Sending Essay Abstracts to Xerox

During Week 13, students wrote essay abstracts.

The abstracts from all three classes will be printed into one book.

We sent the request at the end of Week 13, Friday, April 30 to be ready for the symposium at the middle of Week 15, Wednesday, May 12.

Documents sent to Xerox, xerox@colum.edu

1. Xerox print request form, available in 33 E. Congress Pkwy, suite 300
2. Cover: We used the cover designed by Creative Services and have requested it in color
3. Abstracts: We divided the abstracts by class and used our cover pages (from the essay books) as dividers. We also included a Table of Contents at the front of the book. No page numbers this time.

We requested 45 copies. Again, we will let you know if this number is too large or too small.

Sending Essays to Xerox

We sent our students' essays to Xerox on Monday, April 26, the beginning of Week 13, so they can be ready for the symposium on Wednesday, May 12, the middle of Week 15.

Each class will have its own book.

Here are the order of documents sent to Xerox via email, xerox@colum.edu:

1. Xerox print request form, available in 33 E. Congress Pkwy, suite 300
2. Cover: This is our poster image designed by Noel Cunningham in Creative Services. He restructured the image to 8.5'' x 11'' and gave it a white border. We requested Xerox print the cover in color.
3. Text Part I: Includes a cover page, a short description of the semester written by the instructor, and a Table of Contents. (We handwrote numbers on the bottom of the pages so students could flip to their essays.) We made pdf documents using the Xerox machines in suite 300.
4. Text Part II: The stack of student papers was too large to make it one pdf document.

Number of copies: 1 copy for each student + 1 copy for a friend/family member for each student + a handful for instructors, Critical Encounters, First Year Writing / English Department.

Kate: 7 students: 20 copies

Kristen & Maureen: 12 students: 30 copies

We'll let you know if those numbers were too large or too small. Since we have the PDF files, we can always request more if necessary.

Student Essays in the Chronicle!

Pick up your Columbia Chronicle today and read my current student's essay in the Fact & Faith Column True/Believer:

Rachel Ovaska: "Faith in Me"

And another current student has an essay on the CE:F&F blog

Mike James: "Atheism & Morality"


I taught Fact & Faith last fall, and a few of my students essays have appeared this semester in the same column:

Sarah Blythe: "A Turn to Prayer"
Rebecca DeKing: "On Faith and Family" (on CE: F&F blog)
Riley Hughes: "'Go Ahead, Ask Away!'"


So exciting! Congrats, Students!

Final Essays Coming Together

I can hardly believe it.

Their final essays are coming together. My numbers have dwindled in class, but all the students who came yesterday (all but one who I sent to the lab) had solid second drafts with them.

Up until the first draft day last week, I wasn't sure how their essays would come into being. Even though we read sample student ethnographies, they did not seem super confident about their writing. I did three brainstorming days with them, where I gave them writing prompts about their topics. I think this is what helped them turn the corner (if I do say so myself).

I kept reminding them to go through their Cultural Autobiographies, Research Proposal, Field Notes, and class journal with a highlighter and mark all the passages that they thought would fit into their final essays. Anything they've written for this clcass can be used in the final essay; they do not have to rewrite everything and start from scratch.

One area of concern is the academic resources. We visited the library in Week 4 or 5, and I have reminded them repeatedly to work on finding sources. I had them do sample resource reviews for two of their sources in week 7 and 8. Yet, even yesterday while talking about second drafts, students were asking me about finding sources. I have a few students who concern me because they either did not do their Resource Review or the kind of BS'd their way through it and the sources they listed were not ones they would really use. I wonder how many students went back into the library and talked to the librarians about the difficulty with their sources. I do wish the library would spend less time in the "training" talking about types of sources and help students navigate the journal databases. I don't think most students go back to the journal databases after our library session.

I'm looking forward to seeing their final products and passing them on to Kate's class to review for symposium finalists. I'm also eager to read the essays from Kristen's class, since we taught the class so differently.

I'm getting quite excited about the symposium and hearing them read and talk about their final essays.

Maureen

Promotional Materials, proof sheet

To read our previous posts about working with Creative Services to develop promotional materials, click here and here, or just keep scrolling down.

I received an email from Noel Cunningham of Creative Services at the end of Week 9 with a proof of our poster and a proof sheet that we need to sign and return. The sheet asks if we're satisfied, if changes need to be made, and if we need to view a second proof if changes are necessary.

We have posters: 200 @ 11x17 and 2 @24x36. We also have 400 postcards. Check your mailboxes!

Creative Services did an excellent job!

Kate Dougherty's Week 9 & 10

I've just posted some comments to Kristen's posts and replied to a comment she posted on one of my posts.

Week 9:

Monday: It was the first day back from Spring Break so I needed to assess their progress (mostly internal) and make the remaining schedule and our due dates clear. I handed out calendars for April 2010 and May 2010 with the assignments written in their due dates. I think this helped students visualize the remaining weeks of the semester. On the Wednesday before break we'd discussed time management. They filled out weekly calendars -- wrote in the calendar the times they have class and work, time to transport, sleep, clean, eat, complete assignments, and socialize.

We also discussed their concerns for the essay and the holes or gaps they could identify in their research.

They had a dialogue due. For this assignment they create an informal dialogue that might occur if the authors of their sources were to have a conversation. I usually find this assignment quite successful -- they can really embody their sources' points of view.

Wednesday: Their Research Log 3 and Source Essay 3 were due on Wednesday. I usually have them briefly write up four sources they've found for each research log. And in their source essays, they explore one central idea or argument in one source and create a plan for how to use that source in their essay and what other sources it could lead them to.

I'd changed the length requirements for the polished Researched Discovery Essay, but I hadn't changed the source requirements. The research felt rushed this time, and I couldn't imagine them having time to find four more suitable sources, so for Research Log 3 they needed to find at least two sources that fill the gaps they'd identified in their research. And for their Source Essay 3, they wrote a detailed draft of an outline for their essays, including what ideas from each of their sources would support or help explain each idea or section of their essay.

I decided to require 6 sources instead of the usual 8 in the polished essay. I hope the research component of the essay feels complete. If not, the altered timeline to allow time to select speakers and prepare a speech might need rethinking.

Week 10:

Monday: Their first draft of the essay was due today: 7 pages and 3 sources. Many of the students pieced these 7 pages together from previous assignments. They are extremely rough. I find this is usually the case with the first draft, and I don't know if that's a necessity -- the messy piecing together of all the work they've accomplished thus far -- or if it's a waste of their time. Maybe I should schedule one Frankenstein draft before this first draft that asks them to piece together their previous assignments into an essay as best they can. Then I can require that the first draft be a smoothing and an adding to of this Frankenstein draft.

I've talked to some instructors who are having students complete polished essays throughout the semester, and the finished assignment is a smoothed compilation of these polished essays. How's that going? Does that seem like a better organization than what you've previously used, than what I'm currently using?

Wednesday: My class is extremely small this semester. I have only 9 students now; 3 have withdrawn for various reasons. The discussions I plan for the small groups end up happening with the entire class since we're so small, especially if anyone is absent. Students had written response letters after reading a classmate's first draft. They described their classmate's draft to the class and voiced praise and concerns. That opened up interesting brief discussions, and some of the students who hadn't read the draft (though they know about one another's essays pretty well) offered some ideas for their classmates.

We also looked back at the opening paragraphs of the essays/chapters we've read by published authors this semester. We discussed what's effective, what's ineffective, what they've learned an introduction should do, and what they like to read in an introduction. Drafts of two potential introductions are due the following class period.

Midterm--Where are we?

I feel comfortable with where the students are. We are using the pilgrimage model (the stages) as our writing model. I think this is in keeping with the Fact and Faith idea. This model let us spend a lot of time "leaving home" or situating ourselves with relation to our desires, preconceptions, and misconceptions of the inquiry subject. I am asking for about 3-5 pages of the completed essay that focus on this relationship to the text--a narrative inquiry form. Then we "gathered friends or met fellow travelers" by making online polls, doing class experiments, discussing our stereotypes and ideas; this is about 2-3 pages of methodology and "development of some public sentiment or general opinion." I am hoping they can overlay their own position with the general/public opinion and, finally, with the "educated" ideas they research. So, we've finished that and they should have approx. 7 pages of generated texts.

In preparation for the journey, they had to encounter doubt or an immediate obstacle. This obstacle was the inquiry thesis and its language. We used the OED and completed word charts, keyword games, and definitions within definitions. This was fantastic and playful! Allison started relating the "cuttable" body to harvesting and fruit. Theodore started seeing how C.S. Lewis manipulated readers by giving only three language options and how one option, lunatic, comes from the word luna and a legacy of moon worship. I think this was the part of the class that excited me most but took them awhile longer to see. I've been using student packets of material to demonstrate the associative links and why leaping like this is important, academic, and interesting.

They've also set out on the journey with clarification 1 and 2, and over break the interview. The interview, for a lot of them, was another obstacle. I've noticed that the clarifications were less complicated and messy, but only a few of them were really keeping the "playful" writing of the previous exercises. I think clarification assignments and in class explanations are a work in progress.

I've let them know how soon the due date is and it caused a little panic. Then I reminded them that they have 7 pages of generated text and integration of the 2 clarifications and the interview should lead them to 11ish pages. This calmed them down a bit.

We have midterm conferences after break. The interview is due at the time of conference, we'll go over drafts together, and then we'll workshop student drafts up until the 21st.

I know we have to--Kate and Maureen--discuss "selecting" processes for our student readers. Do we want it to be the same process? Different for each class?