DWRL Lesson Plans - Citation

Introductory Writing Course

Full Assignment Description:

While most students can tell you that plagiarism is wrong, few can tell you what it is. Ask them in class for examples and invariably they will tell you that “submitting someone else’s work as your own” is plagiarism. Instances more nuanced, and so more likely, rarely if ever get attention. Yet certainly college students have been taught the subject before in high school, and so would usually find a lesson on intellectual property theft dry, boring and repetitive. By presenting my students with new, engaging examples from a medium — popular music — from their daily lives, some of the more troublesome and subtle patterns can be addressed without sacrificing their attention.

The pieces I have used in class are organized to indicate varying levels of artistic culpability, intent and innocence regarding artistic theft; I begin with the most clear cut cuts — songs that lost a plagiarism lawsuit — then move into less obvious territory. The songs most helpful to my students, with relevant links and the concepts they mean to exemplify, are as follows:

• Queen & David Bowie, “Under Pressure” vs. Vanilla Ice, “Ice Ice Baby”

My first example highlights explicit, premeditated, egregious plagiarism. While sampling was (and remains) a common practice in hip-hop, what makes Vanilla Ice stand out from, say, MC Hammer’s use of Rick James, is how Ice failed (and even denied) crediting Queen/Bowie. (This clip really drives the point home: http://youtu.be/1s0hEi8zhmg?t=1m40s)

• George Harrison, “My Sweet Lord” vs. The Chiffons, “He’s So Fine”

In contrast to the previous pair, this example spotlights — in the words of the infamous court case — “subconscious plagiarism”; namely, how Harrison (an artist at the peak of his career) accidentally copied a much older song. While most students likely will not blatantly steal from another author, this reference shows that intent or even awareness does not always matter.

• Willie Dixon, “Hoochie Coochie Man” (performed by Muddy Waters) vs. Bo Diddley, “I’m A Man”

This case, on the other hand, calls attention to what I call “conventional knowledge”: elements of a genre that are so widespread and frequent that any attribution would be distracting and ridiculous. In terms of the blues, that would involve a riff like both Diddley and Dixon use; within US political discourse, it would be “conventional knowledge” that Republicans are conservative, needing no extra citation.

• Marvin Gaye, “Got To Give It Up (Part 1)” vs. Robin Thicke, “Blurred Lines”

Probably the illustration that gets the most engaged reaction from students, these songs, much like the previous example, show how pathos and logos (the dance-party feeling and the instrumentation, respectively) can be shared while the individuality remains intact.

• The Rolling Stones, “Lady Jane” vs. Neil Young, “Borrowed Tune”

What might have been the most flagrant case of theft is here spared of any charge of plagiarism not only because Young gave songwriting credit to Jagger/Richards, but because within the lyrics themselves, Young acknowledges that he is “singing a borrowed tune / [he] stole from the Rolling Stones.” If timed well, students can get a real kick out of this example.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Formulate a list of examples, noting specifically what sections of each track you want to play. For instance, you may only want to play the second and third verses of Neil Young’s “Borrowed Tune” (as mentioned above), in which case you’ll want to start the track around the 1:20 mark. A certain familiarity with music theory, in order to communicate exactly how the pieces are similar, might also be helpful for some instructors. Furthermore, knowing the history behind whatever examples you choose — such as whether or not a lawsuit was brought against an artist, and if so, who won — is highly illustrative; asking students whether or not they think George Harrison, for instance, lost his case also improves engagement.

Instructions For Students:

As with any class that primarily involves media examples, students should pay close attention to the music, taking note of whatever objective elements they hear. These could include: genre, instruments, speed, lyrics, time or key signature, etc. All of these elements play into what makes a record unique or derivative.

Evaluation Suggestions:

As an in-class group assignment, I graded my students on participation.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Typically, students enjoy breaks from the routine of reading, and can become very engaged when the material under observation is something that is a part of their daily life, like pop music is. Generally speaking, they are often surprised by the outcomes of certain cases (like the George Harrison or Robin Thicke instances above), which broadens their understanding of exactly what counts as theft and what may not. As it is, few of my students who have participated in this lesson have had any issue with properly citing their sources.

Course Type:

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Collaborative Web Page Annotations With Diigo

Battistelli — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:29:21 +0000

Author:

Todd Battistelli

Image Credit:

Todd Battistelli

Brief Assignment Overview:

This lesson introduces students to a collaborative annotation tool to facilitate class discussions and to encourage active reading and research practices.

Type of Assignment:

Class Discussion

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

One-Two Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Textual Analysis

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Introduce students to a tool that enables organization and annotation of web pages. Encourage active reading and research practices. Support in-class group discussions with references to common reading.

Media Requirements:

Media Console/Projector

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

Diigo accounts for each student & Diigo toolbar add-on installed in Firefox.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Full Assignment Description:

After introducing students to the concept of annotating their sources, the instructor describes Diigo. Diigo is an add-on for Firefox (a more limited add-on is available for Chrome, but the Firefox add-on is used for this activity). It allows for real-time collaborative annotation of text on web pages. Users may highlight text, add sticky-note annotations to specific highlights, or add floating notes to any web page. Diigo also provides a bookmarking & caching function to store pages on diigo.com servers to mitigate against digital impermanence. Teachers may sign up for an educator account which provides access to group administration features useful for working with a group. Users within a group, for instance, can share annotations with each other without making them publicly available to all Diigo users.

As students are introduced to Diigo's functions, they should sign up for an account on the website. Teachers choosing to work with a Diigo group can add students to the group, or users can make their annotations public to share with the group.

Once set up, students work in pairs to annotate a page selected by the instructor responding to questions relevant to the goals of the course (in this case evaluating how accurately discussants in a discussion thread summarized each other). Students highlight text & add sticky notes with their responses. After students are done, the class reviews the annotations as a group.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Instructor should become familiar with Diigo & apply for educator-level account. Set up student accounts (have students sign up for accounts in class). Locate & bookmark a webpage to use for the activity.

Instructions For Students:

Annotate the website according to the prompts assigned to your group. Highlight the relevant text. Hover your cursor over the text to attach a note to the highlighted text. Review the annotations made by other groups by refreshing the page & checking the Diigo side-bar (displayed by clicking on the icon left of the "Diigo" button in the toolbar.

Evaluation Suggestions:

Instructors can assess this activity according to the annotations students produce and how well those annotations can be tied into the class discussion as well as used in later work during the semester. The annotations should provide a means to record and index ideas and arguments often lost in day-to-day discussions.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students should be required to use the Firefox add-on, as the Chrome version only provides basic annotation features. Firefox provides access to a sidebar that provides an overview of a page's annotations. Before students begin group work, the instructor should run everyone through a brief training exercise to familiarize students with the basic operations of the toolbar.

Course Type:

Advanced Writing Course

Course Description:

RHE 330E - Advanced Rhetorical Theory and Analysis - Topic: Audience & Argumentation. Students study variety of rhetorical theory & investigate questions of how rhetor and audience infuence each other and the arguments produced in any persuasive situation. Students apply theoretical models to analysis and evaluation of how sources interact in argumentation.

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Color-coding Revision - Visualizing the Process

Cate Blouke — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:46:38 +0000

Author:

Cate Blouke

Image Credit:

"Big Cup'O Crayons" via haydnseek's Flikr stream

Brief Assignment Overview:

Following a detailed set of instructions, students use crayons (or other multi-colored writing utensils) to visually distinguish between certain elements of their papers. The result is a colorful paper that visually demarcates areas of text that may require revision.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Arrangement

Delivery

Style

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Textual Analysis

Word Choice

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Multimodal

Visualization

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Revision

Organization/Arrangement

Delivery

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

*Having attempted this exercise on computers, I highly recommend a low-tech approach. Using hard copies and forcing students to interact with the material pages themselves both allows for more freedom in marking up the papers and helps the visualization process. Additionally, my students loved playing with crayons.

So, all you will need are:

hard copies of the papers to be revised
crayons, highlighters, or variously colored pens

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Useful Anytime

Mid-Semester

Full Assignment Description:

Students are asked to peer review each other's papers using crayons (my personal favorite tool) or other colorful writing utensils. Using three differently colored crayons, they look for very specific aspects of the paper to underline, circle, or cross-out. The particular parts of the paper they should attend to are easily adaptable to an instructor's needs and the common issues arising in a given class. The important thing is that students mark up the papers with different colors and different types of annotation.

This workshop is incredibly helpful to students who are more visually-oriented learners. It is also an extremely helpful editing process for students to practice. By giving them extremely detailed instructions and asking them to pay close attention to more minute aspects of their peers' papers, they often leave the workshop feeling more attuned to these issues in their own papers.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Adapt the workshop instructions to your own needs. This is particularly helpful once you've already seen the students' writing and can gauge the issues that need addressing. For example, in my rhetoric/composition class, I find that students often rely too heavily on quotations in their first papers (which involve a lot fo summary), so I have them underline all of the quotations. This makes it immediately clear to most of the students just how much of their paper is quoted and how much is their own writing. On the other hand, in my literature class my students might not be providing enough evidence from the text, so underlining quotations have the inverse effect of highlighting a paucity of quotation.

My own teacherly pet-peeve is vague pronouns and distant referents, so this usually turns up regardless of the course I'm teaching. But as you'll see in the instructions below, it's fairly easy to tweak the worksheet to fit your needs.

Other than that, make sure to tell students to bring a hard copy of their papers. It's also important to provide writing utensils in a variety of colors (at least three per student). I tend to bring a giant box of crayons to class - both because crayons are less expensive than colored pencils or other options, and because my students get a kick out of playing with crayons in a college classroom.

Instructions For Students:

(You will probably want to re-format this before giving it to students, but for accessibility reasons, I am not retaining the original Word document's formatting)

This exercise is designed to help with the revision process by making certain aspects of your papers stand out visually. For those of you that are visual learners this might be really useful in that it literally highlights the way you use language. For others of you this might just be an easy in-class exercise where you get to play with crayons.

1. Select three different colored crayons. This will work best if they are distinctly different colors.

2. Assign each color a function by creating a color key here:

a. PRONOUNS ___________________

b. TOPIC SENTENCES ______________

c. QUOTATIONS __________________

3. As you read through the paper,

a. With the color assigned to pronouns,

i. Circle every: THEY, THEIR, THOSE, THESE, THIS, IT, ITS,

ii. Cross out any: I, YOU, YOUR, WE, OUR, US, (and any contractions you come across ‘cause they shouldn’t be there either)

b. With the color assigned to topic sentences, underline the first sentence of every paragraph

c. With the color assigned to quotations, underline every quote you come across (make a second line if quotes are used in the fist sentence)

4. Once you have worked through the entire paper, go back through it a second time. Do the following exercises with a pen or pencil.

a. For every pronoun you circled, identify the referent (i.e. who is the “they,” what is the “this” or “it”), and write your answers on the line below each pronoun.

b. Read through each paragraph again, and in the margin write a few words identifying the subject of the paragraph. Does the content match the topic sentence? If not, make a single, neat X across the entire paragraph.

c. For each quotation, assess whether the quote is one of the following and label each quote accordingly:

i. Rhetorically effective (i.e. uses powerful/evocative language) [RE]

ii. Highly specific (statistics or technical language) [HS]

iii. Could probably be paraphrased or seems unnecessary [PARA]

Evaluation Suggestions:

As it's purely for the students' benefit, this assignment is not graded. I simply use this as an in-class exercise and send them home with their marked-up papers.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

My students generally really enjoy this exercise - in part because I have them playing with crayons in a college classroom. What I have found is that the actual process of doing the workshop is more helpful than the feedback they receive - so, in doing this to someone else's paper, it helps them to notice the trend in their own papers. The exercise can be adapted to any number of common problems, these are just three things that my students tend to consistently have issues with in the first paper (no matter how much we've gone over these things in class).

I do think it's important to use hard copies of their papers. I've tried this in a computer-classroom, and using highlighting in Word just doesn't have the same impact. It also makes it more difficult to visualize all together and doesn't have the same tactile effect.

Course Description:

This exercise will work in any course requiring writing and revision. I've used it in both rhetoric and literature classes, but it was originally designed for an introductory rhetoric class.

Rhetoric 306 is a course designed to introduce students to the principles of rhetoric, responsible civil discourse, and college writing. Students are asked to select a contemporary controversy to explore through research, rhetorical analysis, and ultimately to advocate their own position.

Tags:

Revision

Peer Review

Editing

Visual Representation

Google Docs - Crowd-Sourcing an Annotated Bibliography

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

Author:

Eileen McGinnis

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:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Collaboration

Open Access Software

Presentations

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

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

Media Requirements:

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:

Intermediate Writing Course

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

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

Creating Individual "Infospheres" on the Web

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 16:11:03 +0000

Author:

Jasmine Mulliken

Image Credit:

An example of an infosphere from Jasmine Mulliken

Brief Assignment Overview:

The infosphere assignment calls on students to identify online sources of information they regularly take in and to create a representative structure for this information. Students must build their own unique infospheres and organize them as they see fit.

Type of Assignment:

Course Unit

Major Course Project

Assignment Length:

Course Unit

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Rhetorical analysis, citation, research, invention, digital literacy.

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

Mind mapping software (Novamind, Freemind, etc.)

Aggregator website (Netvibes, iGoogle, etc.)

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Mid-Semester

Full Assignment Description:

Michael Vlahos defined "infosphere" in 1996 as "the fusion of all the world's communications networks, databases and sources of information into a vast, intertwined and heterogeneous tapestry of electronic interchange" (498). The thirteen years since his article was published has seen, among ather things, a shift in use of internet from the impersonal to the personal. Individuals now have their own infospheres, personal tapestries of information that they choose to absorb on a day-to-day basis. The infosphere assignment calls on students to identify online sources of information they regularly take in and to create a representative structure for this information. One way to do this is through an aggregator site such as Netvibes. Students must build their own unique infospheres and organize them. The bases for this organization becomes apparent not only in the way the student displays his or her infosphere on the webiste, but also in the secondary and explanatory requirement--the mind map.

This 6-7 week assignment requires students to construct both a visual and a verbal representation of their infospheres. During the process, it is important to discuss theoretical ideas about the web, sociology, and argument so that students understand what makes up their infospheres, but also why and how these sources play a role in their formations of identity.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Begin the unit with a discussion of infospheres. This discussion can be up to a class in length and may include whole class discussion, group discussion, and/or lecture.

The next class period should focus on the idea of aggrogator sites and should include a demonstration of how one works. I used Netvibes. After explanation and demonstrations, let the students work on their own for 15-20 minutes, addressing any questions that come up during that time.

The next class period might deal with structuring information. (This could be done before the aggregator discussion, but I found it useful to have the material already so there was something to fill up the structure with.) Talk with students about how we structure our lives based on role or time or any other framework. This discussion could be half a class, and the next half could be an explanation/demonstration of NovaMind or another mind mapping software. Again, allow some time for students to play with the software in class.

The next few class periods, allow time at the beginning or end of class to work on project. In the meantime you might have them do readings over information structures or identity and its modern influences and discuss these readings and the ideas they evoke. Tie these ideas in to the infosphere so that the theory behind the assignment is always relevant.

It might be a good idea to have one full class dedicated to working on the project toward the end of the unit. You may not need this, though, if you've been allowing a block of time throughout the unit for work.

Instructions For Students:

This assignment has two parts: a mindmap reflecting the structure and reasoning for your website; and a website reflecting your infosphere as discussed in class.

Create, in an online environment, a space that represents your infosphere. You should use an aggregator site such as netvibes.com or igoogle.com to bring together the various information you take in on a daily basis. This may include any news sites you visit, radio stations you listen to, shows you watch, social sites you visit, email accounts you check, lectures or podcasts you listen to (like church sermons or class feeds), and the like. You may want to create different tabs that effectively categorize the information by role. Perhaps you read different magazines or journals for your job or classes than you do for entertainment. Maybe you want to separate your personal email account from your school email account. Keep in mind how you organize the information you take in and try to represent that through the interface.

As a precursor to building your website, map out the various components of your infosphere in a mind map. This map can serve as a brainstorming space and help you think through the different uses of the various information you take in on a daily basis.

Be as thorough as you can. Include everything you receive information from or take into consideration when constructing your reality. Remember, though, that you are trying to represent mainly the information you take in and not the information you put out. Sometimes these lines intersect, but try to contain this assignment as best you can to information you receive and process.

Requirements

Upload as a jpeg your infosphere mindmap by the due date. The map should have at the center your name. The first level of nodes should represent the tabs that will be at the top of your netvibes site (or the first level of organization on any other site you're using). The next level of nodes should be the titles of the blocks you will be putting under each tab. The nodes under the block titles should explain how and how often you use the information in the block, when and why you started using it, and a brief description of the site represented in the block.

Post a link to the finished site to the submission area for the assignment by the due date.(Check the calendar on the course website.) Additionally you may post a link in the class forum if you're willing to share your infosphere with the class. Be as thorough as possible. If you find along the way any sites that aren't part of your current infosphere but that you want to make part of it, definitely add those in! This assignment is meant to be both reflective and generative.

Evaluation Suggestions:

The grade on this assignment is based on the thoroughness of the site and the mindmap. In cases where students may have fewer objects in their infospheres, the amount of information and description in the mind map should show a thorough understanding of the role of those objects. The page should be well organized according to a specific structure defined by the student. The mindmap and website should show structures consistent with each other. Many objects on the website does not guarantee a good grade. Grade is based on evidence of the student's understanding of the purposes of those objects.

Course Type:

Advanced Writing Course

Intermediate Writing Course

Course Description:

This project was implemented in an intermediate rhetoric course, RHE 309K The Rhetoric of Web Identity.

Tags:

Infosphere

Citation

Visual Representation

Invention

Website Design

Novamind

Chronological Annotated Bibliography Using Dipity

Cate Blouke — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:51:36 +0000

Author:

Cate Blouke

Image Credit:

Screen shot of sample bibliography created on Dipity.

Brief Assignment Overview:

Using the free digital timeline website, Dipity, students can organize and annotate their sources chronologically. This enables students to visualize the sequence of events and better address how particular texts interact with or talk past each other.

Type of Assignment:

Homework Assignment

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Cultural Context

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

The assignment is designed to help students with their research, summary, and citation skills, as well as familiarize them with a particular digital environment.

Media Requirements:

Intermediate Writing Course

Required Materials:

Students will need Internet access and a computer. They will also need to create a free account with Dipity - which will allow them to make up to three time lines.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Useful Anytime

Full Assignment Description:

This particular assignment was part of a larger unit in which students were asked to map out the life of an Internet meme of their choosing. To prepare for the essay they would be writing, I had them create an annotated bibliography of at least five iterations of their meme. Using Dipity for this assignment helped students to organize their sources chronologically and therefore visualize how the various iterations of the meme evolved. They were expected to include an image with each annotation, a paragraph describing the source, its argument, its author, and its "publication" venue. Dipity is useful in that it allows students to compile multimedia materials related to their topic, and it also provides multiple viewing modes through which to access the material.

Here is a student example (graciously offered by one of my students). Notice that you have several viewing options in the upper left-hand corner, and you can adjust the scale of the timeline to see more events or zoom in on particular events.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

I found it was particularly helpful to create a mock-up of the assignment to model for the students. I would point out that the Dipity site can run somewhat slowly at times - meaning that the creation process and/or loading the embedded timeline can sometimes take a while. The site is fairly intuitive, so it is not necessary to spend time demonstrating it in class. My students did not seem to have much trouble figuring it out on their own. Just in terms of annotated bibliography assignments in general, a lot of students seem to have a hard time grasping how robust their annotations should be. So I recommend spending a fair bit of time explaining that one or two sentences is not sufficient for generating a useful source annotation.

Additionally, the Dipity format doesn't really lend itself to including a "proper" citation, so you may want to consider how you want students to provide official citations (beyond just the links in each "event" entry). I organize my courses using a PBWorks wiki, so I had my students embed the timeline on a wiki page and then provide citations below it. You could just as easily have students e-mail you links to their time lines and provide their citations in a separate Word document.

Instructions For Students:

You will create an annotated bibliography with (at least) 5 entries related to a particular meme (or online version of a cultural idea/event/issue) that you want to investigate. One of the entries will be for the “original” iteration of the meme, and the other entries will be for texts that deal with the same idea in different ways. It will be important, therefore, to choose texts that are clearly related but different enough that you can talk about the diverse ways the idea manifested across media and publication venues. Ultimately, you will choose at least three of these texts to write about in essay one, Mapping a Meme.

Below is an example of an "annotation" - it includes a full bibliographic citation (formatted in MLA style) and a paragraph offering a brief summary of this book’s argument. If I were annotating an article, I would do the same thing. For a video or visual text, I would offer a brief description of the text’s elements or storyline and summary of its message.

Aristotle. Rhetoric. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984. Print.

Aristotle defines “rhetoric” as not merely the art of figures of speech, but as the ability to see available means of persuasion, focusing on types public speaking. Here, his emphasis is on the external effects of speech in terms of political implications and audience response (i.e. the public ends of oratory). For Aristotle, public speech consists of three vital elements: the arguments a speaker uses, the character of the speaker, and the disposition of the audience. He finds ethical appeals to be the “controlling factor” in a speech, and explains that these consist of good sense, goodwill, and good character.

For your assignment, after your provide a brief summary, make some sort of assessment of your source and offer some criticisms. Is your source scholarly, popular, or perhaps some of both? What does its purpose seem to be? Is it current? Is the research (if here is any) biased or objective? Why? Are the facts well documented? Who is the author? Is s/he qualified in this subject?

After summarizing and assessing, you can now reflect on this source. How does it fit into your research? Is this a helpful resource? What are the main similarities and differences between this and the “original” iteration? How well do you think you can connect it to other sources you might use in essay 1?

For each source, be sure to include an image and a link to the original source. When you are finished, copy and paste the embed code into a wiki page in your student folder. Be sure to set your timeline's viewing permissions to "public" or else I will not be able to see/evaluate it.

Evaluation Suggestions:

I used the Learning Record in this class, so my evaluative comments were largely based on the students' progress. However, here is the rubric I used:

[ ] The sources’ main arguments are made clear at the beginning of the annotation

[ ] Thorough

[ ] Accurate

[ ] Supported with quotes and paraphrase

[ ] Annotations are well-organized and follow similar organizational patterns

[ ] Writing relatively free from grammatical error

[ ] Quotes are properly framed

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

On the whole, my students seemed to do well with the assignment and appreciated the departure from a traditional writing assignment. They had trouble in terms of writing robust enough annotations, but I suspect that if I spent more time explaining my expectations this would be less of a problem.

Course Type:

Introductory Writing Course

Course Description:

I used this exercise in my intermediate writing course (The Rhetoric of Stand Up Comedy). This course examines how comedians use humor to advocate positions in public controversies, to construct notions of group identity, and to criticize public figures – essentially, how they use humor to persuade. If laughter is a sign of persuasion (a question the course explores), students think through why audiences do or don’t laugh, are or are not persuaded by a text. Students think and write critically about what makes comic performances compelling, focusing closely on the relationship between performers and their audiences. They track how the purpose and message of texts changes as jokes move across media and venue in the digital age, looking at a wide range of sources - from comedy albums to HBO specials, from YouTube to Twitter.

Tags:

Free Software

Dipity

Annotated bibliography

Multimedia Presentation

Visualization Software

Collaborative Annotated Bibliography with a PBWorks Wiki

Bloom — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 20:49:56 +0000

Author:

Emily Bloom

Image Credit:

Screen shot of collaborative annotated bibliography in PBWorks

Brief Assignment Overview:

Students worked together to create a collaborative annotated bibliography on PBWorks that covered a range of literary scholarship relating to the novels and poems on the course syllabus. Each student signed up for a day to give a research presentation; on their assigned day they found a scholarly source, wrote an annotated bibliography entry on the PBWorks site, and presented it to the class. By the end of the semester, students had created an annotated bibliography that could serve as a resource for the whole class as they began writing their final research papers.

Type of Assignment:

Semester-long Project

Assignment Length:

Semester-long Project

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Cultural Context

Historical Context

Literary Criticism

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Collaboration

Presentations

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

This assignment exposed students to different approaches to literary scholarship and research techniques. Sudents developed familiarity with library search engines, peer-reviewed journals, and academic conventions in the study of English Literature. They also learned to write annotations, cite sources using MLA citation style, and present their research to their classmates. By incorporating an ongoing research assignment into the course, I was able to maintain a conversation about research and scholarship throughout the semester. It also served to make research more collaborative, as students could draw upon the summaries that their peers had provided, and use the bibliography as a resource to identify relevant scholarship and to further pursue the conversations that they found interesting.

Media Requirements:

Required Materials:

Students will need to sign up for accounts on PBWorks in preparation for the assignment. Instructors must create a single wiki page entry titled "Annotated Bibliography" on which students will add their entries. Any other materials are optional; for instance, several students gave research presentations using powerpoint, for which I needed a media console in the classroom. However, it would be possible to limit students to oral presentations.

Timeline for Optimal Use: