Welcome, colleagues from Computers and Writing 2013! Use the format below to share your assignment ideas as comments to this post. We’re glad to have you join our efforts on the OpenLab.
Our three cards were
Open Pedagogy Technique:
General Education Student Learning Outcome:
Game:
Our group developed a/an [formal/informal/ group/ classroom] assignment that asks students to [what they’ll do] and then [what else they’ll do] and [finally what else they’ll do] using [specific tools, materials, skills] so they can learn [course goal] while also developing [specific and or general skills]
Cards – Game: Risk, Assignment: Emulate the style of a particular blog, Goals: Demonstrate proficiencies and capacities in dealing with a diverse society.
Our strategy – We would like to have students design a map of Brooklyn representing diverse neighborhoods. The students would research the economic, environmental, architectural, historical, etc elements of each neighborhood and do interviews of members of the community (politicians, real estate developers, business owners, etc). The student would then develop “This American Life” style podcasts and transcriptions to post on the course blog. The students could even write these posts in the style of a member of the community (esp. in a creative writing course).
Our team received: Monopoly (game), tags (technique), scientific/logical reasoning (SLO).
We went with a social science research project with a mixed-methods approach (observation/ethnographic, data collection, but not interviews/surveys).
setup: students identify which Monopoly piece they are (acknowledging their own situation and status to guard against observer bias and/or self-reflexivity a la ethnographic methodology).
A city block is selected and the whole class first engages in direct observation (and begins to develop tags for the folksonomy/coding of data). Observations include proximity to trains, utilities, infrastructure, observable economic details, size of buildings, what does the naming structure of street names look like, etc.)
Depending on the course, students could also collect data from city records, police reports, economic data, histories and news stories, etc. Ben suggested swabs of bacteria or other biological research tools as well. (Maybe run the same block with different courses that use different methods)
class forms a hypothesis based on collective selection of tags.
students in pairs or trios select a new block, use observation to test hypothesis (1st as individuals and then collectively to enact replication/triangulation) and report back to the class.
students can create digital representations of each block that can be visually and textually tagged. maps can be re-used over semesters.
These assignments are great, many thanks for sharing them! Sounds like the conference workshop was both fun and productive.