Looking ahead, Brief Assignment #7
Ryan
I have lots to talk about this week. Please weigh in on any or all of
the discussion points.
Next week students start Brief Assignment 7, which asks them to
rewrite their Draft 1.1 introduction. I think this an excellent
assignment (as are the remaining brief assignments) and builds off the
good work students will hopefully produce in BA6. I've pasted the
assignment description below. Personally, I think the assignment
description is clear and probably doesn't require a lot of discussion.
What do you all think?
Now for an update on our grading: our group has over 200 drafts and
over 250 peer critiques in the queues. We're almost done with the 1.1s
and onto the BA5s. Personally, I think we need to reprioritize our
grading approach. I think the 1.1s need to be finished soon. However,
I think we need to move onto grading the BA6s as quickly as they show
up in queues. BA6-10 all relate to students' Draft 1.2 and should take
grading priority over BA5, I think. What are your thoughts?
I must admit, I am getting a little frustrated with our continued
communication issues: first, some members found it difficult to
participate because they were getting too many emails. Now, some do
not participate in the Google Group because they don't know when
messages are posted.
I post a message on the upcoming assignment every Thursday; I've
posted weekly since Week 1 of the semester. If you have not already,
please check the Google group by Thursday night. Many are not
contributing to the discussion until Sunday afternoon. Plain and
simple: we can't have a productive discussion if you don't participate
or if you prep your lessons before weighing in with the rest of the
group.
BTW, Mark, I'm happy to stop creating Google pages for each assignment
and just edit the discussion thread, but where will each CI list what
they talked about/emphasized in class that week? I think that is
important information for the DIs to have.
Post your comments below,
-Ryan
Brief Assignment #7
Objective: To practice writing effective introductions for academic
papers
Description: For this assignment, review the strategies for writing
introductions on pages 83 - 88 of your textbook. Then, copy and paste
your original introduction from your 1.1 draft and re-read it. In a
brief sentence or two, identify and explain which of the strategies
from the textbook you used in composing this introduction. If you
cannot identify one of these strategies in your introduction, then
describe the strategy you had in mind.
Next, revise your introduction so that it incorporates a strategy from
the textbook other than the one it originally uses.
Finally, write a short summary and justification of your revisions.
Identify and explain which new strategy you used from the textbook and
explain how changing the strategies used in your introduction will
influence your readers' response to your analysis.
Total length of this assignment should be between 500 - 650 words,
including the original introduction, the revised version, and summary
and justification.
kandkg...@gmail.com
pretty straight forward, and I don't see anything I would like to add
at the moment. As for moving on quickly to the Assignment 6 grading,
does that mean you want to limit the commentary on Assignment 5? As
for Google Groups, I really don't have any major issue, except for the
fact that it seems we don't check it as often as we do our email.
Hopefully, most of the other assignment descriptions will be pretty
straight forward from here on out so this won't be too much of a
factor like it was for previous assignments.
-Katherine
Ryan
pretty much agreed BA5 was a repeat (and a poor one at that) of the
peer critiques. Grading BA6 was just a suggestion. If y'all are for
it, I can email Rob and ask him to make the BA6 priorities in our
queue. Then we just grade BA5s when we get to 'em.
> > and justification.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
TTUEngl...@gmail.com
assignment and just edit the discussion thread, but where will each CI
list what they talked about/emphasized in class that week? I think
that is important information for the DIs to have."
You're right, I didn't take that into full consideration. Hopefully
we'll have more participation on the CI page to give DIs a good
resource.
2) "As for Google Groups, I really don't have any major issue, except
for the fact that it seems we don't check it as often as we do our
email."
For any member that wants to know when messages are posted, please
remember that there is an option to be notified by email for that.
Personally, I make it a point to visit our Google Group page on
Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I took off email notifications
for everybody since it seemed like others would do the same. and
generally did not want to have a large amount of emails in their
inboxes. However, since postings do not seem to be so frequent, I
suggest reactivating email notifications for selected threads. If you
need help, I can post instructions on the forum.
3) "Next week students start Brief Assignment 7, which asks them to
rewrite their Draft 1.1 introduction."
Did anybody else notice that the assigned reading is for writing
conclusions, but the assignment is for writing introductions? I
thought it was odd.
Regardless, I think we have a pretty straightforward assignment in
terms of grading expectations. Here's the format I'm posting for
students:
Original Introduction
[paste here]
Original Introduction Strategy and Explanation
[type here]
Revised Introduction
[paste here]
Revised Introduction Strategy and Explanation
[type here]
Identification/Short Summary/Justification of Chosen Revision
Strategy
[type here]
Explanation of how the New Strategy Influences the Reader
[type here]
I would also like to say that my students would like to see the entire
rubric that some DIs are using. My students were under the impression
that their grade heavily depends on their grader. What was more
concerning was that and that they felt drafts graded by (for lack of a
better term) "rubric users" are tougher graders. I told the students
that all online graders follow the same guidelines, and that only some
graders will actually post the rubric in the comment section, e.g.
"70-80 This draft is. . . " Regardless, they expressed that they
would feel better if they knew what their drafts were graded against.
If it is ok, then I would post this on my instructor page.
TTUEngl...@gmail.com
assigned pages 98-104 for their next class because I clicked on the
wrong link. FYW pp. 189-208 right?
Ryan
> I would also like to say that my students would like to see the entire
> rubric that some DIs are using. My students were under the impression
> that their grade heavily depends on their grader. What was more
> concerning was that and that they felt drafts graded by (for lack of a
> better term) "rubric users" are tougher graders. I told the students
> that all online graders follow the same guidelines, and that only some
> graders will actually post the rubric in the comment section, e.g.
> "70-80 This draft is. . . " Regardless, they expressed that they
> would feel better if they knew what their drafts were graded against.
> If it is ok, then I would post this on my instructor page.
Mark,
If we're thinking about the same rubric, it's on pg xxvi of the
textbook. A few weeks ago, I believe Amber or Shelly suggested we use
this when grading 1.1s to give the second reader an idea of how the
first grader evaluated the work. In terms of content areas, I believe
we all settled on these three foundational areas: thesis, ethical
lenses, source integration. Does this help?
I reminded my students that the grading has gotten harder because the
concepts have gotten more sophisticated. Perhaps this is a discussion
we should bring up here? I feel students are past the "learning curve"
of 1301, and it's time to start grading based on the actual quality of
their work, not on how well they attempted the assignment. Since the
remaining brief assignments tie directly to the 1.2, I feel students'
work should be held to a greater standard.
-Ryan
Amber
Sorry for the late posting -- my brain is still on BA5 assignment.
Anyway, I think the BA7 assignment is straight forward, so I don't
have any requests for how students should set up their assignments.
The only part to emphasize is that students identify the new intro
strategy by name in their reflection paragraph (i.e. "I revised my
introduction using the "Review of a Controversy" strategy...) Last
semester, we used this same assignment and at times it was hard to
pinpoint the exact strategy. So it will be easier for us to grade
these if we know what exact strategy the student was trying to employ.
Also worth noting to students -- this exercise is for them to gain
practice in using a different strategy for writing an introduction. If
they fail to employ a different strategy from their first intro from
the draft 1.1 (or don't use any of the given strategies to revise),
they will recieve a F for "doing something other than the assignment
calls for".
Lastly, students need to know that they may not necessarily use this
revision in their final draft. Ideally, they should -- but if they
find that the new strategy is less effective than one they have in
mind, it's okay to use a different introduction in the final essay.
That's all from me -- I'll post a new discussion for the rubric info.
Amber
TTUEngl...@gmail.com
textbook. A few weeks ago, I believe Amber or Shelly suggested we use
this when grading 1.1s to give the second reader an idea of how the
first grader evaluated the work. In terms of content areas, I believe
we all settled on these three foundational areas: thesis, ethical
lenses, source integration. Does this help? "
Yes it does, much obliged Ryan. I'll point students to their FYW books
and post the rubric on my instructor announcements.
Shelley Alvarez
Many thanks,
Shelley