Our Discussion Board

College Writing II: FieldWorking and the World of Ideas

Dr. Nancy Barta-Smith

Office: 312Q Spotts World Culture Bldg

Course Sections: 2410301, MWF period 1, 8:30-10:20 219

2410306, MWF period 2, 9:30-10-20 219

2410320, MWF period 4, 11:30-12:20 316

Office Hours: MWF 10:30-11:30; W5-6; 8:30-9:30; and by appointment

Phone & Voice Mail: (412) 738-2360

Email: nancy.barta-smith@sru.edu

Our Working Materials:

Resources:

Evaluating Websites

Duke University Survey of Student Use of Internet

Building Email Disk

Listserv Rules of the Road

List of Lists

Lists on Technology Related Issues

Mind Diagram

A Brief Description of College Writing II:

College Writing II offers you the opportunity to develop primary and secondary research skills such as observation, interview techniques, transcribing, internet and library research, critical thinking and reading, analysis, synthesis, and rhetorical argument. You will need these skills for college-level work and beyond. It is the second course in a two-course sequence required at SRU. In addition, you will continue process work begun in College Writing I, such as invention (brainstorming ideas), arrangement, revision (rethinking and/or expanding) and editing (meeting current standards of American English while employing principles of good communication and appropriate expression). Of course, good writers know that what is appropriate depends on being attentive to the audience and purpose that inform every step in the writing process.

You will produce a final writing portfolio and paper studying a place, group or organization with the goal of identifying ways to improve its organization, environmental design, operation, morale, etc. The techniques of ethnographic study in Fieldworking are used not just by anthropologists who study culture, but by corporate consultants, journalists, and researchers in the social sciences to locate and solve problems. Good writers also read to supplement primary research and develop background and perspective. You absorb the written word just as you absorbed your spoken native language—new and more complex ideas and words, varied patterns of sentence structure, the history of ideas from which your culture grew and by which it is constantly transformed. The World of Ideas will be one of the books you cite in your research and use to define problems and solutions. Its readings are challenging but you will see that they are "artifacts" of culture important to your education, your understanding of ways to discern issues of importance at your research site, and present yourself as a credible investigator and consultant.

My Goals for You During our Semester Working Together:

Course Requirements and Assessment: The following information explains the course requirements and how we will engage in assessment of your work.

Portfolios

You will keep a portfolio in College Writing II. You may choose an 8 1/2 X 11 manila folder or a 1 inch, soft-back, three-ring binder. The portfolio presents a record of your critical writing and thinking processes and the final products you complete. Because the course is designed so that each assignment can be used ultimately in the longer, final course paper, you will want to make sure that you keep each assignment-- along with drafts--to consult in future work. Do not throw anything away!

CR & NC (Credit & No Credit)

Each preparatory Fieldworking assignment, the World of Ideas peer presentation, and the final course paper will be graded on a CR (credit) or NC (no credit) basis. You may discover that you do not earn CR on an assignment the first time. After making suggestions (in writing or orally), I will return work for revision, which is really part of the writing process. If you receive NC on an assignment you will then have the opportunity to revise it to earn CR. For purposes of keeping to a reasonable schedule, please note the following due dates:

Prior to Spring Break, there will be approximately 8 preparatory Fieldworking assignments. If you have received NC on any of those 8 assignments, you may turn in revisions any time prior to Wednesday, March 3. To assure that you are working on revisions and do not get too far behind, I need all revisions on the first 8 assignments in the mid-term assessment of portfolios on Wednesday, March 3. Everyone (even those who have received CR on all 8 assignments) needs to turn in a portfolio for mid-term review. You will receive a mid-term grade shortly following this review process.

The completed portfolio--which will include the preparatory Fieldworking assignments, the World of Ideas peer presentation materials, the final course paper (and any extraneous assignments)--is due on the last day of class. I will review the organization of the final portfolio and the final self-assessment letter procedure near the last two weeks of the course. Since an incomplete portfolio can result in the lowering of a final grade or even failure of the course, you will want to pay close attention to keeping organized materials for the portfolio throughout the semester.

Participation and Attendance

  1. Please participate fully in daily work and collaborative research activities/presentations and attend every class, unless you have a medical or other documentable excuse. Make up work missed. Since our classes are discussion and activity based, missing classes lowers your grade and can result in an NC for the course if you miss more than two weeks of class. I urge you to become actively involved. I will plan a variety of activities in an effort to engage you. Let me know what works! Take responsibility for finding a way to keep the class engaged! Ask questions!
  2. Be sure to complete work on time and typed. Late work can also affect your grade. Attendance is not in itself participation.
  3. Prepare your midterm and final portfolio with care and double check each artifact against your table of contents and portfolio guidelines.
  4. The writing center is located on the third floor of Spotts. The Director, Dr. McCarren and his able group of undergraduate and graduate students maintain a helpful website on the internet with links to resources. The staff of writing center is available to all students for all courses. You will find help there for all parts of the writing process. Each student should visit the writing center at least once during the semester. I encourage you to set up a conference with readers at the Writing Center (301 SWC) in addition to your classmates and to see me to discuss the progress of your work regularly. You may be asked to participate via electronic means or to see a film at a time other than during class as we try to integrate course readings with other cultural artifacts such as films. If you have a legitimate inability to attend an outside event, arrangements will be made for an alternative assignment or the material may be placed on reserve.

Criteria for Grade Assessment Throughout The Semester

Grade C

CR (Credit) on 7 out of 10 preparatory Fieldworking assignments.

CR (Credit) on final, problem-solving course paper (acceptable)

CR (Credit) on World of Ideas peer presentation.(acceptable)

Participate effectively in peer-response groups, collective discussions, and keeping to deadlines.

Grade B

CR (Credit) on 8 out of 10 preparatory Fieldworking assignments.

CR (Credit) on final, problem-solving course paper. (above average)

CR (Credit) on World of Ideas peer presentation.(above average)

Participate effectively in peer-response groups, collective discussions, and keeping to deadlines.

Grade A

CR (Credit) on 8 out of 10 preparatory Fieldworking assignments.

CR (Credit) on final, problem-solving course paper. (excellent)

CR (Credit) on World of Ideas peer presentation.(excellent)

Participate effectively in peer-response groups, collective discussions, and keeping to deadlines.

"A" work appears the same in quantity as "B" work. However, "A" work differs in quality. Quality of written work is always a function of content, organization, expression, correctness, audience and purpose, visual design and presentation. Each assignment will list specific criteria. Process and the final product count. Your course grade will suffer if you do not meet deadlines, participate fully in class, come prepared, etc.

NC (No Credit)

Students receiving a NC (No Credit) will have to retake College Writing II. An NC will be assigned to those individuals not meeting the requirements for C work, whether it be concerning CR assignments, attendance, or meeting deadlines. If you work consistently the course is designed so you can succeed.

Additional Information You Will Need:

Plagiarism: In academia and corporate and governmental workplaces, it is a sign of professionalism to be aware of what has already been written regarding your subject and to use it in your own work. Thus you should not fear reading others' work and building on their ideas in formulating your own. In research doing so is desirable. Just be sure that you give credit to those who have contributed to your thinking generally, those whom you paraphrase, and those whom you cite word for word—including your classmates! The real failure of plagiarism is not using another’s work, but failing to acknowledge you have! Handing in verbatim the work of another author, professional or student, without due credit is obviously unethical in this context and when discovered will result in your losing credit for your work and/or failing the course. (Unless you have a photographic memory, its impossible to plagiarize by accident J )

Self Assessment: I will ask you to reflect on your work by handing in--at mid-term and with your final Writing Portfolio--self assessments in which you explain how you have met course goals and requirements as stated above. This requirement should also include mention of specific writing you have done and how the rhetorical strategies you have used in your work are appropriate to its content, audience, and purpose. Sheets indicating visits to the writing center may also be placed in the portfolio.

There is an educational purpose behind portfolio preparation, rhetorical analysis, and periodic self assessment. They encourage you to think about intuitive and habitual writing behaviors, so that change and improvement is possible.

We Will Use a Grading Contract for Assessment of Your Writing Portfolio: You will earn credit for your writing in College Writing II by participating in peer review activities and receiving credit (CR). My comments orally or in writing will indicate whether it is acceptable, good, or excellent. To earn credit the work must show evidence of a process and be edited to meet standard conventions of English. I, along with your peers, will give you suggestions for revision as you develop your ideas prior to credit. Your final writing portfolio should contain a clean copy of your final paper and a selection of the "artifacts" that produced it.

It is one of the myths of English Studies that good writing springs forth like Athena from the head of Zeus. The birth of ideas requires gestation, during which the idea is nourished, and your various points are "wired up" like our neural pathways in physical development! Moreover, research now makes it clear that some of this wiring is completed after birth! Thus, your writing is "plastic" for a long period; it undergoes a process of thinking even after it is fairly well formed. We never fully know what we think until we've had a chance to see what we have said. Reading and informal short writing assignments will help carry your ideas to term in the final project.

Many of your problems as a writer may have occurred because you handed in early draft work as if it were fully formed. The keys to success are starting early and working progressively in consultation with others. Open any book and you will see an acknowledgements page in which formal and informal readers of early versions are thanked for their help.

When you receive credit on an assignment, your paper will be given a "CR." You will have the satisfaction of knowing you have successfully completed part of the final portfolio. There will be deadlines by which I ask you to have obtained credit to ensure that you can give your attention to upcoming readings and activities.

Description of Course Assignments in Portfolio

Below the various components of the grade are outlined. You will receive instruction regarding each assignment.

Preparatory Fieldworking Assignments

The following assignments are shorter pieces of writing that are designed to work together in a longer piece, i.e., a final, problem-solving course paper. You will receive specific directions for each assignment. Most of these assignments will be completed in the first half of the semester.

Box 1: Looking At Subcultures

Box 2: Making The Ordinary Extraordinary

Box 3: Using The Ethnographic Perspective

Brainstorming A List of Field Site Possibilities

Box 7: Reflective Fieldnotes

Box 8: Reading An Artifact

Box 10: Writing A Verbal Snapshot

Box 12: Finding A Focal Point (and mapping your field site)

* mid-term *

Box 13: Listening For "The Word": Creating A Glossary

Typed Transcripts of an Interview

Box 19: Using A Cultural Artifact: An Interview"

A World of Ideas Peer Presentation

This group presentation involves being able to make connections between culturally significant thinkers, contemporary issues, and the fieldworking sites that those in your group have been studying. Regardless of how your group will get your peers to appreciate the importance of such connections--be it through creative uses of movie clips and song lyrics or via more academic means--such presentations will help you as you seek to take your own fieldworking project to a level of problem-solving. You will be asked to apply and investigate further what you learn from these presentations, synthesizing the ideas of great writers with your own ideas in writing about your field site. You will receive specific instructions concerning the objectives of this project in the second half of the semester.

Draft & Final Course Paper

Each assignment completed during the course of the term could become part of this longer paper. Specifically, the preparatory Fieldworking assignments will provide you with the necessary means to become an "insider" to an unfamiliar site or an "outsider" to a familiar one. The World of Ideas peer presentation will provide you with the means to discover and reflect upon a problem in your chosen field site. The paper is chance for you to integrate what you have learned throughout the course. Directions concerning this project will be provided in the second half of the semester.

Semester Schedule

*Please note that the below is a tentative schedule.

Week One

Friday, January 15 - Introduction to College Writing II

Reading Homework: Pages 1-6, Fieldworking

Writing Homework: "Box 1: Looking At Subcultures," Fieldworking

Due in class on Wednesday, January 20

______________________________________________________________________________

Week Two

Monday, January 18 - NO CLASS, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Wednesday, January 20 - In-class Discussion Of "Looking at Subcultures" Writing Assignment

Reading Homework: Pages 6-13, Fieldworking

Writing Homework: "Box 2: Making The Ordinary Extraordinary," Fieldworking

Due in class Friday on Friday, January 22

Friday, January 22 - In-class Discussion Of "Making The Ordinary Extraordinary" Writing Assignment

Reading Homework 1: Pages 13-19, Fieldworking

Reading Homework 2: Howard Gardner, "A Rounded Version: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences" from A World of Ideas (353)

Writing Homework: "Box 3: Using The Ethnographic Perspective," Fieldworking

Due in class on Monday, January 25

______________________________________________________________________________

Week Three

Monday, January 25 - In-class Discussion Of "Using the Ethnographic Perspective" Writing Assignment & Gardner

Reading Homework: Pages 19-37, Fieldworking

Due in class on Wednesday, January 27

Wednesday, January 27 - In-class Discussion Of The Sample Essay "Friday Night at Iowa 80"

& The Unsynthesis/Synthesis Map

Brainstorming project topics

Writing Homework: List all possible fieldworking projects ideas. Have a select few that you could be serious about in mind for when you come to class.

Due in class on Friday, January 29

Friday, January 29 - In-Class Writing, "Box 5: Positioning Yourself," Fieldworking

Reading Homework: Pages 60-63 & 66-71, Fieldworking

Due in class on Monday, February 1

______________________________________________________________________________

Week Four

Monday, February 1 - In-class Discussion Of "Observing" and "Ethics of Entry"

Reading Homework: Pages 71-77, Fieldworking

Due in class on Wednesday, February 3

Writing Homework: "Box 7: Reflective Fieldnotes," Fieldworking

Due in class on Monday, February 8

Wednesday, February 3 - In-class Discussion Of "Taking Fieldnotes"

Friday, February 5 - Discussion of grid sheets, The Wizard of Oz

______________________________________________________________________________

Week Five

Monday, February 8 - In-class Discussion Of "Reflective Fieldnotes" Writing Assignment

Reading Homework 1: Pages 78-88, Fieldworking

Reading Homework 2: Sigmund Freud, From The Interpretation of Dreams

from The World of Ideas (307)

Due in class on Wednesday, February 10

Writing Homework: "Box 8: Reading an Artifact," Fieldworking

Due in class on Wednesday, February 17

** The Wizard of Oz viewing will be this evening, Monday, February 8.

Wednesday, February 10 - In-class Discussion of The Wizard of Oz as Artifact & Freud

Preparing To Use Library Resources To Enhance Artifact Essays

Friday, February 12 - Library Day (How to search for library sources)

Reading Homework: Pages 90-95, Fieldworking

Also, bring Little Brown Handbook to class on Monday

Due in class on Monday, February 15

______________________________________________________________________________

Week Six

Monday, February 15 - Putting together a Works Cited Page

Wednesday February 17 - In-class Discussion Of "Reading an Artifact" Writing Assignment

Reading Homework: Pages 112-115, Fieldworking

Writing Homework: "Box 10: Writing A Verbal Snapshot" & Making A Visual Map

Due in class on Monday, February 22

Friday, February 19 - TBA

______________________________________________________________________________

Week Seven

Monday, February 22 - In-class Discussion Of "Writing A Verbal Snapshot" Writing Assignment

Reading Homework: Pages 123-127, Fieldworking

Due in class on Wednesday, February 24

Wednesday, February 24 - In-class Discussion Of Making A Visual Map Assignment & Learning How To Find A Focal Point

Reading Homework: Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter From Birmingham Jail"

from A World of Ideas (151)

Due in class on Monday, March 1

Writing Homework: "Box 12: Finding A Focal Point" & King (Adapted From Book Assignment)

Due in class on Wednesday, March 3

Friday, February 26 - Video, EyesOn The Prize

______________________________________________________________________________

Week 8

Monday, March 1 - In-class Discussion Of King’s "Focal Point"

Wednesday March 3 - In-class Discussion Of "Finding A Focal Point" & King Writing Assignment

Reading Homework: Pages 169-177, Fieldworking

Due in class on Monday, March 15 (Day Back From Break!)

Writing Homework: "Box 13: Listening For ‘The Word’: Creating A Glossary,"

Fieldworking

Due in class on Friday, March 19

Friday, March 5 through Friday, March 12 - NO CLASS, Spring Break

______________________________________________________________________________

Week 9

Monday, March 15 - In-class Discussion Of "Creating A Glossary"

In-class Discussion Of World of Ideas Peer Presentation

Wednesday, March 17 - TBA

Friday, March 19 - In-class Discussion Of "Listening For ‘The Word’: Creating A Glossary" Writing Assignment

Reading Homework: Pages 233 - 235, Fieldworking

Due in class on Monday, March 22

Writing Homework: Complete an interview with a field site informant (topic of your choosing). Bring your typed transcripts of the interview to class

Due in class on Friday, March 26

______________________________________________________________________________

Week 10

Monday, March 22 - In-class Writing, "Box 19: Using A Cultural Artifact: An Interview," Fieldworking

Reading Homework: Pages 203 - 208, Fieldworking

Wednesday, March 24 - In-class Discussion Of Taping & Transcribing

 

Friday, March 26 - In-class Discussion Of Interview Transcripts

Reading Homework: Pages 208 - 211, Fieldworking

______________________________________________________________________________

Week 11

Monday, March 29 - In-class Discussion Of Synthesizing Interview Transcripts

Wednesday, March 31 - Workshop for Peer Presentations & World of Ideas

Writing Homework: Draft of complete fieldworking project--with World of Ideas connections and other external source references--is due in class on Monday, April 26. This means that students will have to be working on this draft outside of class while simultaneously participating in peer presentations during class time. The instructor is happy to discuss the drafting process with individuals!

Friday, April 2 - NO CLASS, Easter Break

______________________________________________________________________________

Week 12

Monday, April 5 - NO CLASS, Easter Break

Wednesday, April 7 - Peer Presentation & World of Ideas

Friday, April 9 - Peer Presentation & World of Ideas

______________________________________________________________________________

Week 13

Monday, April 12 - Peer Presentation & World of Ideas

Wednesday, April 14 - Peer Presentation & World of Ideas

Friday, April 16 - Peer Presentation & World of Ideas

______________________________________________________________________________

Week 14

Monday, April 19 - Peer Presentation & World of Ideas

Wednesday, April 21 - Peer Presentation & World of Ideas

Friday, April 23 - TBA

*Signing up for student/instructor conferences

______________________________________________________________________________

Week 15

Monday, April 26 - Draft Of Complete Project Due In Class

In-class Discussion Of Organizing & Presenting Your Fieldworking Portfolio

(Tuesday, April 27 - Will be used for Student Conferences)

Wednesday, April 28 - NO FORMAL CLASS, Student Conferences

(Thursday, April 29 - Will be used for Student Conferences)

Friday, April 30 - NO FORMAL CLASS, Student Conferences

______________________________________________________________________________

Week 16

Monday, May 3 - In-class Workshop Day, Final Qs&As

Wednesday, May 5 - Teaching/Learning Evaluations - Please make sure you’re here!!

Sharing The Final Paper With Peer Group Members (Bring a completed copy of your final paper to class!!)

Friday, May 7 - Portfolios due in class:-)

______________________________________________________________________________

Final

There is no final in College Writing II since the portfolio takes its place.

The professor will be available during the final exam time to discuss final grades, etc. with individuals who are interested.

Exam times have been schedule by the university as follows:

MWF Period 2, 9:30 - 10:20 (24-103-09)- Monday, May 10 from 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM

MWF Period 3, 10:30 - 11:20 (24-103-14) - Tuesday, May 11 from 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM

 

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