Monthly Archives: October 2021

For Nov 3

Now we turn to the curriculum for 1121!

Originally, the 1121 curriculum focused heavily on the term “discourse communities,” in which we had students read the article “Understanding Discourse Communities” (which you’ll be reading this week) and we used the term a lot in our assignments. However, we found that in doing this, students’ writing spent a lot of time just defining the term instead of focusing on the communities they are a part of and the language of those communities. So with this in mind, we no longer write assignments that focus on the term “discourse community.” Instead, theories of Discourse Community structure the entire semester. Of course, it is up to you how much you want to focus on the term itself.

For this week’s asynchronous course, please do the following (by Nov 3):

  1. Watch THIS SLIDESHOW about the final portfolios. I have opened up a discussion board about the final portfolios on Perusall (it is under “chats: general discussion”)  Please post there if you have any questions. You may also email me, but I prefer you use Perusall if you can because the whole group will be able to see any questions/ answers. Please note: this is the first time I’m using the Perusall discussion function. It’s an experiment!
  2. Read and Annotate “Understanding Discourse Communities” and discourse community slideshow (you don’t really have to annotate this part unless you want to. Just give it a look!) on Perusall. At some point in your Perusall comments, please reflect for a paragraph or more  about how you feel about incorporating these theories into your teaching. (It may be awkward to do it this way, but we can keep it private on Perusall) Do you think you’ll keep the term “Discourse Community” in the background or you’ll talk to the students about it specifically? Do you think this theory is useful to teaching? Why or why not?
  3. We will do a revised version of the day one assignment for 1121 students together. It is as follows:
    • First, watch “(un)Learning my Name” by Mohamed Hassan
    • Second, write a new post on padlet about your own name. (I will email you this link so it will be a private page.) You can do it in whatever way you want!  You can talk about the origins of your name, questions you have about your name, or a time you tried to change your name– or something else entirely.  As part of it, you can add images or links to videos… whatever you think will help us get to know you and your experiences better. You can even add a link to a video. Or record an audio file and link to it. Or draw something and upload the image. Whatever you want. Remember: we’re all about composing in the 21st century, so feel free to do what you think would be interesting for us to see/hear/learn about. The idea is to get you thinking about how those issues affect you. How they’ve helped shape who you are.
    •  Read over 1121 UNIT ONE. If you have any questions about it, ask them on the 1121 unit one message board on Perusall (“chats: general discussion”)
    •  We will discuss this briefly when we zoom on Nov 10, but we will mostly focus on 1121 Unit 2 unless there is massive concern/ confusion.

For Wednesday, Oct 27!

Hi everyone. We will meet on Weds, Oct 27 at 5 pm on Zoom. For this meeting, please do the following:

  1. Read and annotate “Thinking about Multimodality” on Perusall
  2. Comment on your teaching of multimodal assignments on THIS PADLET. (instructions once you click the link!)

When we meet, we will take a bit of time to discuss multimodality and Unit 3 of 1101, but we will also discuss final portfolios and grading.

Research Paper

What does the term “research paper” mean to you?
I see the research paper as the culmination of the semester’s work for students. It gives the students an opportunity to explore areas of interest from something that they have learned over the course of the semester. Students should be allowed to take their discovery outside of the scope of the educational institution as their learning is largely guided by community, culture, language and roles they play. In turn, this gives them a text-to-self and a self-to-world examination that should be factored into research. While student’s are not necessarily researching themselves, these ideas connect to something they were interested in during the semester.

How might we expand our definitions of research and “research paper” to more fully contain the curiosity and delight of research and discovery?
Research should be all encompassing and less directed by the instructor.

What are some ways you have taught research in the classroom– successfully and unsuccessfully?

I give scaffolding assignments in the classroom as research can be overwhelming to process all at once. Then, I follow up with feedback and one-to-one meetings.

Asynchronous Meeting next week– please complete by Friday, Oct 15

Hi everyone! Here is the work for our next week “meeting.”

  • We have two readings up now on Perusall, one by Carmen Kynard (previously of John Jay) and one by Nelson Graff, about teaching research. Please read and annotate both.
  • After reading, please post a blog post to this Open Lab site considering (some of) the following questions:
      • What does the term “research paper” mean to you?
      • How might we expand our definitions of research and “research paper”  to more fully contain the curiosity and delight of research and discovery?
      • What are some ways you have taught research in the classroom– successfully and unsuccessfully?
      • What are some ways you have engaged in your own research– successfully and unsuccessfully?

Please note, you don’t have to answer all of these questions– these are just starting points to guide a post about research!