Students will launch their investigation into the fall of the Roman Empire by analyzing mystery source files, generating focused and investigable research questions, and developing a hypothesis that will guide their individual investigation notebooks and later PSA ZINE work.

Students will design a systematic investigation plan to answer their refined research question about the fall of the Roman Empire. They will determine an appropriate methodology for analyzing their secret file sources, identify evidence categories and quality checks, and produce a detailed data collection protocol that prepares them for structured evidence gathering in the next phase.

Students will systematically gather, document, and quality-check evidence from curated Roman Empire source files to build a reliable evidence base for identifying and ranking the most significant causes of Rome’s collapse and preparing for later analysis.

Students will interpret evidence from their Roman Empire investigation notebooks, identify patterns across cause categories, create visual representations of their findings, and determine whether their data supports, contradicts, or complicates their original hypothesis before moving to formal conclusions.

Students will synthesize their analyzed evidence to write warranted conclusions about the fall of the Roman Empire, explicitly acknowledge limitations in their investigation, generate new research questions, and formally present their findings through their PSA ZINE as a structured investigation defense.

Students will refine and develop focused, investigable research questions about the most significant causes of the fall of the Roman Empire and their modern parallels, preparing for a second cycle of investigation that will inform their PSA ZINE.

Students will refine their investigative plan for determining the three most significant causes of the fall of the Roman Empire and design a clear, evidence-based methodology that will guide source collection, categorization, and analysis for their PSA ZINE.

Students will systematically gather, document, and organize textual evidence from curated source files to answer their refined research questions about the fall of the Roman Empire. They will collect corroborated and contradictory evidence aligned to their methodology plan, preparing high-quality data for later analysis and synthesis into their PSA ZINE.

Students will interpret and synthesize collected evidence about the fall of the Roman Empire, identify patterns across sources, weigh the relative significance of different causes, and refine their ranked top three causes in preparation for their final PSA ZINE conclusions.

Students will finalize their conclusions about the fall of the Roman Empire by synthesizing evidence into their PSA ZINE, explicitly acknowledging limitations and counterarguments, and presenting their findings to an authentic audience during a Roman-themed exhibition.