Activity: Analyzing a Science Blog

http://scienceblog.com/

1.     What were your first impressions when you clicked on the blog? Were you drawn in? Were you pushed away? Explain your answers.

2.     What is the ratio of text to images and multimedia content on the blog’s front page? Do you think the blog has too much of one or the other? Why or why not?

3.     What kind of audience is this blog for? Give me a quick character sketch of the blog’s prototypical reader… what are his or her other interests? What kind of background, etc.? Would you be friends with this person? How do you know this blog is for that person?

4.     What do you think of the blog’s layout? Does it look up-to-date or does it look old? What do you think the web designer’s goals were? Do you think the site achieves these goals?

5.     How would you characterize the tone of the writing on the site? Is it easy or difficult to understand? What age group or education level does the author seem to be writing for?

Activity: Find a Blog

http://www.google.com/blogsearch

1.     What did you search for to find this post?

2.     What made you choose this post rather than others you looked at?

3.     What kind of introduction does the post have? How does the writer try to hook his or her reader?

4.     What do you think of the blog’s layout? Is it inviting or intimidating?

5.     How does the blogger conceive of his or her audience? Is it for insiders or outsiders? What kinds of knowledge does the author assume of his or her reader? Are these assumptions true of you?

Diagnostic Writing Assignment

I will use this document to form you into groups. Things you might write about / questions you might answer:

·      What role does writing play in your life? Do you write daily? Just for school?

·      Do you consider yourself a strong writer? What are your personal strengths and weaknesses?

·      How do you think writing is important to your long-term academic goals?

·      What writing courses have you taken? What did they teach you? What do you wish they taught you?

Unit 3: Humanities

As I mentioned in the Unit 1 assignment sequence, the humanities are often viewed as a set of disciplines based more on personal opinion than fact. In this unit we will test this assumption, using the argumentative strategies we developed in units 1 and 2 to determine if there are such things as "proof" and "facts" in the humanities. You will present these arguments using software called VoiceThread, which will allow you to build on your podcasting skills by adding images to the mix.

Feeder 1

Do you have a favorite visual artist? If so, search for his or her work on the internet and check out some images. If not, try searching sites like the-artists.org for an artist that you would like to write about.

Much like Feeder 1.1, for this post you will identify and summarize a scholarly article about the artist you chose. There are numerous electronic databases of academic art history articles listed on the library's web site, but you may want to start with Art Full Text, the first database on the list.

Once you find an article about your artist (make sure it's from a scholarly art history journal!), you can begin by determining the author's thesis statement. What is the controversy or debate into which s/he is entering? What is his or her position? How do other art historians differ in their opinions?

Once you have determined the author's thesis statement, compose a post (length: equivalent to 2-3 typed pages) summarizing the article's argument for your blog's audience, noting the main theses of each article and what kinds of evidence and arguments the author employs. Is any piece of evidence particularly convincing or unconvincing? Why or why not? Feel free to express your own opinion if you deem it appropriate.

Feeder 2

Now that you've gotten your feet wet in art history, it's time to do a little criticism of your own. Choose a different image by the artist you wrote about for Feeder 3.1 and compose a VoiceThread that contextualizes that image within a specific historical, artistic, or cultural context. Think about what supplemental information could help your audience understand and appreciate the piece more fully. For example, you might explore the connections between your piece and works of art from similar movements and/or time periods or you might give your audience information about the historical or political circumstances in which the piece was created. Though your VoiceThread will probably include other images, sounds, etc., your focus should be the formal qualities of the work you are attempting to explain. In other words, try to make clear, specific, and detailed connections between the formal choices the artist makes (colors, framing, medium, etc.) and the contextual material that you present. The audio track for your VoiceThread should total 3-5 minutes.

In addition to composing your own VoiceThread, I will also require you to post at least one 30-second comment on one of your classmates' VoiceThreads. In your comment, point out at least one detail in the author's image that wasn't explicitly discussed in the original VoiceThread. Speculate about why the author might have included that particular detail, and what additional contextual information might be useful in interpreting this detail.

Unit Project

For your Unit Project I would like each of you to visit the Ackland Museum on campus and compose a VoiceThread (length of audio track: 4-7 minutes) that contextualizes one of the pieces of 20th or 21st-century art currently on display in the museum. (Note: the museum has strange hours and is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so don't wait until the last minute! You can see their hours here). You will want to include a digital image of the piece from the Ackland's web page in your VoiceThread.

As for the content of your VoiceThread, I would like you to argue that, through the piece you selected, the artist has attempted to achieve a particular social or aesthetic goal (examples: documenting the plight of slaves across the Middle Passage; illustrating how our perceptive faculties impact the way we see the world; exploring how 3-dimensional objects are represented in 2-dimensional space) and assess whether the artist achieves that goal. While you might include some historical, biographical, or other contextual information, your VoiceThread should consist mostly of a sustained analysis of the piece's formal qualities.

A successful VoiceThread will (in order of importance):

1. Be focused around a sophisticated, surprising thesis about the author's political, social or aesthetic motivations.

2. Include thoughtful, sustained analysis of the chosen piece of art.

3. Include and address potential counter-claims to the author's argument.

4. Cite all sources in a manner appropriate for the blog and its audience.

5. Be delivered in a lively, engaging and authoritative style.

6. Be free of errors in spelling and grammar as well as visual formatting.

Unit 2: Social Sciences

In unit 2 you will be using the research methods of behavioral psychology to perform a case study with yourself as the subject. After performing this experiment on yourself, you will shape your findings into a series of podcasts that track your progress and assess your original hypothesis.

Feeder 1

For your Feeder 1 assignment you will begin to shift the focus of your blog from the natural sciences to the social sciences. Go to Davis Library and scan some recent issues of the journal Behavior Modification (call number: BF637.B4 B43; also available online here). Find an article that interests you and write a post (length: equivalent to 2-3 typed pages) summarizing the article for your blog's audience. It is up to you how much background information you include about the article's subject or behavioral psychology in general. However, I encourage you to examine the author's references (listed at the end of the article) and give some contextual information about the debate or controversy into which the author is entering.

Feeder 2

For Feeder 2.2 and your Unit 2 project you will design and implement a behavior modification experiment with yourself as the subject. Using the articles you read in Behavior Modification and our other class readings as a model (though I encourage you to adapt this model to the needs and expectation of your blog's audience), compose a 4-6 minute podcast outlining your study.

First, you will identify a regular aspect of your behavior that you wish to modify. You should choose an aspect of your behavior that recurs several times daily, giving you ample data to compile and reflect upon each day. If you perform the experiment over break, a school-related goal such as getting to class on time will not be appropriate. Good examples of behaviors to modify might be trying to address people by name, trying to curse less, or trying to wash your hands more often.

Next you will design an experiment in which you will attempt to modify this behavior. In addition to deciding on specific goals for the period of your study, you must design a system of positive reinforcements for desired changes in your behavior and negative reinforcements for undesired changes in behavior. You are free to design your experiment however you wish, but you must collect data over a period of at least six days and you must fill out some type of form in which you record and reflect upon your behavior during each of the 6+ days. Please submit this form to me via email for my approval before you begin your experiment. Students who do not submit a form before conducting their study will be penalized.

After you have worked out the details of your experiment, compile your ideas into a script for a podcast, including a section that introduces the topic of your study and your specific hypothesis as well as a section outlining the research methods you will use in your experiment. Optionally, you might also include other sections that are pertinent to your topic, such as a section in which you review the recent literature on your topic.

A successful podcast will (in order of importance):

1. Contain a clear, original and interesting hypothesis.

2. Outline, in detail, an experiment that will test that hypothesis while accounting for confounding variables and other potential pitfalls of scientific study.

3. Outline a system of meaningful rewards and punishments that reinforce the desired behavior.

4. Be organized in an engaging, easy-to-understand way.

5. Be delivered in a clear speaking manner that is appropriate to the blog's target audience.

Unit Project

After you have completed your experiment, use the information you gathered to compose a follow-up podcast (length: 3-5 minutes). You should give a detailed description and analysis of your behavior during the experiment, as well as a substantial section in which you evaluate the results of your experiment. If your hypothesis was proven false, you should reformulate it based on the results of your experiment, explaining how you would conduct the experiment were you to try again.

A successful podcast will:

1. Honestly assess the strengths and weaknesses of the study as outlined in Feeder 2.2.

2. Offer a thoughtful and compelling analysis of the data gathered during the experiment.

3. Offer a sophisticated reevaluation of the original hypothesis based on the results of the experiment.

4. Be organized in an engaging, easy-to-understand way.

5. Be delivered in a clear speaking manner that is appropriate to the blog's target audience.

Unit 1: Natural Sciences

The natural sciences are often viewed as disciplines based on cold, hard fact, in contrast to the humanities which appear to be based on subjective opinion. In this unit we will challenge this view by examining controversy in the scientific community. What is up for debate in the natural sciences? Are these disciplines really as factual and as rational as popular perception would have them to be?

Feeder 1.1

Note: You can find instructions for accessing Nature online here. 

For this unit's first feeder assignment you will be studying the editorial section of the journal Nature, a publication known for bringing academic work in the natural sciences to a wider audience.

For your first feeder assignment, select an editorial from a recent issue of Nature (click "Archive" on the left-hand menu to access older issues, then when you click on the contents of an individual issue you can choose from the sections labeled "Editorial" or "Opinion."). Begin by determining the author's thesis statement. What is the controversy or debate into which s/he is entering? What is his or her position? How do other scientists or writers differ in their opinions?

Once you have determined the author's thesis statement, do research using the library and the web to find an author who expresses a contrary opinion. Write a post (length: equivalent to 1-2 typed pages) summarizing this controversy for your blog's audience, noting the main theses of each article and what kinds of evidence and arguments are employed by each. Is one more convincing than the other? Feel free to express your opinion if you deem it appropriate.

Feeder 1.2

While Nature lies in the fuzzy space between a professional and popular journal, for your second feeder assignment you will need to repackage information from a current academic journal in the natural sciences for your blog's audience.

You might begin your research by searching the Academic Search Premier Database (the first item on the list here) for topics that interest you and are relevant to your group's blog. If you find an article that interests you, determine whether it is from a scholarly journal. Also, please choose an article that has been published within the last  year.

Once you are certain that it is a scholarly journal, begin thinking about how you will translate this article for your audience. What are the differences in rhetoric between the two media? What information will you include and exclude? Will you need any information not contained in the academic journal article? (Hint: you probably will!) After you have thought about these questions write a post (length: equivalent 2-3 typed pages) summarizing this research for your blog's audience, doing your best to make the information interesting and relevant to them.

Since I will evaluate whether your source is truly an academic journal, please cite your original article in a manner that allows me to find it quickly and efficiently. Failure to do so will negatively affect your grade.

Unit 1 Project

For your Unit 1 Project, rather than summarizing an academic controversy, you will enter into a controversy yourself. Select another piece from the Editorial or Opinion sections of Nature, preferably one with which you disagree, and write a post (length: equivalent to 3-5 typed pages) arguing against the author's thesis. Do you whatever you may need to make your argument convincing, whether it is attacking the logic of the original editorial, gathering contrary evidence or making some other type of appeal to your audience.

A successful post will (in order of importance):

1. Fully and adequately summarize the thesis of the original editorial while developing a sophisticated thesis in response to it.

2. Contain a wealth of evidence from authoritative sources in support of its thesis while explaining away the counter-arguments of the original author's thesis.

3. Cite all sources in a manner appropriate for the blog and its audience.

4. Be written in a lively, engaging and authoritative style.

5. Be free of errors in spelling and grammar as well as visual formatting.

Introductory Post Assignment

For your first writing assignment this semester, your group will collaborate on an introductory post for your blog. Your post should accomplish 3 main goals:

1. Introduce each group member (including a photo of each person).

2. Establish the subject of your blog, i.e. give your readers a sense of what you will be writing about this semester.

3. Establish the tone and rhetorical style of your blog.

We will spend the first few days of class discussing a number of different blogs and what does and does not work about each. You will also engage in discussions amongst your group members, during which you will negotiate a coherent and appropriate rhetorical approach for your blog based on a target audience that you work together to identify. You should take into account each group member's interests as well as their strengths as writers, since you will be expected to adhere to this plan throughout the semester.

A successful post will (in order of importance):

1. Establish a rhetorical tone that is appropriate to the blog's subject matter and target audience. Not only will the post address this topic explicitly (i.e. a section of the post that will explain the authors' rhetorical approach), but also implicitly through the tone and style of the post itself.

2. Identify a subject for the blog that will serve to link all of the semester's posts. An outstanding post will also give a sense of the authors' unique approach to this theme.

3. Introduce each of the blog's authors in a manner that emphasizes their credibility as authors as well as the common ground they share with their audience.

4. Be free of errors in spelling and grammar.

5. Be formatted in an appealing and consistent manner.

Length: at least 5-6 paragraphs

Introductory Post Assignment

Introductory Post Assignment (DUE DATE: Friday, September 2)

For your first writing assignment this semester, your group will collaborate on an introductory post for your blog. Your post should accomplish 3 main goals:

1. Introduce each group member (including a photo of each person).

2. Establish the subject of your blog, i.e. give your readers a sense of what you will be writing about this semester.

3. Establish the tone and rhetorical style of your blog.

We will spend the first few days of class discussing a number of different blogs and what does and does not work about each. You will also engage in discussions amongst your group members, during which you will negotiate a coherent and appropriate rhetorical approach for your blog based on a target audience that you work together to identify. You should take into account each group member's interests as well as their strengths as writers, since you will be expected to adhere to this plan throughout the semester.

A successful post will (in order of importance):

1. Establish a rhetorical tone that is appropriate to the blog's subject matter and target audience. Not only will the post address this topic explicitly (i.e. a section of the post that will explain the authors' rhetorical approach), but also implicitly through the tone and style of the post itself.

2. Identify a subject for the blog that will serve to link all of the semester's posts. An outstanding post will also give a sense of the authors' unique approach to this theme.

3. Introduce each of the blog's authors in a manner that emphasizes their credibility as authors as well as the common ground they share with their audience.

4. Be free of errors in spelling and grammar.

5. Be formatted in an appealing and consistent manner.

Length: at least 3-4 paragraphs

Syllabus

English102	Instructor: Daniel Lupton
Fall 2011	Office: Greenlaw Hall 307
Office Hours	Monday / Wednesday / Friday 10:00AM-10:50AM
Email	dlupton@email.unc.edu

Course Description

The goal of English 102 is to introduce students to the conventions of specific types of written academic discourse. Over the course of the semester each student will complete three units of study: one unit each on the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. However, unlike most English 12 courses, in this course students will create blogs that explore how the conventions of academic discourse interact with the conventions of more popular media.

Draft Workshops

Much of our class time in English 102 will be spent evaluating student writing in group-centered draft workshops. Your participation in these workshops is MANDATORY, and poor performance in them (i.e. failing to give helpful comments to your peers, consistently pulling the discussion off-topic) will adversely affect your grade for that unit.

Required Texts (Available in Student Stores)

Student Guide to English 100, 101, and 102
The St. Martin’s Handbook

In addition to the above texts, it is required that you bring your fully-charged laptop to every class meeting.

Attendance

More than one absence over the course of any given unit will adversely affect your grade for that unit and any student who accumulates more than five absences over the course of the semester will receive a failing grade. If you have extreme circumstances which require you to miss several classes (i.e. mononucleosis, the death of a close relative, etc.) please let me know as soon as possible so that there may be as little disruption to the operation of your group as possible. Please note that there is no distinction between excused and unexcused absences.

Assignments

Your first assignment of the semester will be the first post to your group's blog, which will be an introductory post that introduces the members of your group and establishes the subject and rhetorical style of your blog that you will follow all semester. We will devote a great deal of class time to this post and I encourage you to take it very seriously, since the first post to a blog often establishes the tone that a blog will follow for some time.

You will produce three finished products for each of our 3 units: two feeder assignments, which will either develop skills you will need or help you put together preliminary research for your unit assignment, and a more extensive unit project that will encompass all of the things we’ve studied in class. At the end of each unit each student's work for their blog will be evaluated based on criteria we have developed in class. Blogs will be evaluated along with your participation in class to determine your grade for the unit.

All blog posts should be formatted properly according to the conventions of published blogging.

Late posts are not only unprofessional, they are unfair to your fellow students who worked hard and turned their papers in on time. Posts are considered due by the end of class on the due date unless another time is specified by me. Late posts may or may not be accepted, but they will be strictly and severely penalized.

Even more unacceptable than late work is plagiarism. All instances of plagiarism will be prosecuted in the honor court to the fullest extent allowable by university policy. If you are thinking of plagiarizing, remember that it’s not difficult to tell your writing from a professional’s and I can probably find the original source as easily as you did. You will get far more from the course if you do the work yourself, and your grade will always be better if you work hard on a mediocre assignment than if you plagiarize an excellent one.

Podcasting

In addition to blog posts, each student's feeder 2.2 and unit 2 project posts will be published as podcasts. We will talk about this more as this assignment gets closer.

Grading

Four grades will be assigned in this course, three letter grades for your cumulative work in each of the three units (including you blog, drafting, pre-writing, class participation, etc.) and one letter grade for your group's presentation.

Obsession with grades is a severe impediment to the writing process, and the perception that one must write to the teacher’s desires rather than one’s own artistic and academic ambition is a key cause of bad writing. No one wants to read the kind of lifeless prose most people think will earn them an A, thus no piece of writing in this class will receive a grade. Grades will only be assigned for your cumulative work in the unit, including final drafts, preliminary drafts and participation in draft workshops and in-class assignments.

The Writing Center (http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/)

Students are encouraged to visit the UNC Writing Center (located on the lower level of Phillips Annex). The tutors at the writing center will work with you one-on-one through problems or concerns about any stage of the writing process and can provide useful feedback between in-class draft workshops. Please note that the writing center tutors will not edit or proofread your papers.

Course Web Site and Blackboard Site

As a computer-intensive course, the internet will be an integral means of communication between yourself, your teacher and your group members. You are expected to check the course web site (http://lupton102fall11.blogspot.com/) regularly. You can log in to our Blackboard site with your ONYEN at http://blackboard.unc.edu. If you have trouble accessing the site please alert me as soon as possible, as many of our assignments will depend upon this technology.

Email Correspondence

If office hours are inconvenient students are encouraged to communicate with me via email with the caveat that I will respond at my convenience. I will not review drafts via email; if you are grappling with specific issues you may send a section of your post, but no more than two paragraphs at a time.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as the unattributed or unacknowledged use of another’s words or ideas and is a breach of the honor code. If I suspect you of a willful violation of the honor code, I will report you to the honor court. See your Student Guide for further information on plagiarism.

Course Calendar