Spring Quarter, 2010

Course Calendar

Please note that this calendar is designed to be flexible: we may make changes along the way, depending on your interests and the needs of the class. Should you miss a class, you are responsible for finding out what you missed from a classmate and for knowing about—and adjusting for—any calendar changes. Professional protocols and collegiality ask you to alert us if you’ll be missing on a day when we’re having a workshop or when you are scheduled to present materials.

Week 1
“We Are What We Find, Not What We Search For”

Monday 3/29 In class: Introductions, key terms, course goals; WRD103 portfolio review and plans for integrating your WRD104 work
Wednesday
3/31
Reading: Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources: Tampere, Yale, and Wikipedia
In class
: Jawlensky, Girl with the Green Face:

Due: WordPress post — email your URL to Michael

Week 2
Relationships Between Research, Audience, & Purpose

Mon. 4/5 Reading: Analyzing source credibility (Lunsford, 252-56)
In class:  Corot’s Interrupted Reading
Due
: Three annotated sources in précis form
Wed. 4/7 Reading: Integrating sources (Lunsford, 270-80)
In class:  Integrating sources workshop
Due: Painting analysis via WordPress — create a new, second post

Week 3
Presenting Research

Mon. 4/12 Reading: Choosing & narrowing research topics
In class: “Choosing and Narrowing a Topic” (Lunsford, 217-221)

Due: Preliminary project questions

Wed. 4/14 In class: “Choosing and Narrowing a Topic” continued

Case Study: “The Language of Psychology: APA Style as Epistemology”

Week 4
Discipline-Specific and Professional Research

Mon.  4/19 Reading: Analyzing source credibility,
citation styles, and integrating sources, revisited
Due
: Library Database Workshop

Case Study: Butler, Paul. “Much Respect: Toward a Hip-Hop Theory of Punishment”

Wed. 4/21 Meet in Richardson Library, Room 417
Due
: Preliminary project questions via
Wordpress post

Week 5
Discipline-Specific and Professional Research

Mon. 4/26 Due: Project proposal
Wed. 4/28 In class: Case study #3
Case Study: “Clipart Images as Commonsense Categories”

Writing workshop:  Lunsford 190-198, especially cause and effect; inductive and deductive reasoning (premises); and visuals

Week 6
Writing with a Method, a Perspective, and with Authority

Mon. 5/3 In class: editing workshop
Reading
: Lunsford 82-109
Due
: Research project drafts & peer-editing checklists
Wed. 5/5 In class: editing workshop

Due: peer-editing responses and letter

Week 7
“They say _______ , I say _______.”

Mon. 5/10 Discussion: Contextual Analysis Project

“What is the purpose of higher education? Why should one attend a university and what should he or she hope to come away with when all is said and done? Sufficient answers to these questions and others like them are essential to the educational responsibility of students and teachers alike. For thousands of years, educators, academics and philosophers have wrestled with such inquiries, earnestly struggling to uncover the keys to securing a good education for themselves and those to follow. Some have met the challenge with great success and others to no avail.”

“Unfortunately, in more recent times it seems that less and less thought is being given to the original purpose of education. Or maybe it is not that less thought is given to the matter, but rather that less is being done to help students obtain a good, well-rounded education and understand the purpose of their education. Many students finish high school and head straight to college with no idea where they are, why they are or what they are going to do with themselves. As V. James Mannoia Jr. puts it in Christian Liberal Arts: An Education That Goes Beyond, “Unfortunately for many Americans, college has become a rite of passage that obscures the deeper questions about the purposes and distinctives of educational institutions.” Even more tragic is the fact that many teachers have lost sight of the purpose of education as well. Our universities are full of professors who profess nothing at all or, worse yet, indoctrinators who offer neat and tidy answers to un-pondered questions.” — W. Lamar Stockton. “A Philosophy of the Idea of Christian Liberal Arts Education Why is it important?”

“The main purpose of college or university education is to help older adolescents and adults renegotiate their membership in that encompassing common culture. The foundational knowledge that shapes us as children sooner or later circumscribes our lives.” — Bruffee, K.A. Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge.

Siegel, Alberta Engvall; Curtis, Elizabeth Ann. Familial Correlates of Orientation Toward Future Employment among College Women. Journal of Educational Psychology. Vol 54(1), Feb 1963, 33-37.

Longwell-Grice, Robert. “Get a Job: Working Class Students Discuss the Purpose of College.” College Student Affairs Journal. v23 n1 p40-53 Fall 2003

Due: Disciplinary/Professional Research Report with cover letter, describing your research process and discussing how and why your six sources are credible.

Wed. 5/12 In class: Contextual Analysis Project

Week 8
Workshop: Making Connections Between Primary Texts, Secondary Texts, and Your Ideas

Mon. 5/17 Due: Contextual Analysis draft — What is College For?
In class: Writing, Revising, and Editing Workshop
— how to integrate sources via the rhetorical precis method
— how to interrogate what people value in your sources
— how to make visible your method, perspective, and authority

Looking ahead to your digital portfolios, which are based on WRD Outcomes:

  • Demonstrate that a writing assignment is a series of tasks that includes finding, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources
  • Integrate your ideas with those of others
  • Interpret and explain the relationships among language, knowledge, and power

CHICAGO, June 11. — Delivering the convocation address at the University of Chicago today, President-elect Robert M. Hutchins declared that in his view the purpose of higher education was “to unsettle the minds of young men, to widen their horizon, to influence their intellects”.
The New York Times.
June 12, 1929.

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 11. — Governor Martin L. Davey pictured football today as “the supreme purpose of higher education” and declared that most of the Ohio State University gridiron squad is on the State payroll.”
The New York Times / The Associated Press.
October 12, 1935.

Major Issues: Writing Text-Supported Arguments About the Purpose of College (K-12 context) http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/major-issues-writing-text-supported-arguments-about-the-purpose-of-college/

Wed. 5/19 In class: Writing, Revising, and Editing Workshop

“We believe that we do our best for students when we give them tools to be analytical, to be able to gather information and to determine the validity of that information themselves, particularly in this world where people don’t filter for you anymore,” Dr. Coleman says. “We want to teach them how to make an argument, how to defend an argument, to make a choice.” These are the skills that liberal arts colleges in particular have prided themselves on teaching. But these colleges also say they have the hardest time explaining the link between what they teach and the kind of job and salary a student can expect on the other end.”
Career U.
Making College ‘Relevant’

Week 9
Workshop: Making Connections Between Primary Texts, Secondary Texts, and Your Ideas

Mon. 5/24 Due: Contextual Analysis draft — What is College For?
In class: Writing, Revising, and Editing Workshop

  • What would this writer, writing on this topic, need to demonstrate in order to be taken seriously by multiple audiences?
  • What other voices, sources, audiences, and contexts does the writer need to consider?
  • Scope: +/- ?
Wed. 5/26
Due: Contextual Analysis draft
In class: Writing, Revising, and Editing Workshop

Case Study: Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe: “The Benefits of Facebook ‘Friends:’ Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites”

Week 10

Mon. 5/31 No class: Memorial Day
Wed. 6/2 Due: Contextual Analysis

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