DWRL Lesson Plans - PBWorks

Facilitating Multimedia Composition

RMazique — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 06:33:14 +0000

Author:

Image Credit:

Rachel Mazique's "Disability in Pop Culture" Class YouTube Channel

Brief Assignment Overview:

This lesson helped students begin composing their final rhetoric assignment: a Multimedia Argument Project (MAP). I encouraged students to work with each other during the planning process and to collaborate with one another as they developed their digital literacy skills.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Homework Assignment

Course Unit

Major Course Project

Assignment Length:

Multiple Class Periods

Course Unit

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

In addition to the goals above, students were to:

-become familiar with the range of digital resources available for multimedia composition projects

-practice composing in multiple modes (visual, aural, alphanumeric)

Media Requirements:

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

--Please Note: all of the links below were organized onto appropriately titled pages in a folder titled "Final Project Help" on our class wiki--

1. samples of student-authored multimedia projects:

either from The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (TheJUMP) or past student work from my class YouTube channel,

2. KeepVid website (best run on Safari),

3. a Google Doc for class brainstorming on “Beginning the Final Project,” (stored on a class PBworks wiki page)

4. Internet Archives,

5. Creative Commons for songs,

6. Disability song list,

7. Animoto website, instructions for Animoto video production, More Animoto Help,

(beneficial, though not required):

8. Digital Writing and Research Lab (DWRL) rental equipment,

9. our class PBworks wiki Homework page

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Mid-Semester

Late in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

Adapted from Justin Hodgson’s Multimedia Research-Argument Creation

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Multimodal Argument Project Prompt:

Using your prior knowledge, that of your peers’, and the skills you will gain during this unit, you will create a multimodal researched-based argumentative "document." These multimodal arguments should demonstrate a significant research effort as well as showcase your abilities to write, think, and express yourselves via the integration of multiple media. This research will include the time you spend with “how-to” guides/tutorials with the aim of improving your digital literacy skills. But, unlike the common approach to this type of "writing," where students/researchers write a traditional paper and then try to remediate that into multimedia forms, these projects will be "born digital." Composing digitally requires you to think, draft, design, and revise in multimedia, not engage in a text-to-multimedia practice.

The multimodal project is fairly open, but its breadth is necessary as each project will be different and take a different shape depending on the intent, skills, and risk-taking strategies of each student-author. I am open to your creative input and ideas!

Your controversy or the pop culture source that you’ve analyzed should shape your creations and the varying rhetorical strategies that you employ. For example, if you’ve analyzed a cartoon or comic in Paper 2.1, you may want to create your own. If you analyzed a documentary, consider creating your own documentary. We will more fully discuss the flexibility of this project in-class, both on the day this project is assigned and throughout the unit, to ensure that you have a solid grasp of how to navigate these guidelines.

That said, here are some concrete guidelines.

Minimum Requirements:

Must take a stance with relation to your controversy and attempt to persuade readers/viewers;

Must clearly be framed as an argument of conjecture, definition, ethics, value, or policy

Must engage your analyses of representations in pop culture by either supporting certain representations, subverting stereotypical representations and/or transforming an argument made in pop culture.
Must integrate and/or utilize multiple media (both the visual and alphanumeric modes are required) for rhetorical purpose (audio is encouraged, but optional—depending on your medium);

The video is not the only medium open to you; you can also compose a comic, be creative and innovative with PowerPoint, create a website, a video game, etc.
Feel free to run an original project idea by me for approval.

Must rebut/refute at least one counterargument/position with the presentation or production of counter-images, words, and/or voices.
Must include at least 5 quality sources and "Works Cited" details (in MLA format) within the MAP--not in a separate document:

At least 2 must come from scholarly resources (you should use the research you gathered for your Annotated Bibliography; you may also use the scholarly class readings)
If your project is nearing the maximum length, you may go over the limit (if you need more time/space to add in the Works Cited and make it readable). Note, this exception to the length requirement applies only for the Works Cited. If you want to discuss another exception, please see me. See the length requirement below.

Length requirement:

Create a 2-3 minute video if you’re working alone.

If you’re working with a partner or two, the video's length requirement increases based on the number of people involved: 4-6 minutes, or 6-9 minutes, respectively.
Group size max: 3 people
If you’re not composing a video, the length requirement still applies with relation to an in-class final presentation of your project. So, if you’re using PowerPoint, it should run 2-3 minutes long in a presentation.
If you’re making a comic strip, the strip should be about 2 pages long--or however long you need to make your argument and be able to present it to the class in 2-3 minutes.

Accessibility requirement:

Make your project accessible to a deaf audience (captions/a transcript)

I can work with you on captioning your video in the Open Lab (PAR 102) on Wednesdays from 5pm-8pm.
I can also point you to some guidelines I created and work with you during class.
Fyi: if your submission to TheJUMP is accepted for publication, you will also need to make your project accessible to a blind audience (descriptions of visual features). If you did this work in advance of publication in TheJUMP, I would consider this evidence of going above and beyond in the argumentation/digital literacy course strands.

For a variety of digital resources, see the link below:

Dr. Rodrigue's Digital Writing Resource Page

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Plan for at least five weeks of in-class time to work on this multimedia argument project. Students need in-class time to familiarize themselves with the various technologies available to them and to learn how to compose in a digital medium besides the alphanumeric programs they are used to composing in (i.e. Microsoft Word).

If feasible within your department, sign up for at least a "plus" account with Animoto. Here in the Digital Writing and Research Lab (DWRL), instructors are fortunate that the lab will renew or subscribe to digital services like Animoto--as long as they serve a pedagogical function. I communicated with the supervisor in the DWRL, who renewed our plus account so students could create a video up to nine minutes long, which was what I required if a group had three students working together.

Below are the major steps I used for this day's lesson plan on "Facilitating Multimedia Composition":

Review vocabulary important to beginning students' composing process: topic, controversy, position and stakeholder. Ask students: what do these terms mean? What is the difference between a topic and a controversy? Explain how students should organize their arguments.
Have students review what their classmates are doing (on a Google Doc students filled in at the start of today's class: “Beginning the Final Project”) and consider who they may want to collaborate with in a co-authorship of this final project.
Introduce students to KeepVid as a way to export videos from YouTube.
Discuss Copyright laws.
Introduce the Internet Archives and Creative Commons.
Point students to “Disability Songs” list.
Have students use the rest of class time to talk over ideas with classmates they want to work with, review samples of student-authored multimedia projects on TheJUMP/previous work from our class YouTube channel, plan their final project with a rough outline, and look for images, videos and/or songs they may want to use.
Remind students to not only look for images, videos and songs that they agree with or those that could support their argument but also images, videos, and/or songs that they disagree with and will refute/rebut in their final project.
Review the definitions of refutations and rebuttals.
Point students to instructions for Animoto (on the wiki) but also mention that I can help students with this program.

Instructions For Students:

As a starting point to today's class, I had students go to the “in-class activities” folder on our class PBworks wiki.

From there, they went to the Google Doc folder and clicked on the “Beginning the Final Project” page.

Here's what they needed to write out as a starting point to the composing process. (The page also functioned as a class resource that would allow students to determine who they might want to co-author a project with.)

Please write:

1. Your topic;

2. Your controversy;

3. The pop culture source you will remediate

4. At least three positions that stakeholders take with regards to your controversy

5. The position that you saw your pop culture source taking

6. The position that you yourself take. (I explained that for this final unit, students were invited to share their viewpoint and to tell us where they stood with regards to their controversy.)

7. Possible multimedia project ideas you are considering (website, comic, documentary, photoessay, stop motion animation, etc).

Evaluation Suggestions:

For information on how I assessed students' final projects, please see my blog post on the topic: "Multimodal Writing: How do we Assess New Media?" at the Digital Writing and Research Lab's Blogging Pedagogy website

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students had the choice to author a project alone or to work in groups of two or three. The number of students involved in a project affected the length requirement. Longer projects were expected of group-authored multimedia arguments.

Most students felt that their controversy was unique and would not merge well with fellow classmates' controversies or topics. (These final projects were the result of a semester-long process researching a single controversy). Those who did choose to co-author a project chose to work with only one partner rather than two (for logistical reasons apparently). One group started with three members, but one member eventually decided she wanted to work on her own due to creative differences. She had a specific argument she knew she wanted to pursue.

Students who were interested in co-authoring a project needed extra guidance from me on how to coherently weave together an argument on two distinct controversies. With these students, I encouraged the student groups to start from a broader standpoint--to work from our class topic "Disability in Pop Culture"--and to use research from their specific controversies to determine an argument they wanted to make about their particular topics within our class's "umbrella."

Several students were anxious about multimedia composition.

Several others were excited about this change of pace.

In the end, through in-class guidance and collaboration amongst peers, students who were anxious about composing in iMovie for the first time (for example) were eventually proud of their final product and the new digital literacy skills they gained throughout this composition process. Several students creatively went above and beyond the requirements to create a project they would be glad to publish in a public forum such as our class YouTube channel.

One student even composed an entirely original music video; another student drew and created an original stop-motion animated video; several others drew their own comics (either by hand on paper, or online with digital drawing tools/comic software).

Additional Resources:

Recommendations from Justin Hodgson:

Bump Halbritter's recent book Mics, Cameras, and Symbolic Action: Audio-Visual Rhetoric for Writing Teachers talks about audio and video work,

Sean Morey recently had his textbook The New Media Writer come out with Fountainhead Press,

and Kristin Arola, Jennifer Shepard, and Cheryl Ball recently published their Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects.

According to Professor Hodgson, those three texts provide a nice (but not comprehensive) avenue into conversations about multimedia composition and some particular strategies for writing (with) media.

Beyond that, he recommends that instructors peruse the Computers and Composition (and Computers and Composition Online) journals for works that might resonate with your class's particular focus.

And, as always, the Blogging Pedagogy site and TheJUMP are useful resources!

Course Type:

Introductory Writing Course

Course Description:

In this course, students focus on analyzing the relationship between pop culture and rhetoric. Their analyses examine public disagreements about various issues such as: How do popular (mis)representations of "the supercrip" convince us to make political decisions regarding accessibility, advocacy, education, and/or social policy? How can we evaluate arguments that not only depict (dis)abled people as "heroic" but also those that portray the converse: the "grotesque unfortunate" deserving of "pity" and "help"? How do these arguments address questions of basic human rights, needs, drives and "eugenics rhetoric"? Will children (and adults) make political decisions based on recurrent thematic representations of "disability" in pop culture, and, is that a good or bad influence?

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Teaching Audience and Stakes With the Colbert Report

Mercier — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 20:30:01 +0000

Author:

Aaron Mercier

Image Credit:

David Shankbone

Brief Assignment Overview:

This exercise asks students to work in groups to move past a working summary of a text's rhetoric to consider the goals of an author and their strategic approach to audiences. It uses PBworks' collaborative potentials to bridge the gap between two connected class discussions.

Type of Assignment:

Class Discussion

In-class Exercise

Homework Assignment

Assignment Length:

One-Two Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Cultural Context

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Collaboration

Software

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Encourage students to think flexibly about the stakes of any given argument and the various goals an author might pursue.

Get students thinking about the relationship between rhetorical goals and persuasive strategies.

Continue to emphasize the central role of research in developing sound rhetorical analyses.

Begin thinking about transitions and their rhetorical function as a critical reader (anticipates later lesson on transitions considered as authors).

Media Requirements:

Media Console/Projector

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

One clip of the Colbert Report, digital projector, computer classroom, PBWorks or some other collaborative website to which all students have access.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Mid-Semester

Full Assignment Description:

This exercise incorporates elements of full-group discussion, small-group work, collaborative writing, and oral presentation.

I used the 10/2/2012 episode of the Colbert Report as the assigned reading for the first of these class periods. I asked my students to watch the opening segment, paying particular attention to the way Colbert set up for his interview using punchlines as transition sentences to string together several topics having to do with the presidential election, campaign finance, special interest advocacy, and religion. This episode is a particularly rich one, but you can use any more current episode that features a "hostile" or oppositional-type guest.

At the beginning of class, I led a brief discussion of the clip, asking: what is Colbert's argument? What is Garlow's argument? What were they trying to acheive with their audiences? Were they addressing the same audience? Once we had agreed upon some very basic answers to these questions, I replayed the segment. I then started asking about transitions. How did Colbert's monologue prepare the audience to react to Garlow? How does Colbert link Garlow and his Pulpit Freedom Sunday movement to other political operatives like the Koch brothers, and what are the implications of such a connection?

Once we've got these questions resolved at a fairly basic level, I break the class down into 5 groups of four and ask them to

Use internet research to get context on Garlow, his movement, and the argument that he and Colbert have. The references to political figures, laws, the constitution, and the US tax code fly thick and fast in this segment, both before and during the interview, so there's plenty for them to pick out and focus on.

Come up with a coherent summary of Colbert's argument and Garlow's argument, each considered as separate texts. Use direct quotation to support the summary.

Getting to this point takes most of a 75 minute class. For homework, I ask each group to post a page of text to the PBworks website. In this page they must make a claim about both Garlow and Colbert with regards to what audiences they are addressing, what they want those audiences to do/think/take away from the interview,and support their claims with both direct reference to the Colbert segment as well as secondary information. On the following class day, each group presented their work to the class in a two minute prepared talk, outlined collaborative via pbworks.

The students seem to get quite a lot out of Colbert's humor, and are consistent in surprising themselves by discovering additional nuance in his argument. Four out of the five groups concluded that Garlow "wanted to convince more people that preachers should be able to talk politics from the pulpit" and supported their claim with direct quotation from Garlow on the issue of free speech. These groups invariably concluded that the appearance was unsuccesful for Garlow because Colbert won the argument, capitalizing on his friendly audience and attacking the obvious gaps in Garlow's logic and evidence.

One group, however, found that Garlow's organization had edited his appearance and put up a clip of just the interview portion of the segment, with none of Colbert's introductory monologue. This editing, together with the caption beneath the embedded video, led the fifth group to conclude that Garlow's goal in appearing on the Colbert Report was simply to gain exposure for his upcoming protest event by any means necessary. They point out that Garlow's whole intention, as he states on the Colbert Report, is to antagonize the IRS by preaching politics from the pulpit in unison with other preachers on one Sunday in October. This antagonism is meant to force the IRS into a legal showdoqwn with the Pastors in which the Pastors can show the government attempting to limit free speech and challenge the conditions of tax code's religious exemptions in the Supreme Court. The fifth group, then, concluded that Garlow was just as successful as Colbert in this segment, because his goal was never to win the argument, but to win more attention for himself. This idea led to a full class discussion about the various possible payoffs of "exposure for exposure's sake" in today's news environment.

This in turn led back to Colbert's transitions/punclines in the opening monologue. Using the quotations and summarized evidence transcribed by the various groups, we spent the rest of the second class period creating an outline of Colbert's argument from opening joke to introduction of Garlow, placing particular emphasis on how Colbert's jokes stimulate a process of association in the audience's mind that links Garlow to superPACs and wealthy conservative donors like the Koch Brothers. One student proposed we think of Colbert as attempting to undercut Garlow's "rhetoric of victimhood" and re-construct the preacher-activist as a plutocrat.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

This is a fairly low-prep lesson. You'll need to select and take notes on a Colbert segment, follow through on a couple of the research opportunities before class, and that's about it.

Instructions For Students:

For watching the video as assigned reading before the first clas period:

watch the opening segment, paying particular attention to the way Colbert set up for his interview using punchlines as transition sentences to string together several topics having to do with the presidential election, campaign finance, special interest advocacy, and religion.

For small group work:

Follow up on as many references and "factual" claims made by Garlow and Colbert as you can. Give yourself context and check to see how and to what purpose each speaker is deploying evidence. Evaluate what kinds of evidence are being used, and try to locate gaps or assumptions in the logic of each speaker. Generate a summary of each speaker's argument that accounts for how they deal with problematic evidence or cover over holes or assumptions in their reasoning.

For homework

Based on what you have now found out about Garlow, Colbert, and the issues they discuss, make an argument about what each speaker is trying to accomplish with the segment, amongst which audiences, and how they go about accomplishing it.

Evaluation Suggestions:

No portion of this assignment is graded, it is meant to stimulate conversation about a complex text and to provide low-stakes practice in invention, research, and the organization of an argument.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

This exercise generated some of the best conversation we'd had so far in the term, and a lot of students seemed to turn a corner in their struggles with "analytical vs. topical argument" when they ran up agains the idea that rhetorical goals can be specific, narrow, and complex.

Course Type:

Intermediate Writing Course

Course Description:

Rhetoric 309k: Rhetorics of Truthiness takes most of its material from the news cycle as it emerges week to week. Using core theoretical readings assigned early in the term and selections from a writing textbook, students are asked to develop expertise on a timely, compelling, controversial topic through independent research and several interconnected writing assignments that move from summary to synthesis to rhetorical analysis. Much of the focus of the course is on teaching students to develop a tolerance for and facility with conceptual complexity, and to explore complex issues without attempting to generate a reductive, totalizing "answer" to questions of rhetoric and policy.

Tags:

Pre-Writing: Surveying Expectations on the First Day of Class

RMazique — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 00:18:32 +0000

Author:

Rachel Mazique

Image Credit:

Gallaudet University Tutorial & Instructional Programs: http://www.gallaudet.edu/tip/english_works/writing/pre-writing_writing_a...

Brief Assignment Overview:

On the first day of class, students think about the course topic and document their personal definitions of and understandings of the topic. In our case, students had to think and write about "Disability in Pop Culture." This type of writing serves multiple functions; it allows the instructor to glimpse the students' thinking and writing processes. It allows students to express or face any anxieties they have about writing/the course topic. It serves as an ice-breaker, and it serves as evidence of student development as this piece of writing can be referred to after students have developed a critical framework for understanding the course topic.

Type of Assignment:

Assignment Length:

Semester-long Project

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Invention

Pre-Writing

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

1. To have students examine their personal conceptions of "disability" and think about examples of "disability" in pop culture.

2. To have students demonstrate their writing skills in a low-stakes, in-class writing exercise, in which they must write in complete sentences.

3. To document a "starting point," which can serve as evidence of the development of critical thinking after students have read about and discussed the critical frameworks for the class. (In our case: rhetoric and disability theory.)

4. To have students become familiar with our class wiki and develop their digital literacy skills from the first day of class.

5. To expose students to the ways in which one activity may apply to multiple course strands and dimensions of learning under The Learning Record assessment system.

Media Requirements:

No Classroom Technology Required

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

I planned this exercise for a classroom with computers as well as a media console and projector as our class work is primarily documented and stored in a PBworks wiki. However, it could be adapted for a classroom without computers as students may write on paper rather than on a computer or in a classroom wiki.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

First Day/Week

Early in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

I designed this as an in-class writing exercise so I could address student concerns or challenges with writing in an online environment (as most students had not yet joined the class wiki that I invited them to prior to our first meeting). After introducing the class and reading through the course description, I invited students to free-write on the topic of the course. I indicated that there was no right or wrong answer, as I wanted this to be a low-stakes writing exercise. I gave students about fifteen minutes to set up their wiki page and write their thoughts before hitting "save." I also explained that this would serve as evidence of their thinking and writing processes from the first day of class and that we would refer back to their thoughts during class discussions as well as in a Unit Two short reflection paper--when they would revisit these concepts--after having developed a critical framework for thinking about and through rhetoric and about disability theory. Because the "firstness" of this exercise--first time using the wiki, first time writing for the class, "first day" evidence of thoughts about the course topic--was very important to the pedagogical goals, I assigned this as homework to those who did not complete writing their thoughts out to their satisfaction. I also assigned this as homework to students who added the class later and asked that they write their thoughts before they delved into the course readings on disability theory and disability studies. I also indicated the exercise's relevance to our course goals and the dimensions of learning by emphasizing the goals in bold and underlining the dimensions, so students would realize how each activity was relevant to mutiple course goals and relied upon several dimensions of learning as their progress is measured not by traditional methods of grading, but by The Learning Record.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Prepare your list of questions to prompt student thinking about the course topic.

If having students post their work online, create the webpage or wiki page with the writing prompt.

Or, make copies of the writing prompt for students to write on (for classes without technology).

Instructions For Students:

In your student folder, create a page titled "1st Day Pre-Writing Exercise" (with your preferred name, major & year in school in the top right-hand corner of the page). [Digital Literacy & confidence and independence or prior and emerging experience]
Free-write, or write a brief, one paragraph reflection (full sentences) on how you think pop culture has influenced your perception of (dis)ability & what (dis)ability means to you. [Presentation & prior and emerging experience]

Here are some writing prompts to get you thinking (answer as much as you can/feel free to add to this anything you think is relevant to the discussion) [Writing Process & creativity, originality, and imagination]

What does "disability" mean to you? What does "ability" mean to you?
How might pop culture have influenced your perception or understanding of these terms?
What kinds of images come to mind when you think of (dis)ability?
What kinds of pop culture have you seen or heard--relating to (dis)ability?
How do these images or sounds persuade you to think a certain way about (dis)ability?

Evaluation Suggestions:

In a class with traditional grading systems, this piece of writing may only receive "completion" points as it is designed to be a low-stakes writing assignment. However, in courses that use The Learning Record assessment method, this piece of writing becomes an essential piece of evidence that documents the thinking and writing skills of students on the very first day of class. It allows students to better analyze their development when they have a concrete example of the ways in which the course may or may not have transformed their writing and thinking skills when they can contrast writing from the first day of class with writing and thinking at the midterm as well as at the end of the course.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students were anxious when I mentioned they would have a writing exercise to do in class and that they would create a page on the wiki to do so. Some students mentioned after class that they do not write well within time constraints and were concerned about whether they would be allowed to finish their writing at home. I assured them that they could as the point was not to test their speed. And, for those students who were anxious about writing and using the wiki, writing on the first day allows students to face their inhibitions about their writing and it allows me to glimpse their writing skills as well as their prior experiences on the course topic. With The Learning Record system of assessment, challenges, frustrations, fears, and problems (as well as successes) writing in digital environments are documented in weekly (or daily) observations that students make about their learning processes. So, encouraging students to experience these dilemmas and to strategize ways to confront their concerns gives them an opportunity to develop their skills as well as their confidence and indepenence (two dimensions of learning). Students who wrote observations about this "First Day Pre-Writing Exercise," noted that their initial anxieities faded away once they were actual in the digitial environment and saw that they were not alone in their concerns--as their peers around them were also encountering similar experiences. Students are also able to build a rapport with one another as students ask a peer for help on creating a wiki page or with navigating the wiki.

With regards to content, some students had very sophisticated thoughts on "disability" and extensive experience with or examples of "disability" in pop culture. Most had common, stereotypical answers to give when defining "disability." These answers were touched on during class discussions on readings by "disabled" writers or during discussions of disability theory. Students will also refer to their thoughts from the first day when we begin Unit Two and they write a reflection on "disability" in pop culture given their new knowledge and critical analyses of (dis)ability in pop culture.

Additional Resources:

1. The Learning Record

2. To access my syllabus with more information on how I use The Learning Record, click "View" under the column, "Syllabus."

3. PBWorks

Course Type:

Advanced Writing Course

Intermediate Writing Course

Introductory Writing Course

Literary Studies Course

Course Description:

This course is an intermediate writing course, but the activity could apply to any course with a specific topic that instructors want their students to interrogate. Here's my course description:

RHE 309K – Disability in Pop Culture is a rhetoric and writing course in argumentation that situates rhetoric as an art of civic discourse. It is designed to enhance your ability to analyze the various positions held in any public debate and to advocate your own position effectively. Your work in this course will help you advance the critical writing and reading skills you will need to succeed in courses for your major and university degree.

In this course, you will focus on analyzing the relationship between pop culture and rhetoric. Your analyses will examine public disagreements about various issues such as: How do popular (mis)representations of “the supercrip” convince us to make political decisions regarding accessibility, advocacy, education, and/or social policy? How can we evaluate arguments that not only depict (dis)abled people as “heroic” but also those that portray the converse: the “grotesque unfortunate” deserving of “pity” and “help”? How do these arguments address questions of basic human rights, needs, drives and “eugenics rhetoric”? Will children (and adults) make political decisions based on recurrent thematic representations of “disability” in pop culture, and, is that a good or bad influence?

Beginning with a selection of readings that introduce disability theory, you will conduct research to explore a controversy of your choice on (dis)ability in pop culture. Throughout, you will engage with your controversy, analyzing editorials, print and video advertisements, and other contemporary portrayals of “the supercrip” in pop culture to analyze rhetorical appeals. The last unit will focus on multimodal arguments; you will create a multimodal composition that takes a position on the representations of bodies and abilities.

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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:

Annotated Bibliography

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:

No Classroom Technology Required

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:

Early in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

Each student in the class will sign up for a day to make a research presentation. On your assigned day, you are responsible for 1) finding a scholarly source that is relevant to the text we are discussing on that day, 2) creating an annotated bibliography entry on the class wiki, and 3) making a short (5-7 minute) presentation to the class explaining the relevance of your research.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Instructors must expect this assignment to take a great deal of class time throughout the semester, both in terms of preparing students for the assignment and in allocating 5-7 minutes for each student to present their research throughout the semester. However, once it gets going, the research presentations should enhance class discussion as well as better-preparing students for research in literary studies. I would advise allowing several minutes of question and answer following the presentations to give students the chance to respond and discuss.

Instructions For Students:

Finding Sources

Scholarly sources, such as articles in academic journals and books, are written by experts for other researchers like you. They are rarely found for free through search engines like Google, but rather are subscribed to by libraries and are available in library databases. For more information about distinguishing between popular and scholarly sources, see <http://www.lib.utexas.edu/students/find/popularvscholarly.html>

1) Finding academic books: Visit the UT Library Catalog.

2) Finding scholarly articles in academic databases: Go to “Find Articles Using Databases” on the UT Library Website. From this page you can look up databases by subject or alphabetically, by the name of the database. Once you find a database, you can search for scholarly articles referenced in that database. The following databases are particularly helpful for our course:

MLA International Bibliography

LION (Literature Online)

ABELL

JSTOR

Project Muse

Writing an Annotated Bibliography

An annotated bibliography includes all the usual bibliographic information, as well as 1-3 sentences that summarize the text. This short summary appears after the bibliographic information and is written in incredibly precise prose (think resume-speak). One challenge for this kind of writing is to choose powerful verbs that show what the source does not just what itsays.

Examples from The Art of Literary Research:

Rampersad, Arnold. “Too Honest for His Own Time.” New York Times Book Review, December 29, 1991: 3, 17-18.

Reviews the history of the censorship that publishers and book clubs applied to the books that made Richard Wright famous, to explain why the Library of America volumes devoted to his major works represent them, for the first time, “as he had wanted them to be read.”

Laird, J.T. The Shaping of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.

Documents, from the manuscript and the various printed editions, the extensive revisions of the novel over nearly a quarter-century. Disposes of many half-truths and outright errors, most of which resulted from Hardy’s own misleading statements.

Maddox, Brenda. Nora: A Biography of Nora Joyce. London: Hamilton, 1988.

The appendix describes the migration of “the largest collection of Joyce material in private hands, the richest source of material on the life of Joyce until 1920” from Trieste to Cornell, and the controversy aroused by the publication of some of the obscene letters included in the purchase.

Posting to the Wiki

Go to the course wiki page on PBworks: https://bannedbooksbloom.pbworks.com. On the sidebar find the link to “Annotated Bibliography.” Log in with your username and password and you will be able to add your entry directly to the document. Do not alter or erase any other entries—just add your own. Put your name at the end in parentheses.

Making a Presentation

Give an extemporaneous presentation (not read verbatim from a piece of paper, but presented in an engaging manner). You are welcome to use powerpoint or any other visuals that would be helpful. The presentation will need to be more detailed than your wiki posting. Describe how you found this article and what you think it contributes to our understanding of the text. Explain the author’s argument and what kind of evidence he or she uses to support this argument. You are welcome to editorialize—to give your own assessment of the article’s strengths and weaknesses, but this should not be the main focus of the presentation.

Evaluation Suggestions:

Minimum Requirements

For a C or above, source must:

Þ Be from a scholarly publication

Þ Clearly illuminate the text we are discussing (cannot come out of left field)

For a C or above, presentation must:

Þ Be at least 5 minutes long

Þ Clearly summarize the author’s argument

Þ Give detailed descriptions of the author’s use of evidence

Þ Be delivered clearly and extemporaneously

For a C or above, wiki posting must:

Þ Be in correct MLA citation style