The formatting got a little screwy here, but whatever, my comments and suggestions are unitalicized and are the result of out-of-class conversations with a few peers concerning how best to wrap things up.
Requirements: subject to negotiation
Everyone is expected to prepare the assignment prior to class and participate in class discussion. Attendance is a sign of engagement. Any student missing more than four classes will fail. Students are encouraged to bring electronic devices to class, although they should not use them until specifically instructed to do so. No student will be admitted to class after 12:05.
Students will need to be flexible--assignments and requirements are subject to change.
There will be three primary modes of assessment:
40% Projects and participation (including blogs). These will be graded on a curve. (no curve)
Students must have blogs with posts that comment on the readings. The best
posts will be featured on the class blog. Students are also expected to comment
on one another's blogs. (keep scrolling for conversation about blogs)
40% Exams and papers. These will not be graded on a curve.
20% Self-assessment. This is your final paper. In it, you give an account of what you've
contributed to the class and what you've gotten from the class. Bluntly put, you
grade yourself and try to convince me that you deserve this grade.
Alternative grading rubric:
30% -Projects
30% -participation
30% -exams and papers
10% -self assessment
5% -blogs
4/5 Group Projects: Google
“Back to Microsoft” (critique of google)
“Society of the Query and the Googlization of Our Lives”
“The Googlization of Everything”
4/7 Group Projects: Facebook, Twitter,
“The Viral Me”
“Twitter and Long Form Thinking”
4/12 Bifo, Precarious Rhapsody, chapters 1-3
4/14 Bifo, Precarious Rhapsody, chapter 4-8
4/19 Group Projects: Wikileaks
“Contain This”
“Twelve Theses on Wikileaks”
4/21 No class. Papers due in my office at 5:00 on 4/22. I will not accept late papers or electronic submissions. (We pick the paper topics 5- 8 pages )
4/26 Nicolas Carr, The Shallows, pp. 1-57
4/28 Nicolas Carr, The Shallows, pp. 58-143
5/3 Nicolas Carr, The Shallows, pp. 144-end
Final Exam: Saturday, May 7 at 1:30.
Group/personal project presentations during exam period – said projects in place of written exam
Should blogs still be a major part of what we get graded on?
Personally- I don’t think they should have a major impact on final grades- everyone has struggled to find a way to make their blog important, and for the most part everyone has failed. Reading over the blogs it’s clear that few if any get pleasure from writing posts, and deep thought is arguably rare. This suggests a problem, not with the class, nor their capabilities, but instead with the medium. Blogging has proved an insufficient means for facilitating and gauging learning.
Perhaps this is because students feel like they are floating in the vastness of the internet’s ether- hardly even tied to a blogipelago. Maybe the requirements are too loose. I don’t know, but whatever it may be, we have shown that blogs are not a good way for the class to respond; therefore they should not be weighted heavily to judge our understanding and explorations of digital networks.
We should ask why blogging has failed us- How are blogs any different then handing in response papers? Even as I argue that blogging has not worked for our class, it has served a purpose, giving us a window into the problematic nature of evolving media and it’s (potential) impact. Blogs should be, at most, 5 percent of our final grade, and everyone should pass for participating in the experiment of blogging- so long as they are able to reflect on it, and prove they have taken something from it.
In the future human blogging or snap presentations where students are given 5- 10 minutes to reflect on the reading/ or bring to light something apropos to the whole physical class might be more effective then the blogs. This risks limiting conversation to inside the classroom, yet it may be more productive and create a better exchange of ideas then the blogs. Maybe there could be an open discussion section of every class and students are required to have blog like conversations; it could be at the end of class so students could continue the discussions once the period is over.
Furthermore, “Terminator II” and the PBS Frontline episode, “digital_ nation” should be incorporated in to the class.
The final self assessment paper should be limited to no more than 5 pages
Blogs will be evaluated starting Monday, May 9, at 12:00 (noon)
Substituting a final project for a final exam won't work--it's too late in the term for folks do something strong enough for this kind of culminating project (also, I tried this last time and 3-5 people didn't have the projects in before graduation). Also, my experience is that students need some kind of incentive to do the readings, particularly as we approach the end of the term.
ReplyDeleteI basically agree that the blog experiment has not been particularly successful--I've been puzzling over why not. It might make sense to weave the blog grade into a larger participation grade (no curve). Yet this has the potential to bring down the grade of folks who didn't do so well on the first exam and were counting on their blog grade. So this is something that needs deliberation.
Self-assessment: I'm willing to move it to 10 pages and 10 percent of the grade. Again, though, this kind of change advantages folks who did well on the midterm and first paper.
Just to make sure this is clear, though, there are no changes until everyone in the class has weighed in.
I think blogs/participation should be atleast 30% because it should be substantially weighted. I don't participate regularly in class, but always give my thoughts/reactions through blogging. In this case, I think this should count as participation because i'm giving my ideas/thoughts/reactions and people are commenting, so I get their thoughts, and when this happens I usually answer back. Also, I think the final paper should be 10 pages minimum, 15 pages maximum. I think 10 pages is adequate space to give your reasons why you deserve a certain grade, I think 15 pages and beyond will start to get repetitive.
ReplyDeleteI continued to be shocked at the paucity of exchange on this question. I think Abe's ideas here make a lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteWow, I expected this to be filled with comments this time around when I showed up 10> before class starts today... I agree with Abe's compromise and with the professor's assessment. I was happy with my grades on the paper and midterm, but I'd like to see if someone more mathematically-minded than myself could figure out the effects that it has on the grade distribution as we all stand right now. I am absolutely clicking the subscribe link after this and will be lobbying more forcefully on it later on, I suppose...
ReplyDeleteI commented on this post last night, but apparently it was deleted.
ReplyDeleteI do not think "Blogging has failed" because look at how we are sharing ideas outside of class. That was the goal. Achieved.
ReplyDeleteI do not understand how the existing grading system works let alone changing it.
ReplyDeleteI agree we need change. I just do not know to the extent the changes should be. Here are my thoughts... I think an in class written final is a terrible idea and that on top of the self assessment is just absurd. I think there is no way to make the exam work since the mid term honestly took everyone many days and even more sleepless nights for an entire week to complete. I think that needs fixing.
ReplyDeleteThoughts?
Actually, I think blogs/participation should stay at the 40% that it is now. If you have not noticed, our class is very discussion based. Additionally, the people who do not blog a lot engage in the class discussions we have and those who do not talk in class write a lot of blog posts expressing their thoughts. Whether not people participate in the discussion through their blogs, in the classroom, or both they still are participating; so why make it less of our grade, in any case I would make it the majority. As for the final paper, I agree with Ryan to make the paper a free write, meaning you write how much you feel would get your point across. However, only a fool would write a page that addresses why they deserve the grade they ask for, their contribution, what they learned, and how they changed since taking the beginning of the class. Of course there should be a limit as to how many pages one could write because I am sure there are some people in the class who can write for days and I doubt Professor Dean would want to read a 30 page paper saying you deserve an ‘A,’ when it could have been done in 6 pages. With this being said I believe the final paper should be 30% to 40% of our grade, I do not see why it should be any less especially since we are making a case for and about ourselves, it is not that hard. Furthermore, I am not sure we have a final exam. I could be wrong but I think our final exam is our final paper because there is no due date for the final paper.
ReplyDelete@Tim: I do not believe blogging failed our class, it may have failed you but I do not think it failed our class. I know people in the class (myself included) who use the blogs as a way to formulate their thoughts for class discussion the next day. You compare blogging to writing a response paper as if it is a bad thing. What is wrong with reflecting on what you have read? I find writing to be the best way to express one’s thoughts, so why suppress it? Also, response papers have a set minimum/maximum. With blogging, there is no minimum/maximum, you can write as much as you feel –something I feel a lot of people in our class fail to realize. You do not have to write 2000 word blog post, a paragraph clearly expressing your thoughts is just as good.