The Assignment Link for Week Seven is activated, and some notes on how to work with your group.

Over the past two weeks, you moved from reading and taking notes on journal articles to a first, rough draft of the body of your research paper.  Putting this draft together could have proved either easy or difficult.  A lot depended on the how useful the notes were you took and how useful you found the notes of your group and class mates.  This is an important moment in what you are finding out in terms of writing research papers, that is, the better the quality of research notes to which you have access, the easier it is to draft your paper and the better paper you can draft. 

This week, you will offer feedback/criticism of the research notes produced to date by some of your peers in your group.  In the process, you should learn more about what is involved in producing a good research note.  You will also begin learning how to offer constructive feedback, receive it yourself, and respond to it.  

I've also build in some time to begin getting caught up on assignments.  If needed, additional time will be available over Spring Break.  

One piece of advice and a few notes on how group work works in terms of the fifty percent of your final grade derived from class participation.  Some groups are communicating better than others. Consider contacting those in other groups to ask how they are structuring communication and group work, the difficulties they've encountered, and how they've worked to over come them.  

Working online with groups isn't easy. Heck, working with a group isn't easy, but good communication is the key.  Another key is setting up some way to identify what each person is responsible for doing, setting intermediate deadlines with some fudge time built in, communicating when you are not going to be able to make a deadline, having backup plans to cover someone missing their deadlines, and holding others responsible to their actions (or, sometimes, lack of action).  

Remember, I have designed each week's exercises so they will be easier on everyone if everyone or most in a group do their work.  The exercises and, in specific, the King research paper can still be done if everyone doesn't do their work, but they will be harder to write--as hard as in a class which doesn't design in others to help. I am not expecting perfection in structuring online group work; this is a new, difficult, and sometimes frustrating experience for most.  I am expecting you to keep *trying* to work with everyone in your group and to ask for help when you hit snags.

Also remember, if your not completing an exercise needed by your group or your not working with your group makes their jobs as students harder, just as with any other job, there will be consequences.  People get fired for such behavior in industry.  In the case of this class, your class participation grade will take a hit, not theirs, yours.  Under such conditions, those who continue try and get the work of the group done in spite of the times life gets in the way or in spite of those who don't shoulder their share will be viewed with the utmost sympathy.  Those who attempt to get the group working together and who take leadership and facilitator roles in their group will receive extra credit on their class participation grades.  

In short, there are rewards for those who try to figure out and work through the complexities of online group work.  Learning how to incorporate others into your writing process in appropriate ways is a learning outcome for the course.  Learning some of the many challenges of online group work and how to overcome them is another learning outcome.  Why? In most jobs in industry online communication and making the time to help others on your team succeed is a required and rewarded skill set.  Again, why? Because most businesses need to make money, and when most of those involved is in the position to do their jobs better because folks help one another and shoulder their portion of a complex job, the business makes more money.  

Steve

A New Regimen for Getting in Touch and Meeting with Me.

About a month ago, I was diagnosed with vertigo, which is a fancy Latin word for dizziness.  The vertigo first presented itself during a visit to Baltimore and following a cold, and the doctors seem convinced it is related to a chronic sinus infection.  As a result, I have been on antibiotics, heavy decongestants, and allegory drugs for over a month, but symptoms have become worse rather than better over time.

I don't usually share health issues with a class.  So far,  I have been able to make every class I have had to teach and interact with and help students.  However, the vertigo has affected my ability to drive, and episodes come and go unpredictably, though they do get worse as the day progresses, which means I am limited in the times I will be at my office.  While I can still make arrangements for face-to-face meetings, and I will be happy to do so, if you need to see me in person, until further notice, the best way to contact me is via one of the website contact forms or via phone, 804-885-3727.  Moreover, until further notice, please contact me to arrange each face-to-face appointment rather than stopping by my office, as I want to make sure I am there when you do stop by.  

Steve  

Assignment Description for Week Six Now Active

Make sure to write with any questions.

Steve

Some advice about taking notes on the King letter and about working with your group.

A student wrote with the following questions, and I thought my answer to her might help a few of you.  For asking the question--one which helps other students learn, the student who asked gets two points extra-credit on her final class grade. The student asked,

Dr.B, I need help...My group has picked 2C for our topic. So I have to re-read MLK's letter and explain the 5 most important things king has accomplish? How do I take these notes? I see you gave us some pointers on how to take notes but is it a certain software? Can I just take the notes how I want to do them? ...I am also going to try to get help from my group which sometimes is hard for me because we all have different times we do homework. 

My answer follows:

My advice is to set up a file in your favorite word processor, and use this file to take your notes.  You should be able to copy and paste the notes to your blog later.  You can also consider using the blog itself to take notes. Here, you would save your notes as a draft instead of publishing them right away as a post, and you can come back later to finish and post your notes to your blog.  You can use the "Edit Posts" link to use your blog in this way, and you'll see the link off the blogger dashboard, right next to the "New Post" button.  Just for information, you can also use "Edit Posts" to go back and edit or revise a post you have already made to the blog.

In terms of how to take the notes and what to look for: 

Read through the letter again.  The key questions you'll be thinking about are: "What is King trying to accomplish in this section of the letter, and what is it in the text which makes me think this is what he is trying to accomplish?" You'll be taking one or two notes for each section as you find answers to these questions. Your notes will be the answers to these key questions plus enough information about the section you are reading to describe it to your reader.   If you'll notice, these notes will then correspond to a point you could make later in a paper, saying something like, "In the section of the letter where King talks about X, he is attempting to accomplish Y.  You can tell he is trying to do Y, because if you look at ... you can see ..."

Don't get carried away here.  My guess is you'll end up with one or two pages max of notes on the various things the text lets you infer about what King is trying to accomplish.  As your research for the paper develops, and you read more about the context and what others say about what King is doing in the letter--you'll be doing some of this reading this coming week--you'll begin to be able to pick out what you think are the priorities in what King is  attempting to accomplish.  

Let me also offer a word or two of advice about working with your group.  Call rather than email, and try and get a list of times when it's OK to call and talk about what your group is doing.  You might consider setting up a calling tree, where you talk to a couple of people each week at a particular time, and they talk to one or two people at another time, filling each in on what is decided.  You can also consider setting up a short conference call or IM or texting session, that is, if you can identify a particular time for these sessions.

Get in touch if any of the above doesn't make sense or doesn't work.

Steve

The Assignments Link for Week Five Is Now Active.

Last week, you began learning about different kinds of research sources and how to take research notes on your primary source(s).  In the case of your research topic, King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."  You also got to begin working more closely with your group, as you needed to make a group decision among a set of option as to the research topic of your King rhetorical analysis.

This week, you'll begin learning how to read secondary sources, that is, journal articles and to take research notes on them.  You'll also get an overview of the steps one goes through in writing a research paper--one of the major learning goals for ENG 112.  As you read and learn the steps in the research paper writing process, you should gain a better idea of where taking notes on your primary source, creating a working bibliography, and taking notes on secondary sources fits into the process of creating a research, analysis, or term paper.

You also have two exercises to complete with your group.  The first is a basis check in to make sure everyone is doing well and to see what help you can provide to help get anyone lagging up to speed.  As part of this check in, you'll divide up a set of journal articles, making each group member responsible for two articles.  As always when interacting with your group, be supportive and act toward each member as you would a colleague.  You want them to succeed, and it's worth your investing time to help them, because without good colleagues, your own success won't be as great as it could be with their support and help. All this is part of the process of learning to work with a team and learning how the professional world usually functions.

As always write with questions.

Explanation of Terms Used to Describe Different Kinds of Research Sources

A student wrote to ask what was meant by "outside refernce-both online and print," in the description of the research topics in this week's assignments.  I thought everyone could benefit from the answer, and it is my custom to publish such questions and answers here in the class announcements.  For asking a question which helps many in the class learn, the student will receive one point extra credit on her final class grade.  It's my way of encouraging good questions from you.  

Here is my explanation:

"There are two kinds of sources, primary and secondary.  A primary source is the text you want to understand and interpret.  In the case of our assignment, King's letter is the primary source.  When you read or find references within the letter to help you say something about the letter, you are using the letter as a primary source.  For instance, quoting the salutation to the ministers would be using a quote from your primary source to make sense of your primary source.  This is the basic idea behind analysis, that is, breaking your primary source down into parts and examining the parts closely to help you make better sense of the whole text.

When you create a text, like a paper or post about your primary text, you are creating a secondary source, that is, you are creating a text which explains your primary text/source.  The secondary source you create joins any number of other secondary sources created to attempt to explain the primary source or text.  Taken together these secondary sources form what is referred to as "the discourse" or "conversation" about the primary text.

When you use someone else's explanation of the primary source you are both trying to explain, you are said to be using a secondary or "outside" source.  This is a source or text created to help make sense of a primary  source.  Secondary sources can be found in any number of places.  You can go online and google a website which explains, for instance, who the audience was for King's letter.  Such a secondary source, would be called an "online secondary source."  You can also go to the library and find a journal article or a section of a book which explains King's audience, this kind of secondary source would be a print secondary source.  

Because print sources often require expert peers to approve and act as readers for print sources before they appear in print, in academic conversations, print secondary sources are considered more likely to be legitimate than online secondary sources which don't require this prior approval of experts in the field to be published.  There is no denying, however, that online sources are often easier to find and use, as you can find and use online sources any place you can find an internet connection.  My guess is that how we judge the legitimacy of online versus print secondary sources will continue to change in the near future; however, for right now, those who participate or use professional discourse, that is, professionals and academics like students and teachers, need to know to find and use both online and print secondary sources.

While the research topic your group will be exploring will have you looking at both kinds of sources, and I wrote the description of the research topic accordingly, for this week's assignments, all you need to do is to decide as a group which of the three topics you will research and, later, write about.  This week, you are also re-reading the letter and taking primary source notes, finding references within the text which will help you explain aspects of the rhetoric of King's letter.  The kinds of quotes and examples you look for and take notes on as you re-read the letter will depend on the topic your group picks to research, so that is the place to begin."

As always, write with any questions.

Steve