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Week 6: Monday, September 29th - Friday, October 3rdGoals for this Week· Take your class to the library for research instruction if you haven’t done so already · Share topics and issues in class—establish a routine way of doing this for the next several days · Collect Topic Proposals · Assign (early in week) and Collect (later the week) Part 2 of Portfolio 2 - the Personal Position Analysis (due by Thursday, October 3 or Friday October 4) · Connect their Personal Position Analysis to the analysis of other sources and writers--their positions, and their contexts, as done in the Position Analysis of a Single Source. Develop the importance of understanding the contexts (social, cultural, etc.) of writers as they stake their positions. Scaffold this learning by (1) beginning with a personal analysis of the relationship between your position and your context . . . then . . . (2) applying similar analysis to sources you collect · Reinforce their collection of New York Times articles that touch on issues in the “contact zones” of differing contexts, values, beliefs, etc. · Start collecting outside sources (beyond the Times) with the goal in mind of having a representative sample of perspectives on your issue and with a set of evaluation criteria in mind that will help you make good choices. Write a satisfactory Annotated Bibliography that will lead to a solid News and Issue Analysis essay. Connection to Course Goals· Introducing students to a university library such as Morgan Library is a hugely important activity. Students in CO150 gain immediate and practical working knowledge of the essential features of college library research, becoming knowledgeable of the online card catalog, sharing functions between libraries (Prospector and Interlibrary Loan), database searching, browsing of shelves, use of basic reference tools, and that most essential of skills—the ability and courage to ask questions of library personnel. · Sharing topic/issue ideas in class fosters a sense of writing community. Students learn that writers exchange ideas in public spaces and they gain insight from what others are exploring. They also learn that writers can share sources in a collaborative environment as a means to create new texts. This process draws students' attention to other students and away from the instructor allowing for a more comfortable atmosphere - and one that is more conducive to peer review and workshop. · Generating a discussion and a subsequent analysis of the forces and influences implicated in the development of one’s own position on an issue can help students to see that even their own points of view come from somewhere, do not exist in a vacuum, and are full of “bias” and context-connection. Bridging this personal analysis to a subsequent analysis of the sources they find through their research —prompted by the Position Analysis Grid--can facilitate their critical (yet fair) analysis of others’ perspectives. Required
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Source: author, title, publisher, other sources cited |
Claim/Thesis |
Influences: Community, Background, & Affiliations |
Vested Interests, Biases, & Personal Stakes |
Values, Beliefs, Attitudes, & Convictions |
These are indicators of affiliation |
State claim or thesis as a full sentence |
Find text evidence to show these here |
Find text evidence to show these here |
Find text evidence to show these here |
Create a transition into discussing the evaluation of sources. Among other things, you might point out that one of the ways that college research distinguishes itself from high school research is in the evaluation and selection of sources. College professors expect students to seek out “better” sources instead of settling on the first ones they bump into. Each piece of academic writing will require a careful examination of the appropriate criteria for the task and purpose of the written assignment.
Discuss source evaluation, using the criteria of scholarship, relevance, and representativeness to help students critically examine and judge their sources—both library sources and Internet sources. Engage students in a discussion of possible criteria for judging sources and why the three selected here make sense for the News and Issue Analysis for an educated Audience of CO150 peers and teachers (You might also review PHG on source evaluation here—see pages 584-589.)
Ways to establish the scholarship of a source:
· Scholarly sources versus popular ones
· Author credentials
· Articles peer reviewed
· Evidence of research or serious inquiry
· Evidence of use of footnotes or bibliographies
· Tone and level of formality/seriousness
Ways to establish the relevance of a source:
· Degree of relationship to the question posed by the Topic Proposal
· Degree of currency (most sources publishes in the past 10 years are OK)
· Evidence of knowledge of other positions, sources, awareness of ongoing debate or conversation—that is, reference to other sources perhaps through an extensive bibliography
· References to current events
Ways to establish the representativeness of a source:
· To what degree does this source represent a particular, and important, perspective in the debate? How would you describe or characterize this perspective?
· To what degree does this source overlap with others in your set? Which ones? Where are they similar? Where different?
· To what degree does this source offer something new, however small, to the discussion as it represents and perhaps overlaps with other sources representing this perspective?
Transition: Explain to students that for their descriptive and evaluative annotated bibliographies that will be Part III of this Portfolio and assigned next, they will need to consider these evaluation criteria. As they collect sources they should keep these criteria in mind.
Discuss the use of the Working Bibliography tool for assembling the bibliography. Develop a list of instructions for the overhead or distributed via Syllabase to help students get started with this useful tool available through Writing Studio.
Assignment: Collect and read sources on your issue. Assemble a first draft of your annotated bibliography, including a minimum of six sources and post to the Working Bibliography function of the Writing Studio. The bibliographic entry should be followed by an annotation that is both descriptive and evaluative of the source. [Instructors: For an example of such an annotation, see the list of optional readings for Portfolio 1.]