similarity correlates to the color coding:

Any score that is blue or green where all of the items in the report have been properly cited is fine. If it is yellow, take a look to be sure you have not relied too heavily on direct quotes, cut-and-paste, or have some issues with citing your sources properly. Yellow Turnitin scores will receive point deductions depending on how low or high your percentages are. Turnitin scores that are orange or red, even if all cited properly, will not be accepted and will automatically receive a zero for the Assignment because that means that less than 1/2 of what you have submitted is your original work for this Assignment. Late submissions will NOT be accepted and submissions via Messages or email will NOT be accepted. Failing to submit your Assignment properly such that it does not get checked by Turnitin will result in at least a 10 point deduction (a letter grade) to your final score. If that happens, your instructor will run it through Turnitin manually and then the color/percentage rules above will apply