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Blog Entries & Community Analysis


Purpose

There are three primary purposes for the blog entry assignment:

• First, to supplement the assigned reading for the course by giving the individual students an opportunity to do research on the topic(s) that you will be focused on for the rest of the course projects. Therefore, you may choose to focus your choices around a single, relatively narrow topic, or you may choose to focus on several topics to give yourself a sense of the field.
• Second, this is a writing in the disciplines exercise in which you will be given some generic expectations and parameters to follow. By following these guidelines you are practicing the production of scholarship within the discourse community of composition studies
• Third, this is a writing to learn exercise in which the process of writing up the blog entry helps you understand the content and how to articulate this understanding to the discourse community. The instructor's feedback will help you with this goal

Instructions–Choosing Articles

For each entry, you will want to find one academic, refereed article or chapter about a college composition-related topic that you plan to be the focus of your course projects. There are many topics related to college composition; use part of your entry to justify why the article fits with this course.

You will find a total of five articles for five different submission dates (see below)–one each assigned week. These texts...

• should be based upon issues that you are interested in learning more about
• should be based upon ideas that you want to both support and refute
• cannot be text assigned for the class
• cannot be texts your peers have already discussed in a Blog Entry for this class

Refereed scholarship has been judged worthy of publication by other experts in fields related to composition studies. Consult the resource page for a list of related journals; additionally consult various edited collections.

Other texts that qualify include...

• academic journal articles
• chapters from an edited collection
• chapters from an academic monographs (no more than two chapters per book)

Texts that do not qualify include...

• most popular publications, such as certain magazines and web pages (consult instructor)
• newsletters
• book reviews
• academics' websites

This list, of course, is not exhaustive. If you have any questions whether an article or chapter qualifies, consult the instructor. Entries for texts that do not qualify will not get credit.

Also you are discouraged from pulling chapters from a "how-to" text. While some of these are written by academics and published by academic presses, they do better at explaining what to do, than why to do it. You will need the latter to help justify your practices for the syllabus rationale.

Variations from these parameters are acceptable, but consult the instructor first.

Instructions-Entry Writing

For each blog entry, you will want to...

• Compose a bibliographic citation for the article you have read. You should use MLA or APA formatting; be consistent.
• Under each citation write a 300-500 word review of one article. For each entry...
  
  • identify the author's argument (sometimes it will be explicit; other times it will be inferred)
  • briefly summarize the main points that the author makes to support the argument
  • briefly review the article: Would you recommend this article to your peers or scholars in the field? Why or why not? Or under what circumstances would you make the recommendation? (You are encouraged to use the first-person singular pronoun to distinguish your voice from the author(s) you are reviewing)

While these three points need to be addressed, this list does not define the order in which these points need to be presented or preclude you from discussing other important issues.

After you compose your entry send an email to the instructor directing him to your post by placing the URL in the body of a message.

Blog Summary

The fourth reason for the blogs is to create a resource that all of the students in this class can use. Therefore you are encouraged to take advantage of the program's affordances by reading your peers' entries and using the comment feature to engage them in discussion.

To encourage this discouse, you will placed in a group with four other people (as deginated by the color coding below). After the submission of the final entry, you will be required to write a 1000 word blog entry in which you articulate your philosophy about writing instruction. To support your argument, you will either align yourself with or challenge scholars referenced in your and/or your peer group's blog entries. Use the list below to follow your peer group's blog.

Criteria–Blog Entries

Logistics for entries:

• between 300-500 words per entry; this is an exercise in writing brief, yet detailed texts
• single spaced

• The five submission deadlines for the annotated bibliography are...

  • September 10, 2012
  • September 17 , 2012
  • September 24, 2012
  • October 1, 2012
  • October 15, 2012
• 50 points

After you compose your first entry send an email to the instructor directing him to your post by placing the URL in the body of a message. You do not need to send a message for subsequent submissions.

• The Blog Entry assignment will cumulatively be worth 50 points. All students will start with 40 points and your grade will be adjusted according to the evaluation of each of the five entries. Each entry will be graded using the following scale...

  check (or 0) = You did the work satisfactorily and on time. If it is an earlier entry, use the instructor's comments to guide how you compose future entries

  +1, +2= You demonstrated various degrees of engagement with the ideas and you turned it in on time. Use features that the instructor liked as a model for future entries

  –1, -2= Your work demonstrates a misunderstanding of the assignment or minimal effort, shows that you do not understand what an academic text entails, or was not turned in on time.

  - 4 = No submission

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...

• a sense of audience–do you provide enough information and detail about the article that your audience of peers gets a clear sense of the article's content? Likewise do you only highlight important information?
• an informed understanding and discussion of composition studies, as well as other topics the text covers
• do you provide a substantiated opinion of the text?
• a professional persona and an understanding of the discourse community
• appropriate use of conventions, including MLA or APA citation formatting

Criteria–Blog Summary

Logistics for entries:

• 1000 word blog entry
• posted on October 22, 2012
• 50 points

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...

• a sense of audience–do you clearly articulate your position and provide enough information from the supporting scholarship? Likewise do you only highlight important information?
• do you adequately support your argument and engage the field?
• an informed understanding and discussion of composition studies through your use of course readings, the readings you have done for the blog entries, the readings your peer group has done for their peer readings
• a professional persona and an understanding of the discourse community
• appropriate use of conventions, including MLA or APA citation formatting