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Midterm Reflection - Paul

Page history last edited by pmassman@... 15 years ago

 

Section I

 
 

Please read the description of the course goals as they are listed on the course website. Do you feel we are proceeding towards these goals? What is so far proving most useful? What would you change, and why? I do not think we are reaching our goals on time, I think we are behind where we should be at this point. What is most useful to me is the peer reviews and the way we break down our writing examples in class.

 

What are you learning in class? What more do you think you could learn in class? How can class be structured to help you learn what matters to you?

I am learning how to use technology to help in my writing process and way of thinking. There is a lot more that can be learned in class - for me a greater breakdown of our unit writing assignments, an example showing where we should be heading when we write our papers at home. A more structured class schedule - make sure that when we read something for class we have time to go over it in class - spend so much time on the things that we are going to cover - a half hour for blogs, a half hour for our reading assignments, etc... Break the time down so that more things are getting covered.

 

How do you define your responsibilities to this class? How are you living up to those responsibilities? What are your greatest contributions to class? What can you improve? Each of us as students have responsibilities to the class that we should be getting done prior to the next class. We are working together so we can help each other become better writers and reach our established goals. I dont think I have lived up to my attendance responsibilities as well as I should have - I am to blame for it - no excuses. I think the most challenging yet rewarding contributions to class have been the peer grading issues. None of us wanted to go through someone's paper and tear it apart - but I think that we need to explore this a little more and really go through a paper in class to establish HOW we should be doing this. The last time we graded each other's papers we just read them and and gave shallow responses - I didn't know exactly what I should be looking for when I graded and I was guilty of giving shallow responses with a good grades - not exactly what I should have done maybe.

 

How do you define ShareRiff's responsibilities as teacher of this class? Is ShareRiff fulfilling those responsibilities? What more or different can he do to help you fulfill the work of this class? ShareRiff's responsibilities are to teach us how to become better writers and to help us reach the goals that are set forth on the syllabus. I think that the concept of letting people work at our own pace is great - just not practical. I am guilty of not getting assignments in on time because we haven't had definite due dates, that's my fault not ShareRiff's though. I think he is fulfilling those responsibilities but I also think that a more defined course structure would be helpful. Have all the assignments that are due posted ahead of time, whatever was discussed in class could be put on the wiki in a short briefing about how the class went and what has changed in the assignments for the week. Deadlines are being put out now to make sure that we are all getting on the same page - that's a good start.  

 

What more or different can ShareRiff do to help you understand the work he is asking you to do? Maybe go over a simple/basic examples of the direction our writing should be going towards. Example: here is a causal paper that is not very well written and here is an example of a polished, well-written paper, something that we can look at and see the differences in.

 

What suggestions do you have for how we can improve class, to help you learn more, and enjoy the class and the learning more? (you can bullet your list for easier reading)

  • More structured class time: go over certain things for a short period of time and then move on to the next adventure.
  • Having deadlines for what is due each week
  • Explaination of what is expected and due the following week

 

 

 

 

 

Section II

Again, no right/wrong answers, here. Just think through what you've done, and make a note of what you'd like to focus on for the rest of the semester. Think of this exercise as an active and honest engagement with your own writing processes and goals.

Section II of your reflection must include the following 2 elements:

 

1. Graphical representation of your writing/composing process: you can scan in a drawing, you can upload or link to a photograph or film clip, you can use software to design a graph or flowchart....have fun.

1. Think of a topic

4. Submit for review - peer reviews 7. Formulate more ideas and Continue to develop the paper into a more thorough and rich paper 
2. Gather information and formulate ideas on the topic 5. Think about the peer reviews as a guideline - if you agree with them use them, if not - think where you want the paper to go now 8. Write the final draft using all of the steps above to create a polished,well defined, and well researched paper
3. Write a rough draft 6. Research more avenues or ways the paper could go - gather further information

 

2. A reflective cover letter that addresses how you are meeting the following student learning outcomes completed to date:

 

     Overall, I think that I have been hit and miss when it comes to meeting the learning outcomes that should be completed by now. I have not been in a writing class for a number of years and the most that I have written for my prior jobs were memos, supply lists,  and work orders. So I haven't really had a need to write major papers over the past few years and being an "older student" who has pretty much forgotten most of what I had learned over the years, writing these papers has been pretty difficult to accomplish for me. However, since we have been writing the past two units, I have learned and continue learning a lot about expository writing and how the way we write is just as important, if not more important than the message we are putting out there. I have always been a traditional student, come to class, get a syllabus, start writing a paper with a pen and some paper (rough draft), have the teacher grade it and review it, then rewrite it into a final draft. So this wiki thing is not exactly what I am used to, but it does open up a paper for far greater expansion and explanation. By incorporating multimedia into our papers we can expand our arguments and by bringing these aspects in to help us to make the argument stronger we make our arguments more believable, more real. Other people are also agreeing with what we are writing about- that can have a big affect on making a weak argument seem stronger, more reliable I guess. I plan on trying to incorporate more multimedia into my causal arguement. Our peer reviews, in-class breakdowns of some of our writing, and overall feedback helps me to better my research efforts and to understand what may be needed to create a better paper overall.  

 

     Learning to write using the 4 primary modes of evaluation is something different for me. I have taken writing classes in the past but don't remember much detail about these primary modes of evaluation ever being thoroughly explained. It is easy to see by reading my first unit that I wasn't in tune with the 4 modes. In fact I didn't even become aware of them until after the rough draft process. What I learned from that unit is to always consider the audience and write the paper for them. Meaning from start to finish think of your audience and what will keep them focused on what you are writing and your paper. The voice and tone of the paper is critical in keeping the audience interested and keeping them on track with what the paper is about - it helps to either get them behind your idea or pushes them away from it.

 

     As far as critical thinking goes, I have discovered that trying to create a plausible and believable arguement takes a lot of this type of thinking. By picking a topic that required me to do a lot of research and then analyze that research and create a paper that would support the topic throughout the entire draft requires a lot of critical thinking. What to leave out, what to support, how does all of the supporting topics flow in the paper, is it easy to read, is my main point coming across easily, does my thesis keep being supported in the paper, is the purpose clear and concise, is the paper written for my audience?  These are some of the questions that I think about when writing my paper. I think that for any paper to be taken seriously, the writer has to be somewhat critical and precise about the material and what they are trying to get across to others. I think that by writing these papers I am becoming a more critical reader because I find myself reading things and taking them apart in my mind trying to examine what is being said more closely. I guess trying to figure out where the writing is trying to say, plus what type of style the writer is using to write the piece. 

 

     The composing process is something that I need to work harder on. While I pick some pretty controversial topics, it is the putting those ideas together in a neat little paper that gets tricky for me. One of the things I try to do is compile as much info as I can and then start going through and arranging it to support my topic, I try to develop ideas out of all this info that will support my paper as well as inform my audience of the potential dangers or the potential benefits of my topic. By far the best thing that has been the most helpful has been the peer reviews. They have often helped by giving another look at my papers and saying: what about this, is this for everyone or just a few, etc... It gives you a different direction you may not have thought about, at least thats how it is for me. I have yet to incorporate graphics, visual, or digital images into my paper but I am looking into putting something like that into my causal paper, it can sometimes give a stronger arguement for the paper because someone other than yourself is pushing the same topic around. One of the major habits I am starting to develop is to be more flexible and less rigid when it comes to writing and revising my papers. It has helped me to take in the constructive criticism and research, write, and revise my papers into something stronger and better.  

     

     Conventions and writing technologies have been fairly easy to deal with. All of my writing on the wiki has some grammatical or sentence-level problems. One of the good things about peer reviews is that they usually bring these out to my attention. Truthfully, before this class, technology was simply used as a research tool, always providing the information but not much else. With this class, technology is the writing medium, meaning that everything we write we post to the wiki, its reviewed, revised, and rewritten all while being inside the wiki. That is completely new to me. The internet and the wiki have become major sources for writing better papers and for opening a whole new way of doing what used to be done with pen and paper. Today we can log on, do research, write, post, and get feedback from many different sources. It is amazing to me how quickly technology can change how we do things. One of the things I would like to still improve and learn more about over the rest of the semester are using these 4 modes of evaluation to continue writing better and better papers. I would like to be able to leave the course knowing that whatever I may compose in the future, I will always remember these 4 techniques and use them throughout the rest of my life.

 

 

 

 

 

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