ENG 201 2.T: Job Ad Analysis

Posted on August 28, 2018 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Quick Exercise: What is Professional Writing? What is Technical Writing? What kinds of genres/activities are germane to each? How do we distinguish the two?
  • Reading Review: Brumberger and Lauer
  • Reading Review: A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing
  • Proposal Report
  • Job Coding

Brumberger and Lauer responses

Holly writes (and this trips on a number of your posts):

I was intrigued by statements made on page 238 and 239 where the authors explore the idea of technical communication undergoing a transition from document-based production to one which is content-based. The researchers state that they cannot say that technical communication has undergone “a sea change” from one medium to another, rather that there is a statistical trajectory which expresses a trend of content-based production in newer jobs.

I think the job ad analysis shows that, while there’s a bunch of jobs out there that are still basically textual, there’s also a lot of jobs out there that involve multimodal composing. I do think the site that I am using for this project–mediabistro–definitely leans toward the multimodal side.

Taylor and Jason both addressed salaries. Salary can be tricky. It is not unheard of for a company to ask you your salary expectations during an interview. It is useful to know what a median range would look like in those situations. Never go into a job interview without knowing what you should be paid.

Molly wrote:

I definitely started to feel wary about what I have been paying to study at this college as opposed to what the job market I am interested in requires. Brumberger and Lauer touched briefly on how the education system is failing prospective technical writers in their conclusion, but I wish they had included specific examples of this failure throughout their article and touched on more solutions. While I was quite aware that all these literature classes my English major requires were of little use to me, it would have been nice to be presented with some other viable options.

Ouch. I don’t think an English degree is useless. Here’s what I’ll say–a degree in English is quite marketable. But it is on you to know how to market it. Learn to write understandable yet engaging prose and people will notice. My hope in designing this course (and my course in Document Design and Digital Video) is to try and supplement the traditional literature major. But even if you don’t take another professional writing course, recognize that a degree in literature has both attuned you to read and think carefully. Those are valuable skills in an age of skimming, as Maryanne Wolf argues in The Guardian:

Increasing reports from educators and from researchers in psychology and the humanities bear this out. English literature scholar and teacher Mark Edmundson describes how many college students actively avoid the classic literature of the 19th and 20th centuries because they no longer have the patience to read longer, denser, more difficult texts. We should be less concerned with students’ “cognitive impatience,” however, than by what may underlie it: the potential inability of large numbers of students to read with a level of critical analysis sufficient to comprehend the complexity of thought and argument found in more demanding texts, whether in literature and science in college, or in wills, contracts and the deliberately confusing public referendum questions citizens encounter in the voting booth.

Multiple studies show that digital screen use may be causing a variety of troubling downstream effects on reading comprehension in older high school and college students. In Stavanger, Norway, psychologist Anne Mangen and her colleagues studied how high school students comprehend the same material in different mediums. Mangen’s group asked subjects questions about a short story whose plot had universal student appeal (a lust-filled, love story); half of the students read Jenny, Mon Amour on a Kindle, the other half in paperback. Results indicated that students who read on print were superior in their comprehension to screen-reading peers, particularly in their ability to sequence detail and reconstruct the plot in chronological order.

Reading well is quickly becoming a valuable skill in and off itself.

Carolyn Miller’s “A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing”

Erika writes:

What Miller is trying to say as a whole is whether one is going into a technical writing field or not, it is vital that we think of it from a humanities perspective. She requires the reader to think of the subject as a means of better communication between people, as opposed to just a certain way and tone of writing.

This captures a lot of the feedback I was putting into Canvas–that ultimately, in a democracy, the exercise and communication of science is dependent on persuasive writing. People aren’t machines. They aren’t Vulcans. We can–like Plato–condemn people for their lack of pure rationality and wish for an intellectually oligarchy in which the inferior know their place and listen to their superiors. Or we can–and I think this is the better option–recognize that communicating information requires we do so in a way that is engaging and persuasive. That leaves open the possibility of response and debate (rather than closing such things off via a tone of imperative authority).

Philosopher Bruno Latour would argue that the “Earth is round” is a fact. A fact is knowledge gained via empirical experiment or measurement. A fact can be proven right or wrong.

Truth is a bit more slippery. Truth is something we know without empirical evidence, something that cannot be measured or verified. Take, for instance, Plato’s assertion that the material world is the physical instantiation of an Ideal realm. Or the Catholic belief that sinners descend to hell after death. Truths (in this precise sense) transcend our ability to verify them–they often require (from a skeptics perspective) a leap of faith.

Report / Proposal

The first major assignment this semester is a combination report/proposal. You will compose a report based on your analysis of 20 job ads (to review: the 10 that I distributed last class plus 10 of your choice). I do not have a set length for the proposal; we will generate an exact list of section requirements on Thursday using the ABO handbook.

I give you liberty in your choice of ads, though I would suggest not choosing more than 5 of one kind and not more than 3 different kinds of ads (so that you can strike a balance between depth and breadth). You will code these ads using the scheme we use in class. You will then collate your data into meaningful tables (using the Brumberger and Lauer information as a model).

If possible, I will encourage you to “team up” and work collaboratively (on both crafting the report/proposal and learning a skill). Having a partner can both help keep you accountable and provide a soundboard for difficulties, frustrations, and victories.

For the proposal portion of the report, you will identify a job skill that you would like to develop. You will research methods for gaining said skill and layout a 3 week course of study (how many hours per week will you dedicate to the activity, how can you document those hours spent, what tutorials/readings will you do, etc). This portion should include a calendar along with deliverables.

Job Coding

Back to work. Here’s our coding scheme.

Homework

Code five jobs for Thursday’s class. Input your codings into the class Google Doc.

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ENG 122 2.M: Proposal Assignment

Posted on August 27, 2018 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

The Proposal Assignment

Vitals:

  • Length 700 to 1000 words
  • Specific writers and articles worth responding to
  • MLA or APA format with Works Cited / References list and citations where appropriate
    Submitted to canvas
  • Due Saturday, Sept 1st at 11:59pm, Proposal Project in Canvas

Note that it is strongly encouraged that you visit office hours to discuss your project with me before submission. Office Location & Hours: 1180D this Wednesday 1:30-3:00. Thursday 12:30-2:00 (extended hours this week to talk proposals).

Let’s take a look at the short project description:

In the proposal project you will articulate to me which discourse community you will join. Medium.com facilitates this process during account creation, since it offers you a variety of topics you might be interested in reading about. You will begin by selecting one of these topics and identifying which authors or outlets you will pay attention to–continue building off your community research assignments. You will also identify active places on the Internet at which people are writing and commenting and identifying a few of the major personalities that drive this community. I am interested in learning what you can add to this community, and how you see yourself fitting in. We will discuss this project more during the first week of class.

The proposal project is meant as an exercise in invention, in generating ideas that you can execute in the coming weeks. Writing on deadline every week can be more difficult than it might seem; this stage of the semester is meant to help you develop a wealth of materials that you can revisit in future weeks.

Grading Rubric:

  • Sufficient Research: [51%] while I can’t put an exact number here, I’ll be looking to see that you have done your homework, so to speak, and that your paper reflects reading and research into the topic by explicating the names, sites, terms, activities, etc central to your topic. This should include numerous citations (both quotations and/or paraphrases). I leave the precise amount vague because some of you will go very deep on a small number of sources, others might be shallow but spread wide.
  • Arrangement: [13%] Following below, I’ll be looking to see that your proposal reads like a proposal and follows the genre conventions we identify in class.
  • Edited Prose: [13%] I expect that you will have carefully edited your prose for correctness and clarity. Also, since we are dealing with digital documents, I will be checking that links are properly hyperlinked.
  • MLA or APA format: [13%] I will be checking three things here. First, I will be looking to see that your proposal is formatted according to MLA or APA guidelines. Second, I will be paying attention to how you format *subject headings.* Third, I will be paying particular attention to how you use direct quotes and/or paraphrases (checking the parenthetical, quotation marks, commas, etc).

Genre and/as Proposal

First, let’s talk about the term genre. Then we’ll talk about some of the fundamental parts of any proposal. Finally, I want to flesh out what my specific expectations are for the arrangement of this proposal.

I would like your proposal to have 3 sections:

  • Project Description
  • Preliminary Research
  • Potential Topics for the First Two Weeks

The first section should be a Project Description. In a few paragraphs, this section should give me an idea of what you want to write about this semester: what community will you join? What is your background in the topic: are you a novice just joining the conversation or have you been invested in this for years? Is that investment casual, or is it more rigorous? Why do you think this community is important and worth doing right now?

The second section should be Preliminary Research. This section should give me concrete specifics about the community. Who are the people currently writing about this topic? Who does your community consider experts? Whose writing would you want to emulate (who is really good at this?) Point to a few specific articles from the links we have provided that looked good to you. Point to a few sites that are currently publishing that you might also draw upon. Make it clear what places you will be reading for ideas. I’m not looking for a mere bulleted list here, but rather a section that flushes out some of the key nodes in the discursive community you are engaging.

Given that you will be publishing on medium.com, I will expect your paper to detail a few of the writers there who are doing good work. We’ll talk more about this in future classes as we get to know medium.com.

The final component of the proposal is your Potential Topics. Here is where you trace out what topics you think your community will be addressing over the next month, so that I get a sense of “proof of concept.” You aren’t in any way wedded to these topics: I have said before, the primary force driving this semester is the idea of community. Communities are always reacting to unpredictable events in real time, and I want your process to be fluid enough that you can switch on the fly. But, at the same time, I want you to do enough research into your community that you have a sense of upcoming events, releases, problems, that your community will likely address.

I have developed a proposal template that you can use to begin the project. Note that it is not in MLA or APA format. This is meant as a heuristic, a process for discovering, improving, and organizing an idea.

Again, let me stress that you have freedom to design a project that interests you. My central concerns are that 1) you read things every week and 2) you develop the ability to summarize, synthesize, and react to those readings productively. I know this happens more if you are interested and engaged in what you are writing about. Don’t develop a topic because you think I will like it. Develop a topic because you think you will like it.

Homework

Get started drafting your proposal. Find a few more resources in addition to those from your community research assignment and post them to Canvas (one post: Monday Aug 27th and Tues Aug 28th constant writing). Be ready to contribute to a class list on Wednesday in the Ross computer lab (Ross Hall 1240).

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ENG 122 1.F: Discourse Communities, Writing Groups, and Homework (Oh My!)

Posted on August 24, 2018 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Let’s Take a Second to Nerd Out
  • Discourse Communities and Writing Groups
  • Norming: Looking at Proposals
  • Homework

Nerd Out

This (minute 20-22).

Feedback to the Community Discourse Assignment

Comment One:

Ok, let me be frank. Climate change is not a controversy. No one who is actually a scientist would argue that climate change isn’t real. Second, you are laying out more of an academic research project. This is the kind of project that would work well in English 123.

I see that you are concerned about the environment. So let’s think about where people write about current environmental issues. Here’s something you might want to try: Google starbucks plastic straw ban. See where that leads you. Or Google Trump to lift coal regulations. See where that leads you. Find something people argue about.

Comment Two:

My spider sense is tingling a bit here. I like the articles you summarize in the paragraph–especially the Banks-Santilli piece. That is recent. But for this class to work, you would have to find something to put in conversation with that piece–an article that either explicitly dismisses her idea, or one that argues for another, bigger, struggle that students face.

Does that make sense? Are these articles clearly speaking to other articles? Can you map a conversation?

Comment Three:

Hmm. This might not work.

You are outlining a topic more than identifying a community. What I mean is that these are stand alone articles. They aren’t responding to a specific event that people care about.

This will make it harder for you to write timely pieces in which people are debating each other. Compare what you have here to this article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/08/the-humanities-face-a-crisisof-confidence/567565/?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=the-atlantic-fb-test-321-2-&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_medium=social

That article just came out. I can almost guarantee that someone will write a response to it in the next few days.

Stay away from the generic “How to succeed in college pieces” and look for more argumentative stuff. If you aren’t sure how to tell the difference, come to office hours and we can carve out a reading list.

I’m all for people writing about education, but I want to make sure you are reading stuff that’s going to spur good writing.

Discourse Communities and Writing Groups

Your discourse community is where you will be writing out there on the wild, wild, net. Your writing group is who you will be working with in here.

Let’s talk.

Homework

Read They Say, I Say pages pages 19-41 (Chapter One, “They Say: Starting with What Others Are Saying.” I want you to use a template from pages 24-25 to write a paragraph introducing your relationship to your chosen activity/discourse community. This paragraph will contribute to your Proposal (which I will formally introduce in Monday’s class).

Then I want you to read pages 30-41. I want you to write a paragraph that concisely summarizes an article that somehow relates to your first paragraph. Perhaps it expresses a similar idea. Perhaps it changes your thoughts or introduces you to something you haven’t thought about before. Whatever. What is important is that you open the paragraph introducing a summary (see pages 39) (i.e., “Susan Miller asserts that Forsaken will provide us the Destiny 2 we have been waiting for. She argues X. She also points out Y. Finally, she concludes that Z. I agree with Miller/I disagree with Miller/I have mixed feelings about Miller. One the one hand, I’m looking forward to X but think Z will stink because it reminds me of this other game that stinks.” Please note that filling out X, Y, and Z might take a lot of words and sentences.

Think up a suitable pseudonym for your writing. If you need help.

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ENG 201 1.R: Brumberger and Lauer’s Analysis of Industry Job Postings

Posted on August 23, 2018 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Discussion of Brumberger and Lauer
  • Sharing mediabistro job corpus
  • Elementary coding
  • Homework

Discussion of Brumberger and Lauer

I asked you to read their article and do two things:

  • I simply want to know what in the article surprises you
  • I also want to know what else you wished the author’s elaborated

You talk. I’ll listen.

Sharing mediabistro.com Job Corpus

Your first project this semester dovetails with a current research project I have been working on. As we revise UNC’s writing minor, I have been curious as to what skills and technologies to focus on. This curiosity led me to research job advertisements for English majors, and Brumberger and Lauer stands as the most recent and comprehensive study I found. However, their article focuses on “technical communication.” This designation can have many meanings–sometimes it is merely a synonym for professional writing. But not in their case–they use (as do I) in the more precise sense of developing documentation and working with scientific experts to communicate scientific/technical knowledge. Our department doesn’t have someone with those specializations–so as much as I appreciate their research, I wanted something a bit more targeted. Their research speaks more to folks at large research institutions with Professional and Technical Writing major, more specialized faculty, and software licenses such as MadCap Flare or Adobe RoboHelp. We are a much smaller department with 4 tenure-track faculty (and none of us, I think, would claim Professional or Technical writing as a core specialization).

So I’ve turned my attention to Professional Writing jobs outside of technical writing (in either of the forms I’ve traced out above). During my research, I came across a specialized job listing site–mediabistro.com. From their “About Us” page:

Mediabistro is the premier media job listings site and career destination for savvy media professionals. Whether you’re searching for new job opportunities, striving to advance your career, or looking to learn new skills and develop valuable expertise, we are here to strengthen and support your professional journey. We have the tools and resources to help you navigate your own path and find career happiness.

In addition to job postings, mediabistro.com offers resume services and courses on professionalization and personal brand building. Rather than turning to a more popular site like monster.com like Brumberger and Lauer, I used mediabistro.com because it focuses specifically on jobs involving writing and communication.

I spent the month of June scanning every job ad posted to mediabistro.com. I filtered out jobs that:

  • Called for experience in television production (especially those that required years of on-air experience)
  • Called for extensive experience as a field journalist (although I retained jobs open to those without journalistic experience; a few jobs were looking for bloggers or content contributers)
  • Required degrees in finance or accounting
  • Required extensive experience with Google Ads and/or other Customer Relationship Management (CRM) softwares (Salesforce was particularly popular)
  • Required applicants bring a client log with them
  • Required management or hiring experience (the term management is quite slippery in adverts; sometimes it means “manage a team” and clearly indicates the need for leadership experience. Sometimes it means “manage our twitter account” and isn’t, per se, a leadership position)
  • Required backend coding skills
  • Required extensive graphic design portfolios (I did retain entry level graphic design jobs)
  • Required 5 or more years of experience
  • Telemarketing jobs, part-time jobs, or unpaid internships

After filtering out these jobs, I was left with a corpus of 375 jobs.

Over the next two weeks, you will select and code a total of 20 jobs from this corpus. I have selected 10 advertisements for us to code together; you will each select 10 other advertisements to create your own 20 ad corpus. We will use a modified version of Brumberger and Lauer’s coding scheme that I will share in class on Friday.

Homework

I would like you to go through the 375 jobs listed above and find 10 to which you would want to apply. Download copies of them and put them in a folder.

If you do not already have a gmail account suitable for job searching, then create a gmail account suitable for job searching.

Read: Carolyn Miller, “A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Communication”

Miller’s essay, published in 1979, speaks to the ways in which writing (and not just technical writing) gets intellectually devalued. Underwriting this devaluing is a positivist epistemology (epistemology is the study of knowledge). In a positivist epistemology, humans can, through various systems, arrive at objective, transcendent Truth. This can be a scientific truth (the earth is round) or a humanistic one (the meaning of Romeo and Juliet). Writing courses aren’t epistemic, they merely provide you with the skills to communicate the truths you discover using other epistemic methods/disciplines.

In your reading response, I’d like you to do two things. First, try and summarize how Miller counters this argument. What is her argument against positivism? What does it require we do/think differently?

Second, think about your own experiences as a student at UNC. To what extent does your education reflect the positivist tradition? Particularly with writing? Is writing framed in a positivist manner as objective and impersonal? Do texts have one single correct meaning? A range of meanings? Is the meaning of a text completely open to a reader?

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ENG 122 1.2: Introduction to Discourse Communities

Posted on August 22, 2018 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • ENG 132
  • Syllabus Time
  • Talk about Discourse Communities
  • Share Communities List
  • Homework

ENG 132

Some information about the course:
English 132, or Comp Enrichment (Lab), is a course that is designed to supplement the work students will do in ENG 122. ENG 132 is now offered on campus, meets once per week, and carries one credit. The course content ranges from assistance with grammar, punctuation, and documentation style to peer review of ENG 122 papers etc. The workshops align with the common syllabus, but the class is flexible enough that students in any ENG 122 who are not using the common syllabus will benefit equally. ENG 132 is meant to be helpful, fun, and educational for those who just need an extra boost when it comes to their writing.

The course is open to all enrolled in Eng 122. We do send out a few emails over the summer to many students who have been deemed good candidates for the course based on their SAT/ACT cut scores and HSGPA. I am happy, however, to enroll any ENG 122 student who would like the supplemental instruction or any students you find through early writing in your courses may benefit from the course.

With this in mind, would you please let your students know about the course either by announcing it in class or sending an announcement through your Canvas shell? I am happy to visit with any of your students more about what the class entails and how it might fit into their schedules etc.

If you have any students in mind, please give them the registration information at the bottom of this email. If they have any questions, please feel free to give them my email and office number etc.

sonja.scullion@unco.edu

Course Info:
ENG 132-101 CRN 14948 Meets: Mondays 11:15am-12:05pm 1 credit

Thanks, again, for all of your help with enrolling Eng. 132 (formerly Eng. 198.).

Sonja Scullion
Senior Lecturer, English Dept.
University of Northern Colorado
1163 Ross Hall
Campus Box 109
(970) 351-2636

A quick PSA.

Identifying a Community

As I mentioned in our first class and throughout our discussion of the syllabus, you will spend this semester writing in a particular community. Let me emphasize that I say writing in a particular community and not writing about a particular topic.
Topic signals “generic area.” You can write about topics to a generic audience. For instance, you could write your standard argumentative paper about immunizations, the death penalty, abortion, etc. But this kind of writing isn’t really aimed at a particular audience or group. It just sort of exists as something for you to hand to me. This is precisely the kind of writing I don’t want you to do.

Research shows that writers develop best when they are writing to a specific group of people about something they all care about. This means we need to find (a) space(s) in which people write, comment, share, reflect, and most importantly *theorize* your interests. By theorize, I mean that people aren’t just reporting news about your topic/activity/interest, but analyzing, debating, critiquing, exchanging, the best elements of your community, the best ways to appreciate your community, how to best be an active member of your community. We aren’t looking for flame wars, but we are looking for informed and constructive disagreement (whether that concerns the best way to tank Susano Extreme, the emotional depth of Jar Jar Binks, the likelihood that Trump raises the debt ceiling, the chances Sammy Watkins becomes a tier one quarterback, or whether Jon Snow will make it through the season). We will talk about this more as you develop your projects, but at minimum I am not interested in projects that report *what* happened, or perhaps even *why* it happened, but rather measure the significance or what happened, projects what might happen next, and explain how to (not) make that happen.

Your writing this semester needs to be responsive. That is: some event happens that people in your community care about. They you read 3-4 pieces by people in the community that share different opinions or perspectives. Then you write a piece that compares and contrasts those perspectives, while situating yourself amongst them and, hopefully, offering new insight. So while each individual assignment might be about a topic (a particular event that just occurred or is about to occur), your writing is primarily directed toward a community of folk. The challenge is in making sure you are reading material that will stimulate good writing. Academic writing–the kind of writing you will be expected to do over the next four years–is intricately tied to reading. It is an act, an art, of putting ideas in conversation. Sometimes you agree with another writer, sometimes you disagree. My aim is to help you learn how to structure an academic argument (whether agreement or disagreement) writing about things that you care about. Learning to structure an argument (how to make a claim, objectively summarize and contextualize another person’s idea, supply evidence to support your idea) should, I argue, transfer to writing situations across different contexts.

But it all starts with reading something insightful, inspiring, and/or irritating (thought is the product of disequilibrium–I define intelligence as the ability to face difference without castigation, hostility, or dismissal; we have to learn how to learn and recognize confusion not as a problem to be solved, but a productive state to be negotiated).

That’s a main reason why the proposal project, outlined below, focuses in on finding writers worth following.

But before we get to the details of the proposal, let’s take a look at the communities we have developed:

Homework

Community research assignment. I want you to write a two paragraph (or more) post for Canvas. In the first paragraph, give us some general sense of what community you want to join, your background with the community, your motivations, etc. In the second paragraph I want you to identify 2 writers who regularly write about your topic well. For instance, if I were writing about race, I would begin with Ta-Nehisi Coates. Do some google searching. Make a bulleted list to three sample articles from each writer (6 articles total). You don’t have to read all the articles, but you do have to skim them enough to know what they are about and what makes them good. We’ll compare lists on Friday.

BE SURE TO EMBED LINKS TO ARTICLES. Get used to writing in a hyper environment. You can find quick instructions for hyperlinking in Canvas here.

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ENG 201: 1.1 Introduction(s)

Posted on August 21, 2018 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Syllabus and Stuff
  • Reading ABO on emails, UNCO Style Guide
  • A Brisk Walk Across Campus
  • Composing and Sharing Emails
  • Homework

Syllabus and Stuff

Let’s take a look at the ENG 201 Syllabus.

A First Day Assignment

The first genre we are going to work with this semester is emails. I expect all correspondence between us to reflect the principles laid out by ABO on pages 164-168.

A few other resources for today:

I’d like you to compose a short email to me (marc dot santos at unco dot edu) that does three things:

  • introduces yourself (and your academic/professional trajectory) and
  • explains your interest in the course (what are you hoping to learn? why are you here?)
  • asks me a question that I can answer

I’ll give you time to compose your emails and then we will read them collectively as a class.

Homework

To prepare for project one, read Brumberger and Lauer’s (2015) “The Evolution of Technical Communication: An Analysis of Industry Job Postings.” You can find a .pdf of the file in Canvas (Files section). I would like you to print out a physical copy of the article and annotate it as you read.

By annotate, I mean I would like you to write comments in the margins and on top of the page. There’s a lot of different methods for annotating, and I wouldn’t force any one method on you. I tend to underline text that either highlights the author’s purpose/argument or that I find difficult or disagree with. BUT every time I underline something, I try to write a word or phrase at the top of the page that captures the essence/importance of that passage. Underlining without writing isn’t useful. Writing notes in the margins helps with retention and comprehension. Throw away your highlighter.

After you read and annotate, please post a 150-250 word response to the article in Canvas. In the future, I might ask you to focus your response on a specific element of a reading. For our first reading, I simply want to know what in the article surprises you. I also want to know what else you wished the author’s elaborated.

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Eng 122 1.1: Introduction to Argument

Posted on August 20, 2018 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • (Brief) Review of Argumentation
  • Close Reading: Banning Alex Jones
  • Homework

Brief Review of Argumentation

This semester I’m going to ask you to read and write arguments. To do this well, you need to be familiar with the fundamental parts of an argument. Knowledge of argumentation is called “rhetoric” (more on this often maligned term later in the semester). Some of you might already be familiar with this terminology–logos, ethos, and pathos. If so, great. If not, no worries–that’s what we’re here for. Let’s get started.

Rhetorical Analysis Questions

As an introduction to rhetorical analysis (or how arguments are perceived and treated by audiences), I want you to think about the following questions as we read different articles today.

  • What is the central claim the author makes? What does it want me to believe? What does it want to change? What does this article make us want to do differently?
  • What evidence does the article offer to support its claim? What kinds of evidence (statistics, experiments, testimony, hypotheticals, deductive reasoning, anecdotes, etc)?
    Are there any claims in the piece that are unsupported?
  • Who does this article believe “we” (the writer and her audience) are? What kind of people? What do we value? What values must be in place for us to accept the claim and its evidence?

In technical terms, the first two questions above concern logos, or how we offer rational arguments. The third question gets at ethos, or how the intellectual, social, and spiritual communities to which we belong inform how we perceive arguments and influences what we consider evidence. Or, put more simply, who we are affects what we hear and think. When we are done, I have one more question:

  • if you could ask the author one follow up question, what would you ask?

Alex Jones, Social Media, and When Free Speech Becomes Hate Speech

Before we start reading, I have a quick image to share.

I have three things for us to read today:

I’ll give you four minutes to read to yourself, and then five minutes to talk in groups.
Then we will talk for five minutes.

Homework

For homework read one article found in the green or yellow box of the media chart above concerning Alex Jones, social media, and free speech. Write a 250 word response to that article. Put the new article you have read in conversation with one of the articles we read in class today–assume that your audience hasn’t read either article (and so you have to provide very short summaries, what we call context, for them). Use a template from They Say, I Say in your post. Post your response to Canvas–there is a pinned discussion forum..

Remember that our next class will MEET IN ROSS 1240 COMPUTER LAB.

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Anti-Racist Writing Assessment

Posted on August 15, 2018 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

My interest in antiracist writing assessment began last semester while teaching the practicum. We read Asao Inoue’s Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future. Inoue begins by reviewing research on how students of color fail FYC at significantly increased rates. This research clearly shows there is a structural problem plaguing developing writers, and Inoue charges the field to acknowledge and remedy this problem. His challenge has been taken up by NCTE, which has recently formed the Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English. Below I want to highlight a few of Inoue’s core principles and advocate for one of my own strategies.

Below I highlight Inoue’s commitment to separating feedback from assessment, rewarding effort instead of measuring achievement, and familiarizing students with rubrics. I then advocate for how increasing authentic praise can help build confidence and increase FYC retention rates.

Separate Feedback and Assessment

Inoue advocates separating the act of giving feedback from the moment of assessment. This separation changes the phenomenological context in which students receive and absorb our feedback. When the two are given together–i.e., you provide extensive commentary while providing a grade–students frame the commentary as justification of the grade. The context is adversarial. The feedback isn’t received as constructive, caring help, but rather as a tick-sheet of faults and reasons why they didn’t get a C/B/A (whatever grade they are trying to achieve). However when feedback is separated from assessment, student attitudes shift, because they absorb feedback as advice (for how to improve a future assessment) rather than as a justification of an assessment.

I put this into practice last fall in ENG 122 by only commenting on rough drafts. Final drafts were simply scored according to a rubric, with absolutely no commentary. Students were invited to visit office hours to discuss any rubric evaluation they did not understand or agree with.

Reward Labor Not Achievement

A core element of Inoue’s argument is that traditional grading rubrics contribute greatly to the structural racism impinging on students of color. His argument is too expansive for me to explicate in this space, so I would ask you to accept that students most at risk for failing out of FYC are the one’s least able to understand rubric categories. This leads Inoue to advocate for his most radical change: his grading is based entirely on a grading contract that rewards labor and does not, in any way, assess quality. Effort is measured by trusting students to keep a labor journal, by the quantity of writing assignments, and by frequent reflective writing on how a project is developing.

As much as I appreciate Inoue’s argument, I couldn’t completely give up formal, abstract assessment of student work. In my ENG 123 last spring, I followed Danielewicz and Elbow (2009)’s work on grading contracts (which Inoue frames as a productive move that doesn’t go far enough to combat structural racism). 70% of the writing students did last semester was scored on a pass/fail basis–if students met word counts and simple, concrete requirements (ie-this paper must describe an article’s research methods or compare two research articles or use APA format), then they got full credit for the assignment. Only a project proposal (10%) and the final paper (20%) for the course was scored by a traditional rubric. I will follow a similar formula in my 122 and 201 courses this semester (shooting for a 75% labor, 25% achievement split).

Yes, this led to what might look like “grade inflation.” I scare quote because I don’t think the grades were inflated. I think they were earned; the quality of final papers in that class were among the best I have ever received from a first-year writing class. Students earned 16 A’s last semester, along with 4 B’s, 3 C’s, and 1 F’s. Final papers earned 11 A’s, 9 B’s, 2 C’s, 1 D, and 1 F’s. While I have no concrete data, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess those grades are way higher than my normal curve. But I think the strongest anecdotal evidence for the success of Inoue’s approach (even with my Elbowian modifications) is that No. One. Dropped. The only person who failed stopped coming for the last month and didn’t turn in a final paper. In an era concerned with retention for FYC, a labor-based assessment ecology holds promise. I’m convinced not only of its ability to keep students in our classes, but also its ability to maximize their development.

Demystify the Rubric

While Inoue challenges traditional rubric assessment, he is not opposed to rubrics. In fact, generating and applying a rubric is central to his class. In my 123 last semester, we spent every Friday alternating between grade norming sessions (in which we used my final paper rubric to evaluate and annotate papers from past semesters) and peer review sessions (using the rubric to evaluate their works-in-progress). The goal is to demystify the rubric via praxis rather than lecture. I don’t want to explain to them what it means for the conclusion of a paragraph to reconnect to a paper’s overarching argument. Rather, I want them to explain it to me via a concrete defense of why a paragraph earned a particular rubric score–a method that resonates with approaches rooted in writing-about-writing. The rubric forms the ecological hub of Inoue’s approach. Constant familiarizing exercises ideally transfer to students’ own composing.

Meaningful Feedback and Praise

While prepping for teaching the orientation last I gathered research on providing meaningful feedback. I was initially searching for two threads: work by folks like Sommers and Moxley emphasizing how students have difficulty hierarchizing instructor feedback–that is, they often can’t determine what feedback is more important (and this resonates with Inoue on multiple levels). The walkaway to this research is to provide *less* feedback–focus on issues related to the hierarchy of writing importance.

One thing that can help with providing less-but-better feedback is to follow Haswell’s “Minimal Marking”: rather than mark off grammatical errors, simply put a mark next to the sentence and dedicate 10 minutes of class time to having student remedy any sentence with a check mark. Students can fix most mistakes on their own. I do this in Google docs by simply highlighting the period of any sentence with a mistake.

While gathering this stuff, I came across Donald A. Daiker’s (1984) “Learning to Praise.” It disturbed me. Productively.

Daiker’s study surveyed 300 FYC essays. He found that 90-95% of instructor comments on a paper are negative. Wow. This trend begins in high school and carries through almost all levels of collegiate instruction. WOW. When students receive a positive comment, they are most often a generic salutation to open the longer summation at the end of an essay. “Karen, I think you offer a compelling argument against straws but let me write 750 words on what you need to do better.”

After reading Daiker, I challenged the grad students and myself to do better. We worked for a 1:2 positive to constructive ratio. It was hard! But I think we can create a more constructive relationship with students, improve retention and the phenomenological context in which they receive our feedback, if we actively work to be more positive.

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ENG 329 14.2: Open Broadcaster and Screen Casting

Posted on April 18, 2018 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Quick Review of Open Broadcaster
  • Time to Screen Cast
  • Homework

Overview of Open Broadcaster

Today is our one-day Open Broadcaster workshop. My aim is to show you the fundamentals of the program. The demonstration I have put together comes from various tutorials listed on the Open Broadcaster tutorial’s wiki.

  • When you open the program for the first time, you will want to run the Auto-Configuration Wizard. Simply select all the defaults
  • Set Audio Source. Open Broadcaster gives you the option of recording audio as you screencast. I doubt this is a good idea–I think you are better off capturing your screen cast and then generating audio in Premiere or Audacity (record the audio while you watch a playback of your video). To set your audio input, go to Settings > Audio (OBS > Preferences on a Mac). If you have an active audio source selected, then you should see movement on your mixer bar.
  • In order to start recording, we have to direct Open Broadcaster to a source. Find the Source box to the left of the Mixer and click the + sign. You should see the following:

Screen Shot 2018-04-18 at 12.43.25 PM

  • Choose Window Capture (for an internet window), Game Capture (for a compatible game), or Display Capture (if all else fails). When the dialogue box opens select “Create New” and type in a title. Press Ok. You will be at the source selection screen:

Screen Shot 2018-04-18 at 12.53.41 PM

  • To open the source list, click on the bar next to Window. Select your source. It should now appear in the left viewer.
  • You can start and stop recording a “scene” using the controls on the bottom right

What I find particularly disorienting about Open Broadcaster is that it doesn’t really do much to tell you that you are recording. It just happens. And, when you finish “stop recording,” nothing really happens. You have to know to look for your screen captures.

  • To find them, go to File > Show Recordings. They should open in a Finder window. Notice that they are .flv files. These are pretty useless in that format.
  • To convert the files into .mp4 video files, go to File > Remux Recordings (because of course that’s what you call it). Press “Browse” to select the file, select a location to save the conversion, and hit “remux”

I had difficult capturing a game–and, based on a few Google searches I am not alone. It doesn’t appear that OB’s game capture plays well with all laptops, especially macs. Here is a trouble-shooting page if you are getting a black screen on a laptop. The first time I used OBS, it worked seamlessly. This morning,
I couldn’t get it to record anything. This afternoon, right before class, it worked fine again. It does feel buggy–if you are having issues, try closing the program, relaunching, and running the set-up wizard again. Also, I found cursing at the program effective.

Homework

Finish your documentation projects. We will watch these in class on Monday. There’s a turn-in in Canvas called Documentation Project. As we discussed, shoot an opening greeting, then go to the screen capture. Maybe a conclusion too? My goals for the assignment are to introduce you to the software and (hopefully) show how easy it is to use.

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ENG 329 14.1: Just One Thing Reshoot Presentations

Posted on April 16, 2018 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Just One Thing Reshoot Presentations
  • Documentation Project

Just One Thing Reshoot Presentations

Now that you have started to review your data from the Just One Thing project, I want you to start thinking about how to reshoot your movie. I also want you to gain some experience learning how to pitch your work. So I am going to ask each group to put together a short (4-5 minute) pitch presentation that covers how your group plans on revising your Just One Thing video. The pitch presentation should highlight some of your findings, but it should also give us a sense of your storyboard–what are you planning on shooting? What angles? Do you have shots in mind (with pictures?) Locations? What ideas have you developed since your original video? Give us a sense of what you plan on doing, and why you want to do it.

You will have today in class to start working on this project and Friday as well. For your presentation day, I would like everyone in the group to have some kind of speaking role.

Documentation Project

One final reminder that we will be working with Open Broadcaster in class on Wednesday to do some screen capture. I will ask you to record audio to accompany your screen capture for homework, as well as to shoot a short introduction (“Hi, I’m Marc, and today we are going to be working with”).

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