This post is part of a continuing series on building a course around the textbook Emerging. For previous posts in the series, see here and here. Theoretically, any two randomly selected readings can be sequenced; however, you will probably find it more useful to develop a theme around which to organize your sequence. For example, you might select a theme such as globalization, death and mourning, science and ethics, networks and communities, or political processes. A more practical method of building a sequence is to start with an essay you would enjoy teaching, then add essays that work with that selection, letting the theme emerge as you write the accompanying assignments. ... View more

In our book Signs of Life in the USA, Sonia Maasik and I take what may appear to some of your students as a rather daring position: namely, that in recent years the traditional dichotomy between “high culture” and “low culture,” or art and entertainment, has eroded to the point that America is entering an era wherein everything is expected to be entertaining. We have become an “entertainment culture.” In an entertainment culture not only do we find such cultural hybrids as Pop Art and Performance Art, Heavy Metal string quartets and the music of Phillip Glass, but also a deconstruction of the line between work and play, the sacred and the secular, politics and vaudeville, the Academy and Madison Avenue, the serious and the nonserious, and so on. Signs of this melding of cultures under a common imperative to entertain include the pressure put on opera stars like Deborah Voight to alter her appearance (via bariatric surgery) so as to look more like a pop singer, Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club, televangelism, the branding of universities via advertising campaigns, the packaging of politics and politicians, the emergence of infotainment, Rush Limbaugh .  .  .  these signs are everywhere. But if you or your students want a fresh indication of the deconstruction of the traditional line between high and low culture in America, simply consider what is coming to be America’s hottest new platform for political entertainment: the Lincoln Memorial. Revered as the site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and Marion Anderson’s operatic protest performance when the Daughters of the American Revolution barred her from Constitution Hall, the Lincoln Memorial has now become a stage for such political entertainers as Glenn Beck and Jon Stewart. What is striking is not so much that these television personalities are choosing to perform at the Lincoln Memorial but that their performances are actually serious politics. It’s a far cry from Will Rogers delivering comic political monologues while twirling a rope or Mark Russell singing satirical political tunes. Nor is it Mort Sahl or Tom Lehrer or even Tina Fey; no, Beck and Stewart are quite seriously staking out their own political positions and establishing themselves as political leaders in their own right. My point is not to critique the political motivations of either man but to point out what a striking departure this is, and what it signifies. This is a rather different thing than a celebrity choosing to run for political office. Plenty of entertainers have left the stage or screen to assume real political office, but the spectacle of entertainers in their role as entertainers rather than as conventional candidates for political office, inaugurating mass movements (or attempting to do so) on their own, takes things to a new level. Unlike an entertainer donating time to a political rally a la Jackson Browne, this time the political center of the event is the entertainer, making it rather unclear what the exact purpose of such an event really is. Yet another signifier of the politics of an entertainment culture popped up when Stephen Colbert testified before Congress on the immigration question. What was especially striking was not simply the fact that Colbert briefly turned the Congressional floor into his own personal performance studio, but that he himself directly alluded to the ambiguity of just who exactly was testifying: Stephen Colbert the concerned citizen, or Stephen Colbert the mock antagonist of Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. Like Sacha Baron Cohen, who almost always appears in public in a role rather than as himself, Colbert deconstructed his own identity before a Congressional committee in such a way that it was impossible to determine for certain what was and was not serious in his sworn testimony—that is, what was politics and what was performance. Colbert’s plans to lead a mock "anti-rally" against Jon Stewart’s October performance on the Mall only extends the ambiguity. The rise of Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert as entertainer-leaders in America is particularly remarkable in the wake of the recent decline in President Barack Obama’s political popularity. A lawyer, social activist, and politician by vocation, Obama made much use of popular culture as he successfully “rocked the vote” in 2008, so it is significant that as his popularity falls, entertainers appear to be filling the void. When politicians cease to be entertaining, Americans will turn to entertainers: This is what it means to live in an entertainment culture. If this is not enough evidence that we live in an entertainment culture, there’s always Sarah Palin, former beauty queen, state basketball champion, and wannabe cheerleader in chief. ... View more

If you’re teaching Mary Roach’s “The Cadaver Who Joined the Army,” you might want to check out this short piece from Jalopnik, a blog about cars and the automotive industry. Share the post with students—considering how cadavers could save lives in nonmilitary contexts may deepen their thinking about the ethics of using cadavers in research. ... View more

As an exercise in collaborative writing and as a way to have students deepen their understanding of a text, have your class work collaboratively to propose, update, or modify an entry about the current essay or author for Wikipedia. If your handbook has information on collaboration, you might first ask students to read that section. You can also use this as an opportunity to discuss plagiarism—why is it OK to collaborate on this kind of writing but not on a paper? You can broaden the conversation to include the role of Wikipedia in academic research and writing. ... View more

All right, you’re teaching a section on interpreting the movies and you want to provide a quick illustration of how the semiotic method works to your class without having to show the whole movie. It isn’t difficult to do this: all you need to do is choose a strikingly significant element in a film and, while providing sufficient background by way of a summary description, focus in on it. Something of the sort really leaped out at me while I was taking a transcontinental air flight recently, and the movie Rumor Has It came on. It was probably a good thing I was strapped down in my seat or I never would have watched the movie through (one’s personal tastes are not relevant to a semiotic analysis), because I found that a single scene in the film pretty much said it all when it came to assessing its cultural significance. So first some background and summary. The key to the plot of Rumor Has It is that it is based on an unusual concept that establishes it as a kind of romantic-comic sequel to the 1967 cinematic icon The Graduate. That movie presented a devastating critique of the sterile lives of upper-middle-class suburbanites, centering on the experiences of one Benjamin Braddock who returns from college to his parents’ home and is seduced by a family friend, Mrs. Robinson. Benjamin ends up falling in love with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, Elaine, and eventually runs off with her, literally carrying her out of the opulent church wedding where she is about to marry a respectable young medical student. The crucial final image shows Ben and Elaine (who is still in her wedding dress) ecstatically riding in the back of the bus that is carrying them from the sterile world of the Robinsons and the Braddocks into a presumably more meaningful future. Now, keep your eye on that image, because the difference between that final scene and the final scene of Rumor Has It is sufficient to cue us in to the profound cultural difference marked by this peculiar “sequel.” The premise of Rumor Has It is that there is a real family living in Pasadena that served as the model for the characters in The Graduate. The model for Mrs. Robinson, Catherine, is now the grandmother of Sarah Huttinger (played by Jennifer Aniston). Catherine’s daughter is now dead, but she really did run off with the model for Benjamin Braddock, whose “real name” is Beau Burroughs, but left him after a few days to return home and marry the respectable Earl Huttinger, who is Sarah’s father. Or is he? For in the course of the movie, Sarah learns that she may have been conceived during that brief elopement between Beau and Elaine and that, therefore, Beau Burroughs is her real father. Upon investigating, Sarah finds Beau—now an extremely glamorous dot.com millionaire—and, in a twist that could be the subject of an entirely different analysis, is seduced by him. Obvious complications ensue. Just in case you’re wondering, we finally learn that Beau is not Sarah’s father, but that’s not what concerns us here. What we want to study is the final scenic image of Rumor Has It. In this final scene, we see the huge, opulent celebration of Sarah’s marriage to Jeff, a respectable young lawyer, for Sarah decides to leave the ultra-rich Beau to return to her upper-middle-class family and fiance´. A nice, sentimental, romantic-comic ending. Cut to the credits. But let’s look at the difference between those two endings. The Graduate concluded with a triumphant image of escape from the “plastic” world of upper-middle-class security and affluence (indeed, The Graduate made “plastic” the operative term among the 1960s youth counter-culture to describe the sterile values of suburban life). Rumor Has It, by contrast, concludes with a triumphant image of an embrace of upper-middle-class suburban life (it is also significant that Jeff is a lawyer—a solid upper-middle-class profession—just as Elaine’s fiance´ in The Graduate was a doctor, which is another solid upper-middle-class profession). The significance of this difference is profound. That is, the almost forty years between 1967 and 2005 witnessed a shift from the counter-cultural rejection of middle-class, materialistic values to an enthusiastic adoption of them. The baby boomers who made sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll the keynotes of 1960s popular culture, are now grown up, are now the “plastic” Establishment themselves, and their children (who are of Jennifer Aniston’s generation), rather than rebelling against their parents’ values, have embraced them. We can see this in the movie’s happy ending, which is a fantasy playing to the desires of its target audience. Baby boomers gone respectable can take satisfaction in Earl Huttinger’s final triumph over Beau Burroughs, while their Gen-X children (Jennifer Aniston’s fan base) can feel all warm and fuzzy over Sarah’s sentimental return to her fiancé Jeff. That the triumph of middle-class respectability is what is entertaining about the film—just as the defiance of middle-class respectability was what was entertaining about The Graduate—is the crucial sign here of a profound cultural shift. In effect, The Graduate has been ideologically remade in Rumor Has It to suit a very different era. Goodbye Mother Jones; hello Wall Street Journal. So, there’s an example of what I mean. After guiding your students through such an analysis, you can then ask them for striking scenes or images that they themselves have noticed and interpret them with your class. ... View more

According to John Battelle in his recent book The Search, search has become “the de facto interface for computing in the information ago” (4). ... View more

To help your students understand the consequences of plagiarism, have them use the Web to research cases of plagiarism in the “real world.” What were the consequences? What role does plagiarism play in the careers of actual people, careers your students might have some day? You might also broaden this conversation to discuss intellectual property more generally. ... View more

Help students see the relationship between Higher Order Concerns and Lower Order Concerns but directly connecting the two. Students should identify key sentences in their drafts that reflect their intentions in terms of audience, purpose, argument, development, and transition. ... View more

Computers, databases, and electronic journals are increasingly playing a crucial role in research. Students can gain a new perspective on these tools, however, by attempting to do research without using them. Ask students to imagine that all the computers on campus have been knocked out, perhaps by something as innocuous as a power outage. Have them complete some simple research tasks using non-electronic tools. The results can be quite interesting. At my institution, for example, no research can be done without a computer now: there is no card catalog and no bound copies of indexes such as the MLA International Bibliography. Asking students to complete this exercise will either expand their set of research skills or, just as usefully, prompt them to consider our reliance on electronic research tools. ... View more

I often find it productive to think of grading not so much in terms of assessment but instead in terms of the goals of the assignment or class.  In doing so, I find I can use grading criteria and rubrics to get students to think about what we’re trying to accomplish in the course.  Here are some activities I use to do that: 1. Having students create grading criteriaOutside of class or in small groups I ask students to write out a set of grading criteria and, for some assignments, I let them know I will in fact use the criteria they develop.  This activity prompts students to think about what’s important in the assignment, what skills we’re trying to develop, and what it takes to succeed.  Not only does it help them then complete the assignment with a clear sense of the goals in mind but it also gives me a spot-check on how well we all understand what we’re trying to achieve. 2. Having students grade a draftI find that if students can understand what’s involved in grading then they can apply that knowledge to their own work.  And so I’ll distribute the grading criteria of the course or assignment to the class—this makes assessment more transparent from the get go.  Then I have students break into small groups: a group for not passing, for “C” level, for “B” level, and for “A” level.  I ask each group to read through the criteria for that grade and determine what they think are the key elements needed to get that particular grade.  After groups share their discussion with the class, I distribute a sample paper and we grade it as a class.  Surprisingly, students tend to be much harder graders than I am, but the resulting discussion helps them understand what I am looking for when I read their work. 3. Criteria to rubric or vice-versaAt my institution we have both a set of detailed written criteria and a shorter rubric in a tabled format.  Asking students to imagine one of these from the other is another way of getting them to focus on the essential elements involved in grading.  If you have written criteria, ask your class to design a document that translates this criteria to a tabled format; in doing so they will need to consider not only the crucial aspects of the criteria but also elements of document design (you might, then have them review handbook material on the précis and/or document design).  Moving in the opposite direction can be useful as well.  Students can expand on shorter criteria to create a more detailed account of grading.  Encourage them to use your comments on past assignments to assist in filling out fuller criteria. 4. Arguing for a grade changeWhenever I have students who feel that their grade should be changed, I provide them with the criteria I used and ask them to create a short written statement that argues for the grade they think they should have received.  I make it clear that they should use the criteria as a set of claims, tying it to the specific evidence provided by their work.  So, for example, if part of getting a “B” involves careful analysis of quotation, I ask them to connect that abstract criteria to the specific parts of their paper where they are doing that.  Sometimes, students will make a good argument but even when they do not, this statement helps me to see what they think they are doing so that we can have a conversation about whether or not that works. 5. Checklist for a better gradeCheck to see if your handbook has any checklists—for drafting or forming a thesis, for example.  For homework or in class, have your students use the grading criteria of the course or the assignment to make this checklist more specific.  They can then use this checklist as they draft, for peer revision, or as a final check before they turn their work in.  So these are some ways I use the criteria to help students think about their work and how it will be assessed.  Do you ever use grading criteria in class?  How? ... View more

To continue the "working with imperfect technology" theme . . . I've never been one for Course Management Systems (CMS). WebCT and Blackboard (Bb) always struck me as being imagined for a huge 300-seat lecture course and not specifically for my 22-seat writing course--it was just too much, too big, too complex, too everything So, while I've long been a tech kinda person, I've also long avoided using CMS of any kind. But that's changed recently and one of the reasons it's changed is the Community site feature of Blackboard. One of my colleagues here actually suggested we start one for the writing program and I've been so glad that I followed his advice. The first thing the Writing Program Community site does for us is provide a central document archive where we can post sample assignments, syllabi, and policy statements. These are organized by course so people moving into a course for the first time have one place to look for all the stuff they need to get ready to teach. We've also used the discussion board with some limited success (it's hard to get a critical mass going for sustained discussion, ya know?), most usefully when we want to toss out an issue and get feedback and commentary. The most exciting tool, though, was Teams (though now it seems to be missing... did some new version of Bb come in and rename or lose that tool?). Teams created a mini wiki within Bb. We used it to have all teachers in the program contribute collaboratively to a draft of our new grading criteria. I loved how we could tap into a Wikipedia-like harnessing of the "wisdom of crowds," and I loved too how every teacher got an equal chance to make any alteration to the developing draft. The Community site seems to play a bigger and bigger role for me as WPA each year. It provides a virtual space of community, which is handy when you have 60 GTAs, 20 full time instructors, and 10 adjuncts spread over 8 courses on 4 campuses. But I imagine my view is skewed by my role as WPA. That is, I don't think it functions to create a true virtual community; it's more like a virtual office where you can drop off or pick up some important forms. I'm not sure what it would take to turn that into a virtual lounge. In my experience, community isn't planned; it just happens. Still, I'm happy for this feature in Bb. It makes my life easier and it has a lot of potential for us yet to explore. ... View more

At my former institution I was the writing programs Director of Instructional Technology, charged with promoting pedagogical uses of technology. The first lesson I learned—and hence the first I taught to others—is that technology will always, inevitably, fail. What do you do when that happens? Here are some strategies I use:1. Identify student expertsI know a lot about computers, but I don’t know everything. And, I can only be in one place at any given moment in a computer classroom which means I can only help one student at a time solve a problem. In order to provide more help in the lab and in order to empower students, I ask for expert volunteers at the start of the semester. Students self-identify as experts in different aspects of computing or software—so I might have PowerPoint experts, Photoshop wizzes, or Office gurus. I give the class a list of who knows what so that students can turn to each other for help. Not only does this tactic reduce the tech support load on me, but students also enjoy being local experts while the practice as a whole reinforced the value of peer input.2. Teachable momentsSomething will always go wrong in a computer classroom and when it does I and my students often feel stupid, disempowered, and somehow to blame. I try to turn these disasters into teachable moments by pausing class to reflect on the assumptions built into technology. Sometimes this discussion can be tied into issues of audience: what audience did the software or website designers imagine? How are we included in or excluded from that audience? Why does it matter? When technology fails it’s no longer transparent; it is instead all too opaque. But that gives us a chance to finally see it and to consider what role it does, can, or should play in our culture and our lives.3. Multi backupsThere’s nothing more frustrating than losing work, so saving it often in many ways and places is the only rule of thumb. Most students have USB flash drives these days, but also encourage your students to email their work to themselves, using your institution’s webmail interface if that’s available. Your school might also provide web storage space or a network drive. Have your students research all the options for saving work in order to create a handout for everyone in the class to use. You might also have groups create tutorials on using the various storage methods.4. Local lab loreI’ve found that all computers have their own personality quirks, not unlike Hal in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. With many computers in a single classroom, those quirks multiply into a culture unique to that lab. During the course of the semester, have students track the particular tips and tricks for your computer classroom: “Close Word before starting any web browser on computer 19 or the whole thing will freeze,” for example. The finished document can be passed on to the next teacher or class to use that space, creating a shared memory of the local lab lore.5. CMS emergency backup plans Course Management Systems (CMS) such as Blackboard are vulnerable to their own set of problems, such as the server suddenly going down and usually just when you or your students need it most. Prepare for these contingencies by working with your students to develop emergency backup plans for CMS problems. For example, if the server is down when a paper is due for posting, work with your students to determine what to do—email you the paper instead? Have a student email everyone about the problem to document when it happens, when they reported it to tech support, and when it’s solved? Provide a backup due date? Thinking ahead can make your semester go much more smoothly. And how do you handle tech failures? Is that a reason to reject computers in composition? ... View more

Derek's comments on the last post have me thinking about finding the balance between invention and expectation, between uniformity and diversity, between heuristic and rubric and creativity and innovation. For me, these are not just questions for individual assignments or individual courses; instead they're the kind of concerns I struggle with as the local WPA. On the one hand, I want students to learn X or Y rhetorical form or critical thinking skill but on the other hand I want students to practice J and K kinds of originality and individualism. On the one hand, I want a common set of outcomes and a fairly uniform student experience but on the other hand I want teachers to be able to innovate in their courses since that innovation can then enrich the program as a whole. Balance is the challenge. In terms of my classes, the problem often manifests itself for me in the "class argument." In any given set of papers I find the same argument in a good chunk of them, an argument that invariably reflects class discussion or group work. It reflects, too, what students come to understand of the rubric and my own expectations. Here are some ways I try to find a better balance: I try to allow multiple paths into my assignments. I try to word them so that you can argue any side, so that you can start your thinking from any personal opinion, so that you can be as creative as you'd like. At the same time, since my weaker students tend to flounder with an assignment that's too broad and open-ended, I also provide a set of questions for thinking about the assignment, questions which provide direction and structure for those students who need it. I take difficulty into account when grading. I tell my classes it's like diving: go for a more difficult maneuver and even if you don't nail it your score will reflect that you tried something new, above, and beyond. In many ways, then, a paper that takes risks is better positioned from the get go than a safe paper. I harness the class when I can. So, for example, a rubric generated out of class discussion is less an imposition from above and more a common agreement of expectations. Not ideal, but I don't think it can be. I think the kind of balance Derek is prompting in his comments is and must be a struggle. You know, in Chaos/Complexity Theory (an odd little interest of mine) the goal of any complex adaptive system is to reach what's called "the edge of chaos," a surprisingly robust state between the death of static stagnation and total chaos. I guess that's what I need to aim for continually in my teaching and my program--the edge of chaos. BTW, the tailbone is a bit better today. Lotsa rest (on my tummy was best), hot baths, and tylenol seem to have done the trick. ... View more

When I teach expository writing I tend to spend a lot of time helping students use quotations effectively to support their arguments. Too often, students just sprinkle quotations throughout their text without providing any sense of how those pieces of text relate to their larger argument. I have a few strategies I use to get them to engage the text closely in ways that support what they want to say: 1. The Super Secret FormulaThis activity is designed to help students build a paragraph that works with two authors in support of the paper’s argument. This exercise has to be one of the most successful activities I’ve ever created. Not only is it the one that seems to help students the most but it’s also the one that other teachers seem to bring into their classrooms the most often. The Super Secret Formula is: Cl > I > Q1 > E > T > Q2 > Ce Students start their paragraphs with “Cl,” a sentence that states the claim of the paragraph. Then, with “I,” they introduced a quotation from the first author, adding a sentenced that explains it (“E”). The next sentence makes a transition (“T”) to a quotation from a different author, “Q2.” Finally, students take a sentence or two to explain the connection between the two quotations (“Ce”) and how it supports the argument they’re making in the paper. The concrete structure of a “formula” provides a good scaffolding for students to build a solid paragraph that works with quotation but the risk is, of course, that all their paragraphs will becomes (literally) formulaic. When I use this exercise in the classroom, I start by having groups use the formula to make a sample paragraph. Then I challenge groups to come up with other formulas for working with quotation. 2. Close ReadingSometimes students have difficulty analyzing a quotation; pieces of text will be sprinkled through a paper seemingly with the assumption that their relationship to the argument is self-evident. Here’s an exercise that can help students with this problem. Ask students to write or type a quotation they want to work with. Then ask them to underline the key sentences or phrases of the quotation, the parts that they feel are most important for the point they’re trying to make. Then have them construct sentences that use these pieces of the quotation and that explain how they relate to their arguments. 3. Facts and IdeasQuotations that only contain statements of fact provide little opportunity for analysis; quotations with ideas do. Bring in examples of each kind to class for discussion and then during peer review ask students to identify each quotation in the papers they’re reading as either fact or idea. This exercise will give them practice distinguishing between the two and will provide useful feedback for paper authors on what type of quotation they’re favoring. 4. Short and LongAnother problem students seem to have in working with quotation is choosing quotations of appropriate length: they might choose quotations that are too short and thus don’t provide enough support or they might choose very long quotations and then say little about them. Have students look through their drafts and determine the length of each quotation by noting how many typed lines it takes. They can use the resulting report to reflect on their tendencies with quotation: do they always use very short ones? Always use very long ones? After the exercise challenge students to use a variety of lengths in their papers. 5. Peer Review BoostDuring peer review, ask students to suggest at least three quotations that could be added to support the paper. This exercise will encourage paper authors to use more quotation while helping peer editors to dig deeper into the text to locate quotations that can help the paper authors. ... View more

I've been working with a GTA on the standard set of writing assignments used by new GTAs and adjuncts every fall. Since he's teaching our FYC course this summer, we get to test out the assignments and we get all the sample papers we need for orientation. Anyway one of the things I've been sharing with him is how very crucial each word can be in an assignment. One wrong word can wreck an assignment and just shifting to a new verb can prompt super successful papers. In fact, we spend a lot of time on verbs in our spring orientation, which is designed to help the fall's new teachers start writing their own assignments for use starting in the spring. Here are some of the verbs we look at how to write effective assignments: explore: tend to avoid this one since the paper can end up meandering reflect: this one can prompt a lot of interiority and some regurgitation discuss: too generalized; doesn't encourage students to find a central argument or focus argue: creates a for/against, win/lose, balck/white mentality defend: combative stance refute: combative stance extend: good word because it asks students to move beyond the readings examine: not too bad evaluate: good word because it asks for some sort of critical thinking propose: good because it asks students to articulate a position assess: good like "evaluate" demonstrate: can be good, depending on the object To give you some sense of how these play out, we use sequences writing assignments a la Ways of Reading, though with our own readings we're putting in a custom reader. For a more specific example, here's the rough draft of our fourth assignment for the fall: This semester we have read works that deal with a variety of complex systems— universities, the world, Wikipedia. Our final reading, “The Animals” by Michael Pollan , takes place on Polyface farm, yet another complex system. It is safe to say that nearly all facets of life in the twenty-first century are small parts in highly dense and interconnected world. Using Michael Pollan’s “The Animals” and at least one other reading from this semester: Write a paper in which you examine the economic potential of complexity. It's funny. I always forget how hard it is to write an assignment until I sit down to do it. Then I hem and haw and tweak and tweak... changing a word here... a verb there... frustrated and crazed... all to get the assignment just so. ... View more