Writing-Intensive – Page 3 – L4: Living Lab Learning Library

May 31, 2016January 5, 2018

Research Project Peer Critique

Ellen Kim

Hospitality Management

Hospitality Management Research Seminar

Activity Description: Provide a brief description of the activity

This activity is designed to provide students with an opportunity to conduct self-assessment on their research project and to receive feedback from their peers as well as the instructor. Students will perform self-assessment on their assignments, (1) Problem Statement & Thesis Statement and (2) Draft, using the rubrics provided by the instructor upon completion of the assignments. The homework submitted via Blackboard will be, then, evaluated by classmates by one week after the deadline. In addition to the instructor’s assessment, evaluating students need to provide the complete rubrics along with suggestions for improvement. Reviewers and reviewees will be paired up during the class period to clarify the feedback and to discuss further about the arguments established.

Learning Goals: What do you aim to achieve with this activity?

• Identify and evaluate the clarity of the research problem statement.
• Determine the theoretical or logical rationale of the research problem.
• Appraise the thoroughness and relevance of the literature review.
• Assess the credibility of the research (application of APA citation).
• Assess the theoretical perspectives and/or appropriate assumptions of the researchers.
• Assess the clarity and consistency of the results.
• Strengthen writing skills.

Timing: At what point in the lesson or semester do you use this activity? How much classroom time do you devote to it? How much out-of-class time is expected?

This exercise consists of two phases:
1) Phase 1 (Problem Statement & Thesis Statement): Students will be asked to submit the formulated problem statement and thesis statement in Week 4. Peer evaluation will be completed by Week 5 and class discussion will follow for about 15 minutes in Week 5.
2) Phase 2 (Draft): The research draft following APA citation is due Week 10 and peer assessment is due Week 11. Peer discussion will be done in Week 11.

Logistics: What preparation is needed for this activity? What instructions do you give students? Is the activity low-stakes, high-stakes, or something else?

This exercise needs clearly defined grading rubrics and an instruction on how to grade students’ work with the rubrics should be provided to students during the class period.

Assessment: How do you assess this activity? What assessment measures do you use? Do you use a VALUE rubric? If not, how did you develop your rubric? Is your course part of the college-wide general education assessment initiative?

Existing grading rubrics will be refined for this exercise. Students will use the updated rubrics for self-assessment and peer-review.

Reflection: How well did this activity work in your classroom? Would you repeat it? Why or why not? What challenges did you encounter, and how did you address them? What, if anything, would you change? What did students seem to enjoy about the activity?

I ran a pilot test of this activity in Spring 2016. I found that students could gain various perspectives on tourism issues for investigation in a dynamic environment.

Additional Information: Please share any additional comments and further documentation of the activity – e.g. assignment instructions, rubrics, examples of student work, etc. These can be links to pages or posts on the OpenLab.

Please share a helpful link to a pages or post on the OpenLab

May 9, 2016January 4, 2018

#TheGuide: An Academic Service Learning Project

Laura Westengard

English/School of Arts and Sciences

English 1101, Freshman Composition

Activity Description: Provide a brief description of the activity

This academic service learning project asked students to create a public OpenLab site to be used as a guide for the City Tech campus and the surrounding community, including the Brooklyn Waterfront. The client/audience for the OpenLab site was the City Tech community, including new and existing students at City Tech, faculty and staff, and friends and relatives of City Tech students. The students were asked to create the webpage itself, design the layout and visuals, and contribute three major essays from English 1101: College Skills, City Tech Places, and Local Grub.

Learning Goals: What do you aim to achieve with this activity?

Write clearly and coherently in varied, academic formats (such as formal essays, research papers, and reports) using standard English and appropriate technology to critique and improve one’s own and others’ texts (Writing and Reading Processes, Knowledge of Conventions)

Demonstrate research skills using appropriate technology, including gathering, evaluating, and synthesizing primary and secondary sources (Critical Thinking, Reading, Writing, and Researching)

Support a thesis with well-reasoned arguments, and communicate persuasively across a variety of contexts, purposes, audiences, and media (Rhetorical Knowledge, Composing in Digital Environments, Critical Thinking, Reading, Writing, and Researching)

Formulate original ideas and relate them to the ideas of others by employing the conventions of ethical attribution and citation (Critical Thinking, Reading, Writing, and Researching, Knowledge of Conventions)

Timing: At what point in the lesson or semester do you use this activity? How much classroom time do you devote to it? How much out-of-class time is expected?

This was a cumulative project that spanned the entire semester. The students created and launched the final site as an end of semester event, but the smaller assignments throughout the semester were all designed to contribute to the site. It is difficult to quantify the in-class and out-of-class time devoted to the activity because the scaffolded structure.

Logistics: What preparation is needed for this activity? What instructions do you give students? Is the activity low-stakes, high-stakes, or something else?

This project was part of a First-Year Learning community partnership (Profs. Goodlad and Akana, Hospitality Management). Profs. Goodlad, Akana, and I introduced students to the assignment at the beginning of the semester with a handout. In my English 1101 course, each smaller assignment was designed to contribute to the site, and I reminded students of this throughout the drafting and revising process. After invention, drafting, and peer review, I gave students feedback and a grade on their essay. Then they were required to meet with me to discuss their strategy for revision, with the audience of #The Guide in mind. We spent about two class meetings designing, naming, and structuring the site itself. Students suggested ideas and voted on them, and they appointed certain class members to contribute graphics and images for the site. After revising their essays, students posted the essays on the website using the categorization that we had determined as a group. At the end of the semester, students wrote a brief reflective essay that discussed their experience working with a client, working with peers, the process of writing and publication, lessons learned, and a self-assessment. Their participation and reflection held moderate weight in the course but were not extremely high-stakes, but the cumulative weight of the essays themselves was significant.

Students’ individual essays were assessed using the English Department’s 1101 rubric along with the basic features of the specific genre (listed in the textbook St. Martin’s Guide to Writing). I did not use a VALUE rubric.

Rubric Assessment Categories: Content, Structure, Sophistication of Language, Mechanics

Basic Features for Explaining a Concept: A Focused Explanation, A Readable Plan, Appropriate Explanatory Strategies, Smooth Integration of Sources

Basic Features for Profiling a Place: Detailed Information about the Subject, A Clear Organizational Plan, A Role for the Writer, A Perspective on the Subject

Basic Features for Justifying an Evaluation: A Well-Presented Subject, A Well-Supported Judgment, An Effective Counterargument, A Readable Plan

Peer-review workshops

Informal oral and written responses to invention materials and drafts

While the students did not see the relevance of their work at the beginning of the semester, they grew increasingly invested in the project as they realized the great service they were offering to their community. By the end of the semester, the students exhibited pride in the work that they accomplished and many articulated the desire to continue to contribute to the project in future semesters.

The activity was a large-scale endeavor, but because I scaffolded the assignment from the beginning of the semester it was not overwhelming. I plan to repeat it again in some form. In future semesters, students will not have the opportunity to create the site from scratch, but they can work together on revision and supplementation.

Please share a helpful link to a pages or post on the OpenLab

https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/theguide/

February 18, 2016March 9, 2016

A Gothic Guide to Brooklyn: Gothic Spaces Presentation

Laura Westengard

English/School of Arts and Sciences

Eng 3407 (Gothic Lit. and Visual Culture) https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/groups/gothic-nyc/

Activity Description: Provide a brief description of the activity

Students created a travel guide for visitors interested in finding the “Gothic” spaces in Downtown Brooklyn (and the surrounding neighborhoods). Each group found a space in Brooklyn that they thought exhibited some of the Gothic elements we discussed in class. Then they created a profile of that place that describes the Gothic elements, analyzes the space in terms of one of the theoretical concepts discussed in class, and connects the space to one of the assigned literary texts.

These profiles will be posted on OpenLab along with images and videos. It will become a “Gothic Guide to Brooklyn!”

Learning Goals: What do you aim to achieve with this activity?

This place-based activity was designed to get students to view local architecture as a kind of text that they could analyze in relation to course concepts. They learned to synthesize course materials, apply course concepts to subjects outside of class, perform written and verbal analysis, work collaboratively, and use the online platform to deliver this information with appropriate style.

Timing: At what point in the lesson or semester do you use this activity? How much classroom time do you devote to it? How much out-of-class time is expected?

I introduced the assignment early in the semester and scaffolded some in class activities each week leading up to the presentation (approx. 10-15 minutes a week). As we discussed the assigned readings and course concepts, we kept a running list of Gothic terms and concepts on the course OpenLab site so students had a glossary with which to interpret their chosen location.

Logistics: What preparation is needed for this activity? What instructions do you give students? Is the activity low-stakes, high-stakes, or something else?

Students need time to schedule out of class explorations of the neighborhood surrounding City Tech. I provide them with a handout that explains the requirements, and they also need some way to create images and/or videos of their site. It is fairly high-stakes (10% of the final grade).

High-Impact Educational Practices: Which of these practices based on George Kuh’s High Impact Educational Practices (and other innovative approaches) does this activity incorporate? Choose all that apply.

Collaborative assignments and projects, Open Digital Pedagogy (the OpenLab), Wrriting-intensive projects/assignments, Place-Based Learning, Brooklyn Waterfront

I use a worksheet on which each required item and its point value is listed. Next to that item, I included notes assessing the students’ work along with a score. This was not a VALUE rubric.

The first time I assigned this activity, my class was too small to complete it in groups, so it had to become an individual activity. This was not ideal because one of the learning goals was to provide an opportunity for collaboration. The creation of the list of Gothic terms and concepts was collaborative, however, and we also collaborated as a whole class to create and design the OpenLab project. We had a conference-style presentation day in class in which students gave feedback on their classmates’ work. I am currently repeating the activity in a larger class as a group project, and I plan to have the current class add to the existing project site.

Students enjoyed the place-based aspect of the assignment, and they seemed enthusiastic about the creation of online travel-blog style profiles with images and videos. They were very creative!

Link to Spring 2016 Activity Handout: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/westengardeng3407sp2016/files/2015/01/Gothic-Spaces-Group-Presentation-Prompt-Eng-3407-S-16.pdf

Link to Completed Project Site from Spring 2015: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/groups/gothic-nyc/

October 3, 2015January 4, 2018

Term Paper Peer Review

Mery Diaz https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/members/mdiaz/

Human Services/SPS

https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/groups/stories-of-service/

Activity Description: Provide a brief description of the activity

This peer-review activity is connected to the HUS 1101 term paper and is designed to strengthen student writing for the human services. In groups of four, students will provide and receive feedback on a draft of part 1 of their term paper. Each student will receive a copy of all group member drafts. With the use of an assessment rubric, each student will provide and receive verbal and written comments on content; clarity; evidence to support argument; and APA citations and references.

Learning Goals: What do you aim to achieve with this activity?

Students will strengthen writing skills.
Students will be engaged in active learning of the use of APA citation and references, and the use of peer-review journals to support their arguments.
Students will encounter greater diversity of perspective and feedback
Students will learn to the different stages of writing and refining their writing.

Timing: At what point in the lesson or semester do you use this activity? How much classroom time do you devote to it? How much out-of-class time is expected?

This activity will take place during the 5th session.
Instructors should expect to actively build preparation over the course of 3 sessions.
Instructors should expect to devote a portion of classroom time for prep and activity.

Logistics: What preparation is needed for this activity? What instructions do you give students? Is the activity low-stakes, high-stakes, or something else?

This is a low-stakes activity that will prepare students for a high-stakes assignment near the end of the semester.
This activity will require three sessions for students to be prepared to provide and receive feedback.
During session 2 of the semester, the instructor will devote a portion of the lecture to deliver instruction on peer-reviewed journals and book sources and APA citation and references.
During session 6, the instructor will devote time to include an in-class writing assignment where students will have brought 2 sources (other than the course textbook) with prior notice to use as they begin a first draft of the first section of their term paper.
The instructor should also discuss the term paper and rubric that will be used to assess student performance.
The peer-review will take place during the 4th session during a portion of class time. Prior to this session, students will have been prompted to bring 4 typed and double-spaced copies of their drafts with reference page. Members of the group will receive copies of rubric that they will use to review and provide feedback. The instructor should model the use of the rubric and how to provide productive and respectful feedback to peers. The group should provide a summary for the instructor on what each member will need to work on to strengthen their papers.

Learning communities, Common intellectual experiences (core curriculum), Writing-intensive projects/assignments

Rubric Grading Rubric Mery Diaz L4 2015 developed for term paper. Students will use this to self-assess and peer-review.

This activity will be implemented during the Fall 2015 semester

September 25, 2015

Drugs in the News

Anna Matthews https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/members/amatthews/

Dental Hygiene/SPS

DEN 2315

Activity Description: Provide a brief description of the activity

This low-stakes assignment is one of the four OpenLab assignments for second-year Dental Hygiene students who take DEN 2315, Oral Pharmacology, in the Summer session. The purpose of the online assignments, including “Drugs in the News”, is to continue the conversation related to the subject of pharmacology beyond the walls of our classroom and to supplement our limited classroom time (Summer session lasts only 5 weeks – 9 in-person sessions + final examination). Assignment description for students can be found here: Drugs in the News Assignment 2015

Learning Goals: What do you aim to achieve with this activity?

1. to relate information about drugs presented in the media (print, TV) to the information students learn in the course (DEN2315);

2. to evaluate the information from the news source (article, TV segment, TV ad, blog post) for correctness by finding the original source such as the research article, textbook, professional resources and websites;

3. to share the information about drugs (which can be newly developed or approved medications, or recent updates about medications available previously) with classmates on OpenLab by creating a post and including the links to the original source and references;

4. to read each others’ posts and comment on at least two of them.

Timing: At what point in the lesson or semester do you use this activity? How much classroom time do you devote to it? How much out-of-class time is expected?

this is the first of the four OpenLab assignments and it is due after the first week of Summer session. Students have three days after the posts are available to comment on each others’ entries. Late posts or comments are not accepted and an appropriate penalty is applied as described in the syllabus.

Logistics: What preparation is needed for this activity? What instructions do you give students? Is the activity low-stakes, high-stakes, or something else?

because of time limitations and very tight schedule of our session, I invite students to join our OpenLab site ahead of time and upload their syllabus before the session starts and assignments at least a week before they are due. Students must be OpenLab members and know how to create a post and reply to each other. I demonstrate it in class during our first session. No other special arrangements are required.

Collaborative assignments and projects, Open Digital Pedagogy (the OpenLab), Wrriting-intensive projects/assignments

this assignment is 5 points of the students’ final grade in DEN2315. Half of the grade (2.5 points) was given to the students’ original post and half to their two responses to each others’ posts. I did not use the VALUE rubric but evaluated the students’ work using a simple Grading rubric, which I created myself based on the examples from Bean’s “Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking and Active Learning in the Classroom” (2011).

I designed and first used this assignment in 2013, and have used it since with success. The students are required to find and share a new article/news segment, published or aired within a year from the beginning of our session, so when they share these news about drugs on OpenLab, we all learn from each other and there is a very active conversation. Consistently, there are many more responses from each student than the two required by the assignment, and each of the posts receives a lot of attention. For example, in our group of 25 (24 students and I) there were 151 posts and comments for the “Drugs in the News” assignment, averaging 6 per person!

The students often surprise me by finding something very unique and sometimes even unbelievable, such as this year one student found a small article about a common medication lansoprazole (Prilosec), an OTC medication for heartburn, which showed promising activity against the bacterium that causes tuberculosis! I was very intrigued but quite skeptical until a few days later an original research article was published in Nature Communications.

This assignment has been a rich source of learning for our students and me every time I offered it in my Pharmacology course, and I intend to include it in my sessions in the coming years.

September 25, 2015January 5, 2018

Tell Me About Infinity

Jonas Reitz https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/members/jreitz/

Mathematics/ School of Arts and Sciences

MAT 2675 Calculus II https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/2012spr-mat1575-reitz/

Activity Description: Provide a brief description of the activity

In this low-stakes writing assignment, students create a blog post exploring the concept of infinity. The post must respond to one of several prompts focusing on personal experiences of infinity, and must include a photo that illustrates infinity in some way. Extra credit is offered for providing a thoughtful comment on another student’s post.

Learning Goals: What do you aim to achieve with this activity?

This activity is introduced in the course MAT 2675 Calculus II as we prepare to embark on the study of infinite sequences and series, the first rigorous introduction of infinity in a mathematical context. Before students begin to wrestle with the (challenging!) technical details of the subject, I want them to reflect on their preconceptions about this pervasive and slippery notion of “infinity”. I want to give them the opportunity to make connections between infinity as it appears in other areas of life – philosophy, art, religion – and as it appears in the curriculum. In addition, I use this activity to build or reinforce technical skills – how to create a blog post, upload images, and add tags. I want to get students writing in a low-stakes environment, where their focus is on the content. Finally, I want to give students a chance to respond to one another, building community and trust in my class.

Timing: At what point in the lesson or semester do you use this activity? How much classroom time do you devote to it? How much out-of-class time is expected?

This activity is tied to a particular topic in Calculus II, infinite sequences and series, which traditionally makes up the last third of the course. The assignment is given just before we begin this topic, around week 9 or 10, and it is due two weeks after it is assigned. I spend 5-10 minutes discussing the project in class when it is assigned, and in subsequent classes I will provide a little time for students to ask questions or raise concerns. I expect students to devote 2-4 hours to this activity, over the course of 2 weeks.

Logistics: What preparation is needed for this activity? What instructions do you give students? Is the activity low-stakes, high-stakes, or something else?

I post the assignment, including detailed instructions, on the course OpenLab site (see below). I will spend a very short time in class discussing the assignment and answering questions – but I will NOT go over every detail (they are expected to carefully read the assignment and follow all instructions). I try to make the assignment stand-alone, with links to appropriate resources (including, for example, how to create a blog post, how to upload an image, and so on).

Open Digital Pedagogy (the OpenLab), Wrriting-intensive projects/assignments

The assignment includes a list of 5 specific expectations (“You should create a new blog post including the following”), and I use this as a checklist. The assignment is worth a certain number of points, and a student’s score is based solely on the checklist. I want this to be low-stakes in terms of writing — grammar and spelling are not evaluated, and the structure and content of the written work need only loosely fit the instructions. I write a response to each student’s post, and while I don’t share their point score at that time, I will point out if there are significant problems or missing items and encourage the student to make revisions.

This has been one of my most successful writing prompts – I was excited and impressed with the variety of creative and thoughtful responses. Asking them to write about their personal experience provided freedom to talk about the subject without fear of “being wrong,” and gave a rich source of material from which they could draw. Many posts spurred great comments, and I noticed in several cases the comments developed into real conversations (although the extra credit offered for commenting on another post did not extend to multiple comments).
I think this assignment could adapt quite easily to many disciplines. It is often the case that certain words, familiar from our daily lives, take on a specific and technical formal meaning in an academic context which gives students trouble – especially as the “formal” and “informal” definitions may be at odds with one another. I can imagine this activity applying to many such cases – by asking students to explore their existing experience of a word or concept, they begin to focus on the meaning of it in an intentional way, which prepares them to compare and contrast their informal definition with the formal usage.

Link to Assignment: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/2012spr-mat1575-reitz/2012/04/04/openlab-assignment-7-tell-me-about-infinity/

Link to Student Work Examples: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/2012spr-mat1575-reitz/?s=infinity

September 25, 2015September 25, 2015

Visit to a Drugstore

Anna Matthews https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/members/amatthews/

Dental Hygiene/SPS

DEN 2315

Activity Description: Provide a brief description of the activity

This assignment is focused on place-based learning as the activity happens outside of class. It is part of DEN 2315 course, Oral Pharmacology, taken by our second year students in a 5-week Summer session. Full description for students can be found here: Visit to a Drugstore Assignment 2015

Learning Goals: What do you aim to achieve with this activity?

1. to enhance classroom learning by observing the availability and selection of herbal and nutritional supplements, and vitamins/minerals in a drugstore or supermarket of students’ choice;

2. to work individually or in groups of 2-4, depending on the students’ preference, and learn to work in teams;

3. to investigate the claims listed on the package of the selected supplement and find information from independent academic or professional sources;

4. to explain possible adverse effects, drug interactions, and effects on dental/periodontal conditions and process of dental hygiene care;

5. to share the findings, including pictures from the visit to the drugstore, references, and personal impressions with classmates on OpenLab.

Timing: At what point in the lesson or semester do you use this activity? How much classroom time do you devote to it? How much out-of-class time is expected?

this is the 3rd of the four OpenLab written assignments and it is due at the end of week 3 of our Summer session.

Logistics: What preparation is needed for this activity? What instructions do you give students? Is the activity low-stakes, high-stakes, or something else?

as a place-based assignment, this activity requires extra time and some additional travel from students, but because they can select the drugstore to visit and choose to either work individually or in groups, it hasn’t presented any difficulties.

Collaborative assignments and projects, Open Digital Pedagogy (the OpenLab), Wrriting-intensive projects/assignments, Place-Based Learning

this assignment is 5 points of the students’ final grade in DEN2315. I did not use the VALUE rubric but evaluated the students’ work using a simple Grading rubric, which I created myself based on the examples from Bean’s “Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking and Active Learning in the Classroom” (2011). Although reading and commenting on each others’ posts was not graded, I strongly encouraged it, and many students did reflect on information shared in group. The post authors, however, were responsible to answer any questions I or the classmates asked and to provide additional information when necessary.

this is my favorite assignment that I created and started using in 2014 and the students share with me that it’s their favorite as well. Visiting a drugstore for a specific purpose can be overwhelming due to the variety of available supplements, their brands, and dosages, and my goal is to let the students experience this and become aware of how our patients who don’t have background information that we know, and perhaps don’t have access to reliable and trustworthy sources of information, might feel in a similar situation. Many students describe this assignment as an eye-opening experience and share that they learn very much from it.

Here are some of the students’ quotes from this year’s posts:

“This assignment made me realize just how many conditions one drug can treat, as well as just how much side effects may occur with the use of these drugs. It really goes to show just how complex the field of pharmacology really is, and just how much there is still to learn.“

“This exercise helped me learn that before I buy such things it is important to do my own research. Trusting the words on a bottle is simply not enough!”

“With all that we have learned in class and my own research I have done, I have decided to stop taking vitamin supplements all together. This assignment has opened my eyes even more and I rather get my vitamin intakes from real food sources.”

I intend to continue using this place-based activity in the coming years and i hope my students will continue to learn from this experience and enjoy the trip!

Category: Writing-Intensive

Research Project Peer Critique

#TheGuide: An Academic Service Learning Project

A Gothic Guide to Brooklyn: Gothic Spaces Presentation

Term Paper Peer Review

Drugs in the News

Tell Me About Infinity

Visit to a Drugstore

The OpenLab at City Tech:A place to learn, work, and share

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The OpenLab at City Tech:A place to learn, work, and share

Support

Accessibility

Copyright

Creative Commons