We are wrapping up Unit 2 this week as you work towards Phase 2 of your drafts, and we’re beginning Unit 3: Ethnographic Research. Here’s your recommended schedule of work for the week!

Last Week’s (Week 8) Reminders

Last week, you needed to meet with me to receive feedback on your Essay 2 Phase 1 drafts. If you did not meet with me, it will be considered late and will impact your course grade, but you should schedule an appointment anyway so you know how to revise your essay for Phase 2. Following your feedback conference, you were supposed to post a revision plan to your #workshop channel so I can assess what you took away from our discussion and what you plan to do before/while continuing to draft towards Essay 2 Phase 2. You also needed to keep working on your Field Notes, all of which are due this Friday. Finally, the prewriting exercise for last week involved using the Visual and Cultural Analysis Worksheet to keep brainstorming towards Phase 2.

Week 9 Schedule of Work

As always, the agenda is in the course calendar, but here’s a brief summary of the “Review” work to be completed before our live session on Tuesday:

  • Watching: Unit 3 Introduction on D2L (will be posted by Saturday Sunday evening)
  • Watching: TedxTalks – Ellen Isaacs on Ethnography
  • Reading: Nonparticipant Ethnography and Social Media
  • Reading: Writing Towards Essay 2 Phase 2
  • Writing: Essay 2 Phase 2 due on Friday by 5pm (D2L)
  • Workshop: Essay 2 Phase 2 Peer Review Forms due on Friday by 5pm
  • Writing: Unit 2 Reflection (Slack #general) Postponed to Week 10 to reduce this week’s workload
  • Writing: Field Notes 1-3 as a single post—MS Word or Google Doc if it won’t fit in the text box—due on Friday by 5pm (Post as a reply to the HW prompt in Slack #homework)

In our live session on Tuesday 3/23, we’ll do the following:

  • Go over mid-semester announcements and Grading Contract reminders
  • Wrap up any lingering questions about Unit 2 you have
  • Introduce Unit 3 and go over any questions you have about the Unit 3 materials thus far, including the assignment guidelines for Phase 1 and Phase 2
  • Address any questions you have about the Field Notes assignment you were hopefully working on for the past couple of weeks
  • Discuss what counts as ethnographic research based on the video lectures and blog post
  • Go over any questions you have about identity factors and dynamics to watch out for and how to critically analyze them as you finish up your field notes
  • Do a breakout room activity analyzing the field notes you’ve written up so far or getting help from one another in starting your field notes
  • Look ahead to conducting secondary research in Essay 3 Phase 2 and the asynchronous library instruction tutorial designed to help you with that (which will be posted in Week 10)

Workshop Instructions

As usual you’ll be conducting a workshop as you move towards Essay 2 Phase 2. Share your work in a Google Doc for Essay 2 (you’ll save your work as an MS Word/PDF file to submit to me on D2L by Friday). Plan for a couple of hours to be able to do all the work asked of you, which will include reviewing each other’s work and completing an Essay 2 Phase 2 Peer Review Form for each of your workshop members. Here are the general instructions again as a refresher:

  1. Don’t talk about your essays! First, read without commenting.
  2. Read again and make marginalia using the Comments feature. Underline/highlight what you think the controlling idea is, make notes about what you think the writer’s aims are, etc.
  3. Complete the “Essay 2 Phase 2 Review” Google Form.
  4. After receiving feedback via email from your peers, read what they wrote and discuss any questions you have together as a group. You may want to ask questions about what their comments mean, how they suggest enacting those comments, collaboratively write your way towards enacting those comments, and so on.
  5. After workshop, write a brief post-workshop reflection letter (~500 words) to me summarizing the feedback you were given by your peers, identifying what you prioritized for revision and why, explaining which assignment parameters you think you met and which you think you need to keep striving towards. You may also reflect on the reasoning behind the decisions you made in revising your draft for submission to me: any regrets or difficulties you dealt with, your attitude towards the assignment and feedback, any burdens of college or life that crept into your work, and so on. Include this letter as a paragraph at the end of your draft–in other words, you’ll submit it as one file on D2L by Friday at 5pm.

Be respectful of each other’s work and time when scheduling and attending group workshops. By missing out on peer review, you’ll cost your peers feedback as well as costing yourself feedback, and you won’t be able to complete the post-workshop material afterwards. Workshops are very difficult to make up if you can’t attend, so plan accordingly. Also, remember that I keep track of who has completed peer review or not, as peer review is mandatory for maintaining a B+ in the class. I track this as fairly as possible: that is, if I see that you have made a good-faith effort to coordinate workshop but your peers are not responding to you or are significantly late in posting their work, I will not penalize you. If you don’t complete review forms for your group in the manner of effective peer review, you will be penalized for it unless we have made alternate arrangements in advance. Peer review cannot be made up.

Make sure to submit your revised draft and post-workshop reflection to me by Friday at 5pm as a Microsoft Word document or PDF on D2L. As usual, Essay 2 Phase 2 Review Forms must be submitted by then as well.

Looking Ahead…

After reading your Essay 2 Phase 2 drafts, I’ll update your scores on D2L and will post a “General Feedback” post to this blog. The General Feedback posts include revision suggestions that apply to 90% of my students across all 3 sections I teach. After you go through the list once or twice, it’s a good idea to meet with me if you have questions about items that may apply, or how to address the issues in your particular essay. If your Phase 2 draft contains a unique issue that needs addressing, I’ll leave a personal comment for you on Gradebook on D2L as well. If you don’t receive a comment on D2L, it doesn’t mean anything—as always, pay attention to the score you receive. The symbols and what they indicate are listed in the Grading Contract if you forget what they are.

I will also score your Field Notes and offer general feedback as a reply in the Slack Field Notes HW thread. If needed, I’ll offer a personal comment as well to help steer you in a more fruitful direction.

We do have a live session scheduled for Week 10, on Tuesday 3/30, during which we will learn about doing secondary research and will begin to draft potential controlling ideas for Essay 3.