Labor-Based Grading

Posted on August 18, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

This post was originally delivered as a conference presentation, later edited and presented at an English department summer retreat. I am in the process of revising it for an article submission. The article highlights three interrelated tenets of antiracist writing instruction that I have incorporated into my classes:

  • The importance of separating feedback and assessment (via)
  • Labor-based grading (and)
  • Transforming a rubric (to be accessible and used as a tool to)
  • Make assessment a core classroom activity

This blog post provides an overview of the all four of these principles. Below, I focus on the Labor part, though I believe I touch on all of these concepts.

Of course, a premise for this work is that every student has the right to their own language. The exigence for this work lies in the quantitative data that repeatedly shows unequal outcomes for non-white students.

Much of my research on this subject has centered on Asao Inoue’s work on antiracist writing and assessment (including his work with Mya Poe and others) and labor-based grading and Jesse Stommel’s work on ungrading. I have included the reference list to my earlier conference presentation below.

If as teachers, we cannot alter such pervasive unequal distribution of experiences and opportunities in our students’ lives, which affects who they are and what they bring to our writing classrooms, then I think our best strategy as antiracist educators is to change the way we understand and do writing assessment, while simultaneously building arguments and movements to change the larger structural racism in our society and schools. But this antiracist project begins in our classrooms because it is the only place we, as writing teachers, can begin. (Inoue, Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies, p. 29)

Over the past few years I’ve been working to embrace Inoue’s ecological strategies aimed at creating more equitable outcomes. Last year I focused on revising the rubric I use in my writing classes, moving away from attempting to judge a piece of writing’s quality. Instead, I assess whether the writer is working to enact the strategies I introduce and reinforce in class (both through in-class writing activities and grade norming sessions in which we use the rubric to evaluate papers from previous semesters). A goal of this rubric is to turn subjective evaluation into objective observation; rather than delve into the murky depths of whether a thesis is sophisticated, I’m looking to identify whether its most foundational elements are present. I try to make sure the rubric is student-focused, providing as much concrete language as possible describing what an element should do/look like. Instead of signs of mastery, I’m looking for signs of learning. In addition to avoiding the kinds of bias that can come from non SEAE (Standard Edited Academic English) style, such a goal ensures developing writers have equal opportunity to learn the fundamental elements of invention and arrangement. While some might see this as a loss of rigor, I’ve come to see it as a move toward fairness and equity; students get rewarded for the work they do in my classroom rather than penalized for the work they didn’t do (for whatever reason) before they got there.

At the same time that I’ve been altering my rubric and the ways assessment operates in my classes, I’ve also been tinkering with how grades are weighted and/or determined. I started this process 7 years ago in multimedia composing classes, as I was looking for a way to encourage students to take risks and recognizing the disequilibrium and technological knowledge gaps that caused them anxiety. So, in addition to having students co-create rubrics in class, I implemented something close to Elbow and Danielewicz’s version of a grading contract, which guarantees a student a “B” if they complete fundamental expectations regarding production, attendance, revision, and more. They write:

Thus you earn the grade of B entirely on the basis of what you do—on your conscientious effort and participation. The grade of B does not derive from my judgment about the quality of your writing. Grades higher than B, however, do rest on my judgment of writing quality. To earn higher grades you must produce writing—particularly for your final portfolio—that I judge to be exceptionally high quality.

Inoue has been critical of this style of grading contract because “exceptionally high quality” often translates into mastery of Standard Edited American English. Even if it doesn’t, the emphasis on subjective assessment of supposedly objective standards likely institutes a barrier that prevents all students in a class from earning an “A.” This was the model that I used for a few years, but after reading Inoue, I’ve become a bit skeptical of a model that reserves excellence for an elite few, and bases that reservation on the quality of a final product. Chances are that I didn’t do all that much in my 16 weeks to “teach” them how to create that product. Chances are most of the factors that contributed to that product stretch back over life experiences that came long before that student entered my classroom. If we want to hold true to the promise of Inoue’s opening quote, if we want to design racially equitable classrooms, then we need to make sure that every student who enters our classroom on day 1 has as equal a chance as possible of earning an “A.” That’s what equity looks like: ensuring that every student gets assessed based on the work that they do in our classes, and not penalized for what they might not have learned or mastered before they walked through the door.

Before I explore ways of assessing labor, I’d like to clarify how my rubric and grading policies work ecologically: moving towards this kind of labor-based grading model means that the rubric becomes a purely pedagogical tool. It assesses the quality of a student’s writing without assessing the quality of a student. What sells me on this approach more than anything is how the phenomenological context in which students receive feedback shifts: from “defense” of a (often unwanted) grade to explanation of how the quality of writing can improve. When we liberate feedback and assessment from grades, we create a more productive learning environment for all of our students, one that rewards experimentation, risk, failure, and growth (see specifically Stommel on ungrading; Stommel’s system is quite different than Inoue’s since it relies on student self-assessment rather than labor criteria).

Nuts and Bolts of Labor Based Grading
I’d like to share Inoue’s example of a graduated grading system that he uses in an intermediate-level writing class, one that awards a student a grade based on how much extra/exceptional effort they invest in a class. He developed this model after changing jobs and working in a university that (like UNC) awards plus and minus grades.

Below I share my version of this labor-based approach that I will be using in my ENG 225 and ENG 301 classes this fall.

Labor-Based Grading (ENG 225)
Following contemporary research on assessment and student learning, this course eschews a traditional evaluative grading system (one in which I use a rubric in order to judge the quality of your work) in favor of a labor-based system (one in which you earn a grade through the consistency and quantity of your effort). Research on traditional grading shows that it often rewards students from more affluent backgrounds and penalizes students from marginalized backgrounds. Labor-based grading does not penalize students who enter a class without supposed foundational prior knowledge. Given the myriad (and often insufficient) ways writing gets taught in many secondary schools, and the wide range of literate experiences y’all might have had growing up, I want to provide an environment that lets everyone succeed regardless of their previous preparation and experiences. My understanding of “success” is built around individual growth and development–this course is successful if you leave it as a more proficient and confident writer.

However, effort alone will not necessarily make you better–we need to focus that effort. Class assignments will often come with rubrics that identify key concepts, genre conventions, strategies, or content that has to be included in a project. If you miss something, you will have the opportunity to revise and resubmit until you get it down. My expectation is for recognition of key concepts, not necessarily mastery. We will familiarize ourselves with project rubrics and key concepts by grading past projects together as a class. This should help familiarize you with some key genre conventions for academic writing.

Both disciplinary research and my personal experience suggest that consistent effort is the best way to achieve success. Put simply, the more you write, the more energy you invest into your writing, the better writer you will become. Thus, assessment in this class aims to measure how hard you try more than whether your writing is “good.” You will earn a B in this course if you:

  • Pass in all assignments (relatively) on-time
  • Address basic concerns of a project’s rubric
  • maintain solid attendance, showing up to class on-time
  • and receive positive assessments from group mates on our team project

To earn a grade beyond an “B,” you will have to invest extra effort in this course. Completing two of the items below will result in a B+. Completing 3 of the items below will result in an A-. Completing 4 of the items below will result in an A. Note that the first item is required for a grade beyond a B.

  • Submitting revisions of the Sicart Analysis Paper and the Representations paper until they reach a 90% on the rubric and/or address key instructor comments (required)
  • Visiting office hours in order to share drafts or ask meaningful questions about a project/reading/work (minimum 2 visits per semester)
  • Bringing drafts of 2 papers to the Writing Center (be sure to get confirmation)
  • Making consistent and meaningful contributions to class discussions (especially when we are reviewing scholarship or are grade-norming)
  • Showing leadership and responsibility in group projects (noting what extra work you did in your self-reflection, taking into consideration peer assessment)

I recognize that some of these criteria might seem ambiguous. The last thing I want to do is to stress you out about whether or not you are doing well in this class. In fact, I’m aiming for exactly the opposite. The gambit I am playing here, backed by research, is that your writing will improve if you aren’t concerned about your grade, about whether your writing meets my subjective standard for what constitutes excellent writing. I think this model makes the path to earning an “A” more clear and accessible: do the things that we know tend to make you better writers and your grade will take care of itself. Do the things! You will complete a Google form in the final week of class that includes a self-evaluation, in which you justify your grade based on which of the things on the list you have completed.

For Further Reading

  • Balester. (2012). “How writing rubrics fail: Toward a Multicultural model.” In Inoue and Poe, eds. Race and Writing Assessment (pp. 63-77). New York: Peter Lang.
  • Behm and Miller. (2012). “Challenging the frameworks of color-blind racism.” In Inoue and Poe, eds. Race and Writing Assessment (pp. 127-138). New York: Peter Lang.
  • Burns, Cream, and Dougherty. (2018). “Fired Up: Institutional Critique, Lesson Study, and the Future of Antiracist Writing Assessment.” In Poe, Inoue, and Elliot, eds. Writing Assessment, Social Justice, and The Advancement of Opportunity (257-292). Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse.
  • Daiker, Donald. (1989). “Learning to Praise.” Ed. Chris Anson. Writing and Response: Theory, Practice, and Research (pp. 103-13). Urbana, IL: NCTE.
  • Danielewicz and Elbow. (2009). “A Unilateral Grading Contract to Improve Learning and Teaching.” College Composition and Communication, 61(2), pp. 244-268.
  • Inoue. (2015). Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future. Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse.
  • Inoue. (2014). “Theorizing Failure in US Writing Assessments.” Research in the Teaching of English 48(3), pp. 330-352.
  • Poe, Inoue, and Elliot. (2018). “Introduction: The End of Isolation.” In Poe, Inoue, and Elliot, eds. Writing Assessment, Social Justice, and The Advancement of Opportunity (pp. 3-40). Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse.
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ENG 319 14.M: Misinformation Review / Mini TED Talks / Project Check Ins

Posted on April 19, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Work Log Assignments [1&2 closed; 3&4 open]
  • Misinformation Review
  • Next Week’s Mini TED Talks
  • Presentation Sign Ups
  • For Next Class

Work Log Assignments

I’ve caught up in the gradebook and noticed that quite a few people have failed to turn in the Work Log assignments. I’ve closed logs #1 and #2, but if you haven’t turned in #3 and #4, you have until Wednesday. Given how the Corder and Blankenship readings emphasized the importance of time, I don’t want this to be something you crank out in the days leading up to the final presentation.

Misinformation Review

A few people missed Friday’s class, so I wanted to distribute the reading and provide a quick highlight. The second class in our misinformation series, Friday centered around a “Fighting Fake News” workshop report from Yale University’s law school. You should review that report before this coming Friday’s in-class write up.

The report notes the increasing threat misinformation and information overload present to democracy, which requires an informed citizenship deliberating decisions based on trustworthy, quality information. In the eras of print, radio, and television (before, say, the cable explosion of the 1990’s), Journalism (capital “J” indicating the discipline of study as much as the industry) worked to ensure quality information. But in the age of the Internet, Journalism has died to entertainment news–and this death is exacerbated by the creation of social media echo chambers in which one does not have to confront facts that might make one uncomfortable. The problem the report identifies resonates significantly with Miller’s explication of demagoguery.

The report then attempts to map out possible solutions, identify all of the agents in play and hypothesizing how each might contribute to a healthier political and news ecosystem. Those agents are:

  • Content Consumers
  • Content Creators
  • Content Distributors
  • Accreditation Systems (can we develop them–if so, from where? The government? Universities/Journalism departments? Private Sector?
  • Technological Design
  • Market Incentives
  • Law

While all of these agents have paths to helping improve our information ecology, we ended Friday’s class critiquing a lot of the suggestions.

I would highlight two of the questions posed by the report:

  • Assuming one can identify an objective truth, how do you give people the tools to get that truth?
  • Even if you could get people tools to distinguish truth from fiction, would people care enough to use those tools?

Note: Is “care” the right word?

Mini TED Talks

Link to sign up sheet.

The final presentation asks you to present your final project in a concise, entertaining, engaging, persuasive way. From the time you say “I’m ready,” you will have five minutes to make your presentation. I expect you to use at least 4:30 of this time.

You are welcome to give a talk, provide it is rehearsed and engaging. You can read off a paper for some of the talk, but not the whole thing. If you give a talk, you can accompany it with a handout or a Powerpoint/Slides presentation (which you will turn into Canvas or share with me prior to your presentation so we don’t have to spend time logging in and out of the computer).

You can also pre-record your presentation using a video camera (say your phone) and editing it in Google Rush. Or you can pre-record the audio for a Powerpoint or Google Slide presentation. This is quite easy, and I will show you how to do this later today.

This assignment is inspired by TED Talks, particularly their remediation of longer articles/presentations into talks of 6 minutes or less. Those talk are animated, which is great, but you can certainly achieve a similar level of engagement using still images.

In some cases 5 minutes isn’t enough time to cover the entirety of your final project. You might have written something much longer. As I initially indicated, my expectations for this project is something in the 6-10 page range–traditional academic conference length. But, even if you were reading briskly for the entire 5 minutes, that would come to about 3 and 1/2 pages. In other words, be selective with your five minutes. You might open up with a few sentences describing the total project, but then focus on what was the most interesting discoveries you made. How you end is up to you–but I would consider ending with a clear conclusion, even what you learned from the project, what you consider the significance of the project, and/or what you hope we do differently after hearing your talk.

Grading Rubric:

  • Is the presentation between 4:30 and 5:00? [2 points]
  • Does the presentation present something smart? unexpected? original? insightful? [Likert 5-4-3-2-1]
  • Is the delivery of the presentation, and/or the construction of multimedia elements rehearsed/polished? [3 points]

Adding Audio to a PowerPoint

There’s a few different ways to add audio to a PowerPoint. My favorite way involves using a Voice Recorder on your phone (which has a much better built in mic than most computers). So, for demonstration, I’ll use the Voice Memo. Record. Three dots > Edit.

You can also record audio directly in your slides.

Set Up Slideshow.
Rehearse Timings.

For Next Class

There’s an assignment in Canvas called Final Project Progress Check. In it, you can share whatever progress you’ve made on the final project thus far. On Wednesday, I’ll go around the room and we’ll talk about that progress. You can also ask a question.

If you have a paragraph prepared for me to read, or would like to share an excerpt of your work, that’ll do (you can include that in the Final Project Progress Check.

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ENG 225 13: Lit Review, Methodology Sections

Posted on April 13, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Timeline Review
  • Paper Arrangement Overview
  • Drafting Your Lit Review
  • Drafting Your Methodology

Timeline Review

  • April 6/8: Ideally you would finish your preliminary research, with 4-5 research annotations completed by next week
  • April 13/15: You would spend 8-10 hours completing whatever constitutes your primary research
  • April 20/22: You would draft the paper, focusing on the methods, findings, and discussion section
  • April 27/29: You would finish submitting the paper and submit it for my feedback
  • May 4/6: You would revise and resubmit the paper for a final grade. Final papers are due no later than Friday, May 7th at midnight

Paper Arrangement Overview

As we move from secondary research (reading articles) to primary research (playing your game), I wanted to review the overall paper structure. My goal today is to give you a clearer sense of how to outline your paper, and how/where the research you’ve already done might fit into that outline.

Of course, there is no one way to organize a paper. But there are some basic principles I can lay out that will work in most situations (genre here also matters, there’s a big difference between a research report and an argumentative essay–the former is more formal and suggests the structure I lay out below, the latter is more informal and allows for more creative play).

The standard science or social science outline looks like this:

  • Introduction: Articulates the problem that generated the research question(s). Poses the research questions clearly. Lays out the thesis: which is the answers to the research questions.
  • Literature Review: This reviews previous research on your topic. As I’ll show below, there’s a lot of ways to “group” this research; you should organize this section around ideas, not around individual articles
  • Methodology: This section generally needs to do 3-4 things (in our case, most of you will only do two of them). I will go over these below.
  • Data / Findings / Discussion: Sometimes you will see these sections separated–especially in the hard sciences where your data can be presented as numbers, graphs, and tables. I don’t think that any of you are working on these kinds of projects, except for those who are extending our race and gender projects. In these papers, you will see one section for Data (or Findings) and another section for Discussion, in which you compare your findings to previous studies in the literature review (noting what agrees and what disagrees with previous findings), you highlight and explain unexpected findings, and you suggest the impact of these findings (what they mean for the field, or what changes they suggest are necessary to our world–note that sometimes this happens in the conclusion).
  • Conclusion: I think conclusions are quite hard to write; they have to summarize the entire paper (which, REMEMBER, the introduction should do) and either end emphasizing a change (if you did not do this in the discussion), a hope, a direction for future studies (say, what you would do next or what you would have done differently if you could start over or had more time).

Many of you are not writing a social science, experiment or quasi-experimental paper (that is, you aren’t developing a survey, measuring something, counting anything, etc etc). You are doing a more humanities-focused approach, one in which you interpret a “text” to discover hidden meaning, social/personal significance, cultural reflection, etc etc. But–and I hope you already see this–your papers, like our Sicart papers, are following something pretty close to this approach.

These papers still use a literature review, one in which we survey previous interpretations of that text. Some of them might be more relevant to our study than others. These papers often also include a methodology, even if we do not label it that. That is where we lay out a way of thinking about texts. For instance, in our Sicart papers, we explicated two criteria that he identifies as essential to developing meaningful ethical game play: player complicity and wicked problems. Your papers then turned to examine scenes from video games and assessed how well they executed these elements. Some papers argued that games created powerful, meaningful ethical experiences without using these criteria. I am currently working on a paper comparing Walking Dead to The Last of Us, arguing that the particular form of engaged witnessing Last of Us evokes engenders powerful and empathetic moral reflection, even if we (as players) do not feel complicit in the choices “our” protagonist makes. So, I establish Sicart and use his theory to read Walking Dead and explicate its effectiveness, but they use A Last of Us to illustrate how games can leverage our genre expectations (making difficult choices) to amplify moral experiences (by taking the choice away, making us live through the choices made by another). In my literature review, I talk about the power of books and film to also make us witness and experience, but argue that the interactivity/engagement of games, and the emergence, development, and popularity of the “ethical choice” game amplifies the power here (games are special!).

Writing a Literature Review

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time I co-wrote a research article on multimodal artist Maira Kalman. The article reported on a multimodal project I developed for a Digital Video course on how Kalman’s approach to art echoed “radical” rhetorical theorists on the unpredictable nature of creative invention–on how we cannot teach creativity, but we can teach habits, practices, approaches, that might allow something creative to happen.

The original outline of that paper looked like this:

  • Introduction
  • Surveying Theories of Choric Invention
    • Gregory Ulmer
    • Thomas Rickert
    • Byron Hawk
    • Jeff Rice
    • Sarah Arroyo
    • Colin Brooke
  • Explicating Kalman’s Aesthetic

Our reviewer feedback was tough, but fair:

On a similar note, the theoretical chops of this article come forward as relatively unconnected blocks. In the ULMER section, we get a block on Ulmer, interspersed with several others, but then it becomes a set of legos: a green block (Rickert [and Rickert and Kristeva]), then a red block (Hawk), then yellow (Brooke [and Brooke and Barthes]), then blue (Arroyo [and Arroyo and Deleuze and Guattari]), then purple (Rice [and Rice and De Certeau]). Each of these feels strangely disconnected and underdeveloped, particularly given the potential connections between Kalman’s work and each of these authors (as well as the theorists they are working in relation to).

Essentially, we had walked through our literature, or research, one source at a time (even if each of those sections often involved multiple sources). What we didn’t do is cut across all those sources to identify the most important ideas they have in common. We didn’t synthesize our sources.

Our second outline looks like this:

  • Introduction
  • Synthesizing Theories of Choric Invention
    • Prioritizing Space
    • Juxtaposing Subjective (Affective) Experience Alongside Objective History
    • Resisting Synthesis
    • Resisting Codification
  • Explicating Kalman’s Aesthetic

The difference here is essential: moving from talking about one source at a time to explicating an idea. The Prioritizing Space section has references to Rickert, Ulmer, and Hawk. The Juxtaposing Subjective.. section also has references to Rickert, Ulmer, and Hawk. The Resisting Synthesis section has references to Brook and Arroyo. The Resisting Codification section has references to all of them, and brings in Rice and Shipka. I put this section last because it was the one idea that runs through all of the stuff I read.

Now I had a clear structure in place (four elements of choric invention) to read Maira Kalman’s work (and then to ask my students to consider in creating video remediations of their experiences in historic/affective spaces).

The point of the long story is this: whether you are writing a social/scientific research paper or a humanities scholarly analysis, you need to organize your lit review around ideas, not around names or articles (and researchers and scholars have names. Don’t write “this article” in an annotation or research paper).

In the proposal document, I suggested the following heuristic for helping you carve up your research:

  • Research that shows there is a problem
    • Also: if applicable, research that argues there isn’t a problem
    • Some of this might appear in the introduction, then get repeated/explored in more depth in the lit review
  • Research that addresses what is causing the problem
    • Not different articles, but different theories for causes (referencing multiple articles per theory if possible!)
  • Research that measures the public’s perception (or lack thereof) of the problem, I don’t think anyone is working on this kind of project
  • Research that offers solutions to the problem
  • Research from which you can steal methodology for your primary research (which would go in the methods section)

Methodology

As I mention above, a methodology section has four general goals:

  • How you collect your corpus (group of object you were going to study)
  • How you analyzed your corpus to produce data
  • How you analyzed your data or texts
  • How you ensured your analysis was reliable

Not every study does all four of these things. For instance, scholars do not have to explain why their interpretations of a text are valid–the act of interpreting a text is making a claim for the ingenuity and relevance of the reading. But if you are reading 500 student papers and assessing them for the quality of their thesis statement, then you need to demonstrate how those evaluations are consistent.

If you create a survey, an interview, a focus group, etc, then this section has to walk us through the questions you asked. How/why did you ask this question; what does it attempt to measure, why is it important?

Let’s look at a very detailed example.

Homework

According to our timetable above, you should be finishing up your secondary research this week and moving on to start playing your game.

To help keep this project on track, I want you to draft your literature review and methodology sections. If you have completed your annotations, then this should be easier.

And it is quite helpful to really pin down your methodology section *before* you start playing your game.

The due date for this assignment in Canvas is next Monday at midnight. I will do my best to check Canvas every day–the earlier you submit this, the earlier you’ll get my feedback.

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ENG 225 Week 12: Doing Research

Posted on April 6, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Whoa are We Behind
  • Reviewing Proposals
  • Methods/Practice Reading a Scholarly Article
  • Homework

Whoa Are We Behind

Let’s take a look at our remaining schedule:

  • April 6/8: Ideally you would finish your preliminary research, with 4-5 research annotations completed by next week
  • April 13/15: You would spend 8-10 hours completing whatever constitutes your primary research
  • April 20/22: You would draft the paper, focusing on the methods, findings, and discussion section
  • April 27/29: You would finish submitting the paper and submit it for my feedback
  • May 4/6: You would revise and resubmit the paper for a final grade. Final papers are due no later than Friday, May 7th at midnight

I lay this out because, honestly, I am a bit concerned. I myself have fallen behind in my grading and work, and there’s a number of people who haven’t turned in a proposal. Only one person in today’s class submitted there 2 research annotations.

Reviewing Proposals

I wanted to quickly examine a few proposals I received for today.

Strategies for Reading Academic Research

As we move past proposals, it is time to dig deep into research. I’ve already suggested some promising research to most of you. Now comes the challenging part–reading and digesting that material.

There’s a lot of jokes out there about the nature of academic research–why is it so difficult? Is this even English? Etc. Some of these chides are well-earned. But the thing to remember here is that academic vocabularies and styles develop over long periods of time. The more people study a particular problem, the more precise and deep meanings become.

Whatever your field, you will encounter these precise vocabularies. At first encounter, the prose can be daunting and appear almost impenetrable. My focus these next few weeks is to help acclimate you to academic discourse, to help you wade in to the kind of material that you will encounter over the next few years. Learning to read complex research in a short amount of time is a hard skill, but it is important to learn how to read it strategically. Likewise, it can be quite difficult to condense a 20-page article into a few paragraphs, and certainly the I have collected a few readings that should help us do this.

From these, we can synthesize a few general rules:

  • Pass One–see the framework–Begin by reading the abstract, introduction, and conclusion. Look at any tables, diagrams, and/or illustrations. Have an overall sense of the argument.
  • In or near the conclusion, look for where the writer(s) advocate(s) for us to do something differently; what does she perceive as the impact of this research?
  • Can you summarize the paper in a sentence or two in your own words?
  • Pass Two–
  • Highlight and annotate as you go. Look for keywords that indicate findings. Try to identify what problem the article hopes to address
  • Especially when working with research, make note of the methodology. Was it a survey? An experiment? Was it qualitative research (textual analysis), or more quantitative (measurement)? When working with scholarship, pay attention to the theorists or scholars the author uses to support her argument.
  • Pass Three–Can I answer all of the following questions?:
    • What are the central arguments in the article?
    • How did they collect their evidence?
    • What does their evidence say?
    • Why is the article important?
    • What recommendations do the authors make?
    • After reading this research, what recommendations can I make?
    • How does the article contribute to my field of study, my present research?

Stewart, Arif, and Starbird (2018) detail how russian trolls inflamed arguments regarding police shootings in America by creating and retweeting highly partisan, inflamatory statements. They analyzed almost 249k tweets from 160k accounts and found that over 91% could be classified as either leans-left or leans-right. They chart how many of the top hash-tags and tweets from each leaning were produced or boosted by russian agents. Their analysis reinforces research on how filter bubbles are increasingly plaguing American political discourse: they find that troll activity “primarily circulates within and not across” political leanings (pp. 5).

At first, it might take you an hour to go through three passes of a typical 25 page academic article. It might take you two hours. With practice and experience, you will likely be able to cut those times down dramatically. But I want to stress that academic reading takes a lot more time than reading a medium.com post. When doing research, set plenty of time aside and be sure to write–DON’T JUST READ!

For Next Class

I’m expecting a 3-4 hour commitment this week. As the schedule above indicates, you need to read and annotate your research. This should help you tighten your research questions, develop any research materials, before you start your primary research project next week.

The primary research component of your final project is the most laborious. I’m expecting that you will do research (whatever you proposed to do in your paper) for at least 8 hours. This is generally the most labor-intensive time of the semester in this class, as I try to push you through to a draft of the final paper before you start gearing up for finals in other classes. Get’er done.

In class next week

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ENG 319 11.F: Towards Our End

Posted on April 2, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Advising Question / Writing Minor Courses
  • Mapping Out the End of Our Year
  • The Proposal Assignment
  • The Work Logs
  • George Carlin on Shell Shock

Advising Question / Writing Minor Courses

Y’all get my email? Hey, look at these!

Mapping Out Our Year

I bet you didn’t remember that this class had a syllabus.

The Proposal Assignment

Thus far I’ve asked you to free write for fifteen minutes and then share ideas. I consider these activities part of rhetorical invention. They are the percolation process. Now its time to brew that coffee.

This weekend I’d like you to spend 1-2 hours working on your Proposal. The proposal asks a few formative questions and then asks you to think about your timeline. In addition to the intellectual elements of the project, I want you to contemplate the logistical dimension of it as well. Show me–better yet–show yourself–that the project is viable.

Some of you have clearly defined projects–you have some sense of where you will end up. Some of you don’t–you are venturing into a forest and are unsure what you will find. Either way is okay! Let me assure you that your final grade isn’t based on discovering something specific, so much as documenting the journey you took to get there. The proposal, and the corresponding work logs, are evidence of that journey.

The Proposal Document. Make a copy of this document, make sure it is set to “anyone with the link can edit,” and submit that link to the Canvas assignment.

George Carlin

Many of you likely have no idea who George Carlin is. The simplest description is a stand-up comedian. A more complicated description is a philosopher of language, since so many of his performances are tied to analyzing our (mis)use of language (his original claim to fame was the 7 dirty words you can’t say on TV).

Let’s watch his bit on euphemism. We will talk about this next week after you have read the Burke essay.

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Red Sox 2021 Opening Day Thoughts

Posted on April 1, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Yes I’m Still Complaining about Mookie

So tomorrow’s opening day. Ho hum. I find it a bit difficult to be excited about this 2021 Red Sox team. Frankly, I’m still mourning the loss of Mookie Betts, whose trade feels to me like the 21st century equivalent to the sale of Ruth. And while I acknowledge that the return Bloom got for Mookie–Verdugo and Downs–is a nice return, he should have never been forced to trade him in the first place. The Red Sox should have recognized Betts’ value earlier in the form of a 10/300 million dollar contract (way before Machado, a lesser player, actually go that deal). After the Machado and Harper signings, the Sox could have offered Mookie 10/350. Instead, they signed Chris Sale to what seems like a potentially disastrous extension (more on that below) and traded one of the best players of the 21st century. 

Overall, it is quite hard to predict what the Sox will be in 2021. Look at the wide difference between two major projection systems: Fangraphs’s Depth Charts and Dan Szymborski’s ZIPs. The former (rather surprisingly) projected the Red Sox to win 86 games–three more than the Rays–and to have a 47% chance to make the playoffs. The latter, which factors in injuries more and thus evaluates depth, puts the Sox at 79-83. Symborski notes that, in addition to questioning the health of, say, Sale and Rodriguez, ZIPs also doubts a projected bounceback season for JD Ramirez. And the lack of developed prospects means the Sox are really in trouble if everyday players miss any extended amount of time. I tend to agree with Szymborski; the lack of pitching and lack of depth foretells a sub .500 season.

Sale on Fire or Fire Sale

For me the zeitgeist of the 2021 season will be the health of Chris Sale. If Sale returns in mid-June and his velocity (at the very least) looks something comparable to his career norms (his avg fastball velocity with the Red Sox is 94.1mph, though that includes a career low 93.2 in his injury plagued 2019) then the Red Sox would probably consider themselves real contenders. As I see it, this leads to a chain of consequences: they likely resign Eduardo Rodriguez, though given his injury history it is hard to project what that contract might look like. With a good year, Rodriguez might get a deal in the neighborhood of Zack Wheeler’s 5/118 with the Phillies. A less good year might put him in Jake Odorizzi purgatory. But I digress. A healthy Chris Sale probably also leads to a Devers extension and makes it more likely that the Sox can either entice Bogaerts to opt-in or sign him to a longer extension. Whether these are good things–given those players’ defensive deficiencies at their current positions– is another question. But, in short, a healthy Sale likely means the Red Sox consider themselves a contender. We spend the next three years watching this team chase wild card spots.

But if Sale doesn’t look like Sale, then I’m guessing you’ll see a fire sale at this year’s trade deadline. The Sox would certainly trade Rodriguez. A few years back Marcus Stroman, whose career numbers are similar to Rodriguez’s, landed Toronto two top-ten organizational prospects Granted, that was from the ole LOL Mets, and Stroman had one additional year of team control. If we look at 2020 trade deadline deals, there’s less reason for optimism (especially if Rodriguez isn’t having a good year)–Mike Minor returned two PTBNLs and Robbie Ray returned a non-prospect. One can figure Rodriguez would be worth either one solid prospect (say in the 10-12 range) or 2-3 lottery tickets. The Sox farm can use all the prospects it can get. 

If Sale isn’t Sale, I’d also bet that the Sox would likely move on from Xander Bogaerts, who has an opt-out clause after the 2022 season. By WAR, Bogaerts has been one of the most consistent and productive infielders in baseball over the past 5+ seasons. Nevermind that his defensive numbers at SS are among the worst at the position… he can hit. It is a toss up whether he would actually opt out of the 3/60 left on his contract–players over 30 haven’t fared well in free agency lately. If Sale isn’t Sale, then it seems less likely he would stay with the Red Sox, and makes sense to deal him for a few quality prospects that could contribute to the next competitive window (likely 2025 after Sale’s contract expires). 

The biggest question mark for me is what the Sox will do with Devers. And, um, what is Devers? Is he a generational offensive talent? Or is he a slightly better version of Travis Shaw? For the record, Devers career OPS is .830 and Shaw’s is a .773 (and Devers is fueled by one outlier season). I tend to think he’s better than that career OPS shows, even if he might never again replicate his amazing 2019 season. But his defense is terrible. I cannot believe he stays at third base much longer, especially for an analytically savvy GM like Bloom. Trading Devers, with two years of control after 2021, would net a massive return. As much as I’d hate to see it, trading Devers is likely the fastest path to rebuilding a competitive team.

The Sox have a few other assets they could move, like Matt Barnes, if they decide to tear it all down. Given the lack of depth in the farm, outside of a few prospects who figure to be contributors more than superstars, it would might make sense to tear it down. But, as I said above, I think it all comes down to what Sale looks like when he returns; the Red Sox will have to make a decision on Rodriguez at this year’s deadline, and it makes no sense to keep him if this team isn’t going to compete for championships in 2022 and 2023. And if this is the path the team follows, it is likely we don’t see any attempt at playoff baseball for at least 3 years. Honestly, I’m not sure what long-term path I’d prefer.

I Guess the 2021 Team Isn’t Entirely Terrible?

I opened writing a few paragraphs about the hypothetical future of the team because the impending reality is, um, pretty bad, especially the rotation. I like Rodriguez, and Eovaldi’s extension has gone better than I anticipated. But the rest of this rotation? Phew. I realized the Red Sox were giving up on the 2021 season when I saw they resigned Martin Perez. Nick Pivetta was so bad that the Phillies got rid of him. It has been six years since Garrett Richards managed to pitch more than 76 innings in a season (and he likely would have been cut if not for Rodriguez missing the start of the season). Tanner Houck, who threw 17 good innings at the end of 2020, is projected by virtually every major system (The Bat, Zips, Depth Charts, Steamer) to have an ERA over 5.00. Beyond the starters, they sport a slightly improved bullpen, although I can’t feign too much enthusiasm when both closer options walk more than 5 batters per nine innings. It doesn’t matter if the Sox have made some offensive improvements when you have a pitching staff this bad. 

And, yes, the Sox do have an intriguing offense. Bogaerts is most certainly the best player on the team, and I *think* Devers will look more like the 2019 MVP caliber player than what we saw last year. Verdugo had a great 2020, and here’s to hoping he can repeat that in 2021 (fingers crossed). I really, really want to believe that JD Martinez didn’t disintegrate in the 2019 off-season. Bobby Dalbec scared me coming into spring training, given his 42.4% k rate and .394 BABIP last season; but he was excellent in spring training, and I’m now authentically curious to see what he looks like in the regular season. Franchy Cordero is a sort-of-high-upside-no-longer-prospect who certainly has the power if he can tame his career 35% k rate. Hunter Renfroe should probably be a platoon player, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him lose the starting job when (or if?) Danny Santana is healthy. I’d have rather held onto Benintendi rather than sell so low and replaced him with that trifecta, but if the Sox were willing to give up on him I am going to assume they had their reasons. A bounceback seems unlikely. I think Kike Hernandez was a smart pick up given his versatility–it makes sense to have a player who can fill gaps in the roster on a team that plans to test out a lot of 45-50 grade prospects over the next few years. But he shouldn’t be the starting CF. Especially when Bradley went to KC for 3/27 and the Sox are about 20 million under the cap. 

There’s probably not a lot of talent coming up from the farm this year. The brightest star is Tristan Casas, who has crushed the ball in the lower minors, but who also lives off fastballs and had a 28% k rate in A+ in 2019. I’m more interested in Casas’ AA season than I am in how the Red Sox do this year. If he can realize his upside, then we likely have a middle of the order superstar. Jeter Downs figures to be a quality MLB second baseman, but likely isn’t more than that (say a .270/.320/.420 kind of player). On the surface, Jarred Duran’s minor league numbers look impressive–but he’s also had a minor league BABIP of about .440. In 2019, in a 350+ PA sample at AA, he hit .250/.309/.325. Good thing he can play defense. These are the kinds of players that can top-off a good team, but there’s not enough there to constitute the core of a winning one. So either the veterans, led by Sale, regain their previous forms, or we ride the train to rebuildville.

Final Prediction

As I said above, I’m not too optimistic about this season, especially given our reliance on some players who have historically struggled with injuries and lack of depth/prospects. I’m thinking 77-85 sounds about right. All eyes on Sale.

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ENG 319 11.W: Closing Project 2, Introducing Project 3

Posted on March 23, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Closing Project 2
  • Introducing Project 3
  • For Next Class

Closing Project 2

I’d like to go over some of the results from the survey and share a few closing thoughts.

Addicted to Normal

I’d like to start us down the final path for this semester, the third project, which I am tentatively titling “What Can Your Body Do?” This project is tied to Sarah Hendren’s book What Can a Body Do?, and while Hendren isn’t a rhetorical theorist, she teaches at Olin College of Engineering, I feel her approach to design and disability resonates with both classical rhetorical theory (persuasion, audience awareness) and contemporary rhetorical theory as I define it (attention to alterity, to the the presence of others and other(ness)). In our next few classes, I hope to make those resonances clearer. In short, I’ve always considered rhetoric a way of thinking about how we can use words to solve real problems in the world. Hendren works similarly, even if she isn’t designing solutions in words alone. Working materially, she thinks about the significance (emphasis on “sign,” social meaning, interpretation, representation) of the things she encounters and/or builds.

Hendren’s introduction trips upon how the notion of average, taken as a Platonic Ideal, makes life harder on just about everyone (but especially–both materially and spiritually–on people who do not fit the norm). The intro works through how the very idea of “normal,” “typical,” and “average” developed through the previous through centuries, a kind of by product of scientific thinking.

I would frame the idea of average in terms of the Modern Enlightenment, and its search for “objective” certainty: the idea that there is one absolute certain truth that transcends our material world. This was Plato’s Truth. In Platonic ontology, physical reality is a reflection of a higher, transcendent, realm of ideals. This dual ontology forms the backdrop for Modern (18th, 19th, early 20th) century science–the idea, for instance, that there is one healthy notion of human sexuality (and many “deviant” sexual practices). The idea that manhood can be defined as one thing, one set of traits. That there is one perfect healthy body. Etc. The point for Hendren is to recognize that this very idea of normalcy, its instantiation as our idea of “healthy,” are cultural developments. And problematic ones. There problematic dimensions are often invisible to many of us.

Reading Hendren over break recalled for me a book that really changed the way I saw the world: Todd Rose’s The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World that Values Sameness. I first encountered an excerpt of that book a few years ago. There’s an excerpt online that is (theoretically) a 11 minute read. Let’s give it a go. Our addiction to “normal” runs deep.

Project 3

Our semester will end something like this: this week and next week we will read and discuss Hendren. But we will be reading with a purpose in mind: I will ask you to develop a project based upon her work. This project can unfold in any number of ways–it can grow out of intellectual curiosity, personal relationship. It can work towards spatial awareness. It can manifest in a potential chapter to her book, a personal essay, a policy proposal for the University, a prototype object. As we read Hendren, there’s a few questions for you to think about:

  • What else could you read? Does she mention something that makes you want to read more (this might grow out of her chapter format, which is often an exploration of a person or space, a history of a disability, a new idea or theory, a circle back to the person or space)
  • Where could you explore? Hendren’s chapters are often both pointed explorations of a space’s affordances (or hindrances) and personal phenomenological reflection (rigorously walking through what she is thinking or feeling as a result of being in a space or encountering something/someone).
  • What can you design? and/or What can you make? (and who might you be making it for?)
  • What’s the point? Why do the thing you want to do, or read the thing you want to read?

After we’ve spent two weeks (this week and next) reading, thinking, and writing, I’ll ask you to develop me a proposal that lays out what kind of work you want to do. This, for me, is the best part of teaching a seminar, since it offers you the opportunity to design your own assignment, one that speaks to how the course material interests you. I hope you find something of interest in Hendren’s work, some lead you can follow.

For Next Class

Read Hendren’s Introduction (pp. 1-32).

For next Monday, I’ll ask you to read the chapters on Chair and Room. Next Monday night, I will ask you to read one more chapter and the epilogue. For next Friday, you will complete your final Write Up for the semester on Hendren and we will share those in class. You will develop your proposal next weekend for Monday’s class.

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ENG 225 Week 11: Sicart Revisions, Final Project

Posted on March 23, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Sicart Revisions
  • Final Project Possibilities
  • Final Project Proposal Form
  • Wrapping Up Project 2
  • Office Hours Friday

Sicart Revisions

I have graded the Sicart papers. Due to COVID, I did not invest as much time in them as I normally would–so my comments are restricted solely to your introductions. I would stress (again) that you cannot write a quality introduction until you’ve finished writing the entire paper, since the introduction has to introduce your conclusions–those conclusions are the arguments, the claims, that the paper seeks to defend. Some of you did this (and in a moment I’ll share examples of introductions that do this work). If so, then congrats! You got a grade in Canvas and are done with Project 1.

Some of you didn’t do this–you either wrote your introduction before you wrote the rest of the paper or wrote a generic introduction that lacks a specific argumentative claim. There isn’t enough detail in your introduction. I actually have to read the whole paper to identify the smart thing(s) you discovered. So, if your paper doesn’t have a grade in Canvas, then you need to go back and rewrite the introduction so that it reads like an actual academic introduction: one that lays out *all* the important findings proven later in the paper.

If you get nothing else out of this class, it will be how to write the kind of introduction that sets you up for an “A” in your other classes.

To the Google Doc.

Final Project Possibilities

It is time to begin working on our final paper projects. I see three possible trajectories for the final paper. Regardless of which one you choose, here’s some details on the final paper:

  • It has to involve at least 5 academic, peer-reviewed sources. A major focus of the final paper involves demonstrating the ability to read and synthesize (not just summarize) academic research
  • It will involve some amount of primary research (so, not just reading stuff, but doing stuff)
  • It will be 1600-2000 words (7-8 pages double-spaced) not counting title page and reference list
  • It will be in APA format

I see three possible avenues for a research project:

  • Analyzing a specific game
  • Further Developing Project 2
  • Investigating a Common Place Argument

The first option involves selecting a game in order to both review previous scholarship on the game and to propose some new way of analyzing it. For instance, you might apply Sicart’s theory of ethical gaming to a different game. Your research review would look at what scholars have already said about the game. Perhaps someone has already investigated ethical decision-making in the game–cool! You could confirm or challenge their research. You could look at different decisions. Perhaps, instead of ethical decision making, you want to look at racial/gender/LGBTQ+ representation. Cool! Although this might get trickier if someone has already studied this–unless you want to challenge/complicate their interpretation.

The goal here is to make sure you have some “space” to ask a question that hasn’t been definitively answered. So we do some research to carve out that space.

The second option asks you to pick up the work we started in Project 2 and move it to conclusion. We generally skipped a proper research review in project 2–so that’s the first thing you would have to do. What have previous studies said about racial/gender representation in games? You would be doing research to flush out the research review. This will give you some numbers against which you can compare your findings.

LBGTQ+ folks: I’m not sure this would work for you. However, you could do something closer to option #1–doing a much deeper/more nuanced analysis of LGBTQ+ representation in a game. This might involve actually playing the game in order to present and analyze the complexity/subtlety of a game. You’d still need to do some research on LGBTQ+ representation (in order to set up a baseline expectation to compare/contrast your analysis, to situate it) and you’d need to do some research on your game (has anyone talked about LGBTQ+ representation in the game before). So a little bit of column A, and a little bit of column B.

The third option is the most generic, but perhaps the most appealing to the non-gamers. This option asks you to do a more traditional research project regarding what I am terming “video game commonplaces.” In Rhetoric, commonplaces are the argumentative positions people generally “step into” when they first start thinking about a topic. They are kind of like the general knowledge on a subject (note: what people generally consider doesn’t mean they are true! Just that they are the arguments you are likely to find in the wild, wild, public–hence commonplaces). For gaming, these are generally:

  • Games, Gender, Race, and Toxicity
  • Games and Violence
  • Games, Community, and Empathy
  • Games, Education, Learning

I have a link to a document that collects sources on these issues.

Let me highlight one other potential project, related to Games, Education, and Learning. James Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Literacy and Learning is one of the most important books in the history of video game scholarship. Gee argues that video games have intrinsic educational value regardless of their content. [Quick Scan of the table of contents]. Furthermore, every chapter ends with a checklist of claims regarding the value of games. So, a research project could be selecting a game and assessing what kinds of learning it promotes (using Gee’s end of chapter checklists as a guide).

Wrapping Up Project 2

Sometime this week, I will go through the Project Two materials that were completed and assign grades based on participation in the project. That’s my homework for next week.

For Next Class

You need to complete a Project Proposal document. Make a copy of that document in Google Docs. Submit a SHARE link (set to edit) to Canvas. Completing the proposal should take you 2-3 hours.

If you have not received a grade on Project One, then you also need to revise your introduction.

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ENG 225 8: Analyzing Data, Writing Methods, Drafting a Report, and Planting a Seed

Posted on March 9, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Analyzing Data
  • Writing/Examining Methods
  • Planting a Seed
  • Before the Start of Break

Analyzing Data

Soon we should have all of our data collected/submitted. The Thursday class has until tomorrow to get their work done. Once completed I will (as usual) contact the race and gender team with their updated assignments. (LGBTQ+ team is on their own schedule).

I will update the Canvas assignment Thursday after all of the data has been submitted. You should be able to complete the data analysis assignment in under an hour (and, beyond that, there is no other homework assigned over break).

Writing a Methodology Section

One of the hardest parts of qualitative/quantitative research concerns writing up a methodology section. Methodology sections can grow quite long and detailed, such as this section for a PEW center survey on Gaming and Civic Engagement. This level of detail adds reliability and validity to the research and is what generally separates academic research from other forms of study.

Generally a methodology is divided into two sections:

  • How did you collect the things you analyzed?
  • How did you develop your method of analysis?

Your answers to these questions have to be detailed enough that someone unfamiliar with your project could recreate your research. And the purpose of these questions (especially the second one) is to demonstrate how you have worked to ensure the accuracy and integrity of your research.

Planting a Seed

Before we leave for break, I’d like to plant a seed regarding your final project. The final project is flexible, and offers you options. Here’s a few requirements.

  • The final paper must involve academic research. This can be into other reads of a particular game, or research into video games/gaming in general
  • The final paper must use APA formatting

That’s not a particularly long list! Generally, there’s a few ways to approach this paper:

  • You can continue/further develop the Project 2 research project. This means building a more thorough literature review, collecting more data, and deepening your analysis
  • You can “Sicart” another video game. This also involves doing a deeper lit review (on Sicart, on your game, etc).
  • You can research and develop an “issue in gaming” paper. Here is a list of topics and research we compiled last semester

Before You Leave for Break

Complete the Week 9 Data Analysis and Methodology assignment in Canvas.

The first part of this assignment will be to draft a methodology section for your research team. Everyone will do this individually and we will work on this over break.

The second part of this assignment (which I will develop Thursday morning after everyone has submitted their research) will ask you to work with our collected data in order to produce a finding. Everyone will produce a finding (and, I imagine, folks will do different things with the data!). We will synthesize these findings and revise your methodology drafts when we return after break.

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ENG 319 8.M: Project 2 Final Expectations

Posted on March 8, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Reviewing Papers (I still have 3 to do)
  • Expectation #1: The Reflection
  • Expectation #2: The Letter

Random Introductory Thoughts

As I indicated when we started this project, I was working to develop a space/time in which we could attempt to enact Miller, Blankenship, and Ore’s rhetorical approaches.

In terms of Blankenship, I wanted to think about how to enact critical self-reflection in a way that attends to postpedagogy. That is, how can I ask you to position yourself in socio-political contexts without risking performativity. Authentic self-reflection is personal work, potentially uncomfortable work, and, thus, has to be personal. It is also work that I shouldn’t force you to do. [Sidenote: what is higher education? What is a seminar? What is my job?]

Ore is a bit tricky, since (unlike Blankenship), her book lacks a pragmatic aim. As I said when we were discussing the first chapter, I think the argument of Ore’s book is clear, but she leaves the consequences of that argument a bit ambiguous. It is up to us (as teachers, students, citizens) to figure out what to do as a consequence of her argument.

The project I developed–which I’d call, drawing upon Heidegger “dwelling with race”–aims to splice Blankenship and Ore together. My response to Ore’s book is to think about how I, as a white educator in a position of (sorta) power, is to use my power to amplify her voice, to lend credence to the problem(s) she identifies. At the same time, as a postpedagogue, I am not trying to dictate a particular solution to that problem, nor even to “persuade” (which in the power context of the classroom might as well read “force”) you to agree with her. At best, my aim is exposure with (a la Blankenship and Corder) space for digestion, reflection, and (non-policied* need a better word) response.

Along the way, I’ve asked you to close read some news stories. I haven’t yet had time to comb through your entries yet. As of Sunday afternoon, there’s 47 responses submitted so far. We have 17 active students, so 6×17=102. So… um…

Well, let’s review the Calendar as I imagined it back on Feb 19th:

  • Monday, March 8: Lay out final reflection assignment. Homework: make sure you have read and annotated all 7 sources. The weird timed thing on Wednesday will be open note.
  • Wednesday, March 10: In class “quiz” on sources. (timed writing that should take around 30 minutes). Let me know if you need help locating a lap top.
  • Friday, March 12: Class cancelled. Submit your Final Reflection. If you so choose, submit any other materials you wouldn’t mind me using anonymously in a conference paper or academic article.

We are going to stick with this schedule, but I am going to tweak the assignments a bit.

Wednesday will still be an in-class “quiz,” open note. I will ask you to identify some patterns/observations in news stories that speak to the theorists with whom we’ve been working. It isn’t a quiz as much as a reflection piece. I’ll also ask you to reflect a bit on the course thus far. My goal is to keep the quiz anonymous, so as long as you show up and work for the class session, you’ll get an A.

Expectation #2: The Letter

This second project attempts to put theory into practice. It should take you two hours to complete.

For one hour, I would like you to draft a letter to someone. The letter should have a purpose. (Aren’t those instructions clear!). The purpose should be rhetorical in the terms I have laid out this semester: when selecting to whom to write, and what to write about, you should be thinking about Miller, Blankenship, Corder, and/or Ore. Maybe not all of them. Your letter should reflect what in this course has mattered to you.

I will not collect the letter, nor ask to read it. I will create a submission portal in Canvas if you *want* to share it, but such sharing will not be required.

I will also develop a short google form that asks some basic information about the letter for you to complete once you have finished it.

There’s no class Friday (let’s just start that break thing a day early.

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