This looks awesome, Danny! A couple of thoughts/questions:
- As one resource for helping students break out of 5 paragraph essay mode, I really like the approach illustrated in this article from the science writing site The Open Notebook:
- In the planning and proposal stage, I like to encourage students to build around a key question rather than an argument. The way I look at it is, students *may* have an argument they want to make at that stage in the game (and if they do, that's totally fine), but what they *need* to have is a genuine and compelling question. (Two of the big traps my students tend to fall into are a. getting locked into an argument prematurely and b. trying to make an argument where there's not really a question.)
- I'm curious about the relative length of the proposal and the close reading and the relative sequence of the concept and the close reading. This is partly personal preference/philosophy, but I'd be inclined to let the proposal be shorter and more informal, make the close reading part relatively longer, and move the conceptual discussion after the close reading. I really don't think there's a right and wrong here, but my thinking would be that I'd want to make the first step easy, foreground looking at the details of a specific text, and avoid having students treat the movie as something to apply theoretical concepts to.
- I really like where you put the bibliography and the introduction. These are two things I've been wanting to rethink in my own courses and it's super helpful to see the way that you're approaching it.
- Also really like what you're doing with the allocation of points to emphasize the process. Also something that I've been working on, and again, super helpful.
- Overall, love the ambition and the way you're designing an experience that really encourages students to explore ideas in depth!
Hey thanks so much for this input! First of all, I love that resource you provided and I bookmarked it for future use (probably in my Rhet/Comp class this fall!).
Second, you make some really good points here. I also prefer questions to arguments in the beginning stages of a project and I think I want to make that clearer in future versions of this sequence.
And I also agree with your preference about proposal and close reading lengths. I myself had a very tough time writing proposals in Grad School and needed to just get through that part of the process to get to the drafting, where my ideas clarified. (Eventually my grad advisor figured that out about me and then I was way more efficient. So yes, I prefer a basic "here's what I want to look into and research" proposal. The details will be something they discover through the process. I definitely want more detail in the focused readings than the abstract document that is the proposal.
One thing that I think I will be looking at in the future is the point allocations. I do feel like some of the earlier (journaling) exercises probably have too many points that could be allocated to later stages of the project.
Really appreciate your input here, as always. Keep up the good work!
I can definitely identify with your proposal-writing experience. Some painful lessons learned there...
The question of how to weight the different steps in a project like this is the kind of thing you can tinker with endlessly (and I do), but I like the overall approach that you're taking here, and specifically the way you're de-emphasizing the point value of the final draft. It sends a useful message.
Personally, I like to have most of the grade on a project be "earned credit" for work in progress, meaning that students get the credit if they put in a useful effort on a plan, draft, biblio, what have you, and a relatively small part of the grade be "performance credit" determined by the quality of the finished work. This lets me spend most of my time in coaching mode rather than grading mode, so that my responses to student work are framed as "let's talk about how we get to the next step," rather than "this is why you got the grade you got," which I find to be helpful.
Thanks again for sharing this assignment and the thought process behind it - I'll definitely be coming back to it as I'm thinking about my own planning!
The phrases "earned credit" and "Performance credit" are mind-blowing. I'm totally stealing that framing! And yes, designing these assignments so I'm more of a coach than an evaluator is exactly what I have in mind.
This looks awesome, Danny! A couple of thoughts/questions:
- As one resource for helping students break out of 5 paragraph essay mode, I really like the approach illustrated in this article from the science writing site The Open Notebook:
https://www.theopennotebook.com/2015/10/20/narrative-x-rays-stories-structural-skeletons/
- In the planning and proposal stage, I like to encourage students to build around a key question rather than an argument. The way I look at it is, students *may* have an argument they want to make at that stage in the game (and if they do, that's totally fine), but what they *need* to have is a genuine and compelling question. (Two of the big traps my students tend to fall into are a. getting locked into an argument prematurely and b. trying to make an argument where there's not really a question.)
- I'm curious about the relative length of the proposal and the close reading and the relative sequence of the concept and the close reading. This is partly personal preference/philosophy, but I'd be inclined to let the proposal be shorter and more informal, make the close reading part relatively longer, and move the conceptual discussion after the close reading. I really don't think there's a right and wrong here, but my thinking would be that I'd want to make the first step easy, foreground looking at the details of a specific text, and avoid having students treat the movie as something to apply theoretical concepts to.
- I really like where you put the bibliography and the introduction. These are two things I've been wanting to rethink in my own courses and it's super helpful to see the way that you're approaching it.
- Also really like what you're doing with the allocation of points to emphasize the process. Also something that I've been working on, and again, super helpful.
- Overall, love the ambition and the way you're designing an experience that really encourages students to explore ideas in depth!
Hey thanks so much for this input! First of all, I love that resource you provided and I bookmarked it for future use (probably in my Rhet/Comp class this fall!).
Second, you make some really good points here. I also prefer questions to arguments in the beginning stages of a project and I think I want to make that clearer in future versions of this sequence.
And I also agree with your preference about proposal and close reading lengths. I myself had a very tough time writing proposals in Grad School and needed to just get through that part of the process to get to the drafting, where my ideas clarified. (Eventually my grad advisor figured that out about me and then I was way more efficient. So yes, I prefer a basic "here's what I want to look into and research" proposal. The details will be something they discover through the process. I definitely want more detail in the focused readings than the abstract document that is the proposal.
One thing that I think I will be looking at in the future is the point allocations. I do feel like some of the earlier (journaling) exercises probably have too many points that could be allocated to later stages of the project.
Really appreciate your input here, as always. Keep up the good work!
I can definitely identify with your proposal-writing experience. Some painful lessons learned there...
The question of how to weight the different steps in a project like this is the kind of thing you can tinker with endlessly (and I do), but I like the overall approach that you're taking here, and specifically the way you're de-emphasizing the point value of the final draft. It sends a useful message.
Personally, I like to have most of the grade on a project be "earned credit" for work in progress, meaning that students get the credit if they put in a useful effort on a plan, draft, biblio, what have you, and a relatively small part of the grade be "performance credit" determined by the quality of the finished work. This lets me spend most of my time in coaching mode rather than grading mode, so that my responses to student work are framed as "let's talk about how we get to the next step," rather than "this is why you got the grade you got," which I find to be helpful.
Thanks again for sharing this assignment and the thought process behind it - I'll definitely be coming back to it as I'm thinking about my own planning!
The phrases "earned credit" and "Performance credit" are mind-blowing. I'm totally stealing that framing! And yes, designing these assignments so I'm more of a coach than an evaluator is exactly what I have in mind.