DWRL Lesson Plans - Eileen McGinnis

Google Docs - Crowd-Sourcing an Annotated Bibliography

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 14:45:35 +0000

Author:

Image Credit:

"2 reasons why the term 'crowdsourcing' bugs me" via opensourceway's Flickr

Brief Assignment Overview:

Using GoogleDocs, students create a group bibliography page to practice summarizing and evaluating a source. They then engage in an informal presentation of their source to the class. By addressing their classmates as an audience, students have an extra level of accountability to their peers to find quality sources and to write about them with care.

Type of Assignment:

Homework Assignment

Major Course Project

Assignment Length:

Multiple Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Annotated Bibliography

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Collaboration

Open Access Software

Presentations

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Research, citation, group collaboration, awareness of audience, summary

Media Requirements:

No Classroom Technology Required

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Media Console/Projector

Required Materials:

Students will need a Google account in order to access the group document. A media console with projector would be preferable, but strictly-speaking, this lesson does not require classroom technology as students do most of the work from home.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Early in the Semester

Mid-Semester

Full Assignment Description:

Using GoogleDocs, students create a group bibliography page to practice summarizing and evaluating a source. They then engage in an informal presentation of their source to the class. This collaborative exercise goes against the Lone Researcher model, but it is interesting to track how an article that one student finds stimulates another student's thinking in the final paper. There's also an ethos factor here--by addressing their classmates as an audience, students have an extra level of accountability to their peers to find quality sources and to write about them with care.

This assignment took about two weeks (i.e., less than a unit-length) to complete. 2-3 students would present each day, over the course of about 6 class periods.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

After introducing research methods in class, I asked students to find a source related to our texts for the third unit. They signed up for presentation slots available over the course of the next two weeks. On the day of their presentation, their annotated citation was due.

Instructions For Students:

Overview

In 250-400 words, write an annotated citation of a primary or secondary source. Your annotation should include (1) a concise summary and evaluation of the source and (2) an argument about how this source might enhance our reading of Gattaca or Oryx and Crake.

Specifics

This semester, we've examined materials that establish the historical and cultural contexts in which literary texts participate. E.g., we've looked at Lankester's writings on degeneration to understand the bleak evolutionary themes of The Time Machine. We've also consulted visual artifacts, such as late-Victorian cartoons about evolution and representations of genetics on recent magazine covers.

Now it's your turn: find an outside source that illuminates the literary and scientific contexts of Gattaca or Oryx and Crake. A few ideas: an interview with the author/director; an article in Nature or another scientific journal; a scholarly article or book chapter by a literary critic; an advertisement, artwork, film, etc. In class, we will discuss strategies for researching and assessing potential sources.

Regardless of your choice, your annotated citation will have three components: (1) an MLA-style citation, (2) a concise summary of an argument or an evocative description of an artifact, and (3) an argument that connects your source to the film/novel. Although you won't have much space to quote extensively, use specific language and examples to tie your reader closely to the source.

To receive credit for this assignment, you will also informally present your source to the class, summarizing your findings and pointing us to their implications.

Goals

Demonstrate care in selecting a source.
Provide a succinct but thorough summary/description of your source.
Successfully argue for what this source can tell us about the film or novel.
Clearly present your findings to the class.

Formatting

Each assignment should be 250-400 words, single-spaced. Include an MLA-style citation in bold at the top of your entry.
Add your citation to our class's annotated bibliography on GoogleDocs (no hard copy needed).
In-text citations should be formatted according to MLA style: insert page numbers for any quotations in parentheses after the quote (just the page numbers; no pp. or p.)

Evaluation Suggestions:

This short assignment counted for 6 percent of their total grade. However, the presentation component was evaluated on the basis of completion only, as it was not the focus of the assignment. Strong assignments demonstrated care in selecting a source, provided a succinct but thorough summary/description of the source, and successfully argued for what this source can tell us about the film or novel.

Course Type:

Advanced Writing Course

Intermediate Writing Course

Introductory Writing Course

Course Description:

This lesson was used in an introductory literary studies course: E314J - Literature and Biology

What does it mean to be human? Why do we behave the way we do? What’s the difference between life and non-life, organism and machine? Where are we (the human species, the planet Earth) headed next? Acknowledging certain obvious and meaningful differences in methods and outlook, one might nevertheless argue that both writers and biologists travel similar terrain, presenting themselves as (often competing) authorities on the “big questions” about Life. Instead of seeing literature and biology as necessarily antagonistic ways of looking at and understanding the world, we will read literature about science and literary science writing for their complementary insights. What do literature and biology look like at their interface? How do the scientific paradigms of their day influence how writers grapple with questions of human experience, identity, and ethics? In turn, how do literary narratives about evolutionary biology or genetics shape the way we think about these disciplines, the way they’re understood by non-scientists? No expertise in biology or in literary criticism will be presumed. The broad goals of this course will be to introduce science majors to the basic tools of literary analysis as well as to enable non-science majors to be savvier readers of the popular science they encounter. The course’s emphasis on students’ own critical writing will be helpful no matter what your major.

Tags:

Annotated bibliography

Video Conferencing in the Classroom

mcginnis — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 18:00:35 +0000

Author:

Eileen McGinnis

Image Credit:

Hardcover edition of Lehrer, Proust Was a Neuroscientist

Brief Assignment Overview:

In this classroom activity, a scholar/expert whose work is on your syllabus visits the classroom via Skype or another conferencing tool. The visit doesn’t require much of a time commitment or advance preparation on the part of your invitee, but it has a big payoff in terms of bringing students in conversation with a noted off-campus scholar or expert.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

One-Two Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Audience

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Cultural Context

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Invention

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Collaboration

Presentations

Social Media

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

To connect our classroom discussions with what's going on outside the classroom.

To inspire students through a conversation with an outside expert (in our case, the science writer Jonah Lehrer).

Media Requirements:

Media Console/Projector

Required Materials:

Skype (available on DWRL computers) or another video-conferencing tool

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Mid-Semester

Late in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

In this classroom activity, a scholar/expert whose work is on your syllabus visits the classroom via Skype or another conferencing tool. The activity follows an in-class discussion about the scholar's work, allowing students to engage with the reading and its author in a different way. Asking students to prepare questions in advance allows for a more focused and lively discussion.

Although I used this activity in a literature course, it would work well in a rhetoric course, perhaps even a 306 or 309S/K, where students might interact with a stakeholder in a controversy being discussed that semester.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

1. Contact the scholar as far in advance as possible about the visit to your class. Be flexible about the date of the visit.

2. As the date approaches, let the scholar know in advance which book excerpts/articles you have assigned in class, so that he or she is on the same page. Also, use this opportunity to arrange logistical details and maybe even to do a test conference on a DWRL computer.

3. For the class period before the speaker's visit, have each student submit a question for the visitor (ideally, this class would also be used to discuss the scholar's work, so that you the visit is an extension of that converstaion). I had students use the Drupal forum on our course website to post their question; they had about 10 minutes at the end of class to formulate a query.

4. On the day of class, log onto skype using the teacher computer. As per the previous arrangement, have the visitor call in, or call him/her when you are ready. Feel free to mediate the discussion using the questions submitted in Step Three. Unless the speaker's time is limited, be prepared to spend the full class period in conversation with the speaker.

Instructions For Students:

I did not give students a prompt for the activity, but I did give them advance notice about the speaker's attendance and an overview of how the class would be run that day.

Evaluation Suggestions:

This activity was not evaluated.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

The activity was a success in that our speaker (Jonah Lehrer) was quite engaging, and, based on our conversation during the next class, students enjoyed the visit. However, there were two main issues (possibly related) that you might consider when customizing the activity:

1. Student silence. My normally talkative class grew quiet when confronted with a disruption to our usual dynamic. The list of questions that I'd collected in advance were helpful in this regard, but you might consider other measures to get them going, like placing some students in charge of asking their peers' questions and interacting with the speaker.

2. Interactivity of speaker and students. In our set-up, the conferencing interface was projected on a large screen in the classroom, so that students could easily see the speaker. One drawback is that I had to be a liaison between the students and Lehrer; he could hear but not necessarily see all of them, as the computer’s video camera was not facing the class. This arrangement made true conversation/interaction difficult at times.

Alternatively: Jim Brown, who inspired this lesson, suggested gathering students around a single computer. This arrangement would allow students to communicate directly with the visitor (and vice versa), but might not be feasible if you have a class larger than 10 or 12 students.

Course Type:

Literary Studies Course

Course Description:

“We are made of art and science. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, but we are also just stuff.” –Jonah Lehrer, Proust Was a Neuroscientist

What does it mean to be human? Why do we behave the way we do? What’s the difference between life and non-life, organism and machine? Where are we (the human species, the planet Earth) headed next?

Acknowledging the obvious and meaningful differences in methods and outlook, one might argue that both writers and biologists travel similar terrain, presenting themselves as (often competing) authorities on the “big questions” about Life.

Instead of seeing literature and biology as necessarily antagonistic ways of looking at and understanding the world, in this course we will read literature about science and literary science writing for their complementary insights. What do literature and biology look like at their interface? How do the scientific paradigms of their day influence how writers grapple with questions of human experience, identity, and ethics? In turn, how do literary narratives about evolutionary biology or genetics shape the way we think about these disciplines, the way they’re understood by non-scientists?

No expertise in biology or in literary criticism will be presumed. The broad goals of this course will be to introduce students to the basic tools of literary analysis and to develop students’ own critical writing.

Tags: