Day 17 (Friday, October 3)
Lesson Objectives
Students will
Connection to Course Goals. Today, students plan out how they will look at the whole conversation about their subject. Groups will negotiate research strategies that will lead them to sources they may use in their Critical Intros and their Academic Arguments
Activities
Attendance and introduction (2-3 minutes)
Share Inquiry Interview Summaries (5-7 minutes)
Ask students to give their homework to the group member about whom they wrote. Each student should read the summary of their own interests, opinions, and frames of reference. If they feel there is something to add, they may note it on the back of the summary. Also if they feel they have been misrepresented, they may discuss that with their group.
Tip. You might ask one person from each group to hold onto the summaries so that the group has access to them as they draft the Critical Intro.
Consider the inquiry list from multiple perspectives (18-20 minutes)
Another criterion for choosing a question for this inquiry is that it needs to be of a manageable scope. Groups will be gathering 15-20 sources about the question. To help gauge the scope of the questions on the inquiry list, ask students to pair off and read over a description of one of the colleges at CSU (Agricultural Sciences, Applied Human Sciences, Business, Engineering, Liberal Arts, Natural Sciences, Veterinary Medicine, and Natural Resources; you can access descriptions of each of these colleges, which include descriptions of majors, here).
Once students have had a chance to read the description of the College, choose one of the questions on the list and ask, “Who cares about this question?” For example, people in business, marketing, psychology, and environmental sciences care about the question “Does green advertising work?” People in just about every discipline imaginable have some kind of stake in the question “Does climate change matter?” The green advertising question, then, is much more manageable than the broader question about climate change.
Make inquiry plans (15-18 minutes)
Next, demonstrate how to plan out an inquiry using one of the questions from your inquiry list that groups didn’t choose. For example:
Tip. Once groups have compared ideas, they will be able to choose different sub questions to research individually, so as to avoid duplicating research.
Explain basic research strategies (7-10 minutes)
Part of students’ homework will be to find one source, which they will most likely do through Google. Explain three basic criteria for a source for this project: relevance, reliability, and currency. The source needs to help answer the inquiry question, it needs to come from a credible author or organization, and it needs to be current enough that its contents still matter. In addition, the source needs to be useable in an academic paper (therefore, no Wikipedia).
Tip. Revisit the assignment sheet to remind students of what they should do once they have found the source (they should read it closely to write the summary and they should read it critically to write the evaluation).
Tell students that you will collect bibliography entries next time to provide feedback.
Conclude class and assign homework (3-5 minutes)
Wrap up class as usual, reminding students to meet in the library next time.
Homework
