INLS 520 - Reading Responses

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Rationale

Context
- Students will know the objectives of each course session before they begin the readings.
- Before they begin the readings, students will know how they are expected to demonstrate meeting the objectives—how they will apply the session's topic(s) in their course projects.
Assumptions
- Students in the course will have a wide range of experience and interests.
- Students will be working on projects on different topics, and running into different challenges at different points.
- Many topics need to be covered—too many to cover in class discussion.
- Many of the topics are covered in the readings.
- If students have done the readings, they will already "have" much of the topical content.
- There is no need to spend class time on things people already gained from the readings.
- Students have no good reason to do the reading if they know the information will just be rehashed in class.
Decision
- Each class session will be driven by student responses to the readings for that session.
- If there are no responses to a session's readings, there will be little to do in class.
Intended results
- Students will be motivated to do the readings.
- Students will get more out of the readings because they have a practical context in which to apply the ideas.
- Because students know the objectives for each class, they will be able to read in a more focused and efficient manner.
- Students will more value out of class time.
- Less class time will be spent on fact-transfer. More class time will be available for higher level learning activities: discussion, evaluation, application, and synthesis.

How to do a reading response

With the objectives and related project activity for each session in mind, do the readings.
As you do the readings, note:
- Concepts you can't figure out
- Questions that arise in your mind
- Connections you made
- Ideas you thought were particularly relevant or interesting
- Things you disagreed with
- etc.
Think about these things as/after you complete the reading.
Write up a summary of your thoughts, observations, questions and/or confusions. Consider the following:
- In order to meet the session objectives and complete your project, what would it be most useful for you to ask/discuss in class?
- What do you think is important for everyone to think about?
- What would make for good class discussion?
- What would you like everyone to know is wrong. (At least partially so.)
- Did you make any connections/have any new ideas that might be useful to others?
- Did you think of interesting examples of the ideas?
This should be relatively brief. Shoot for less than 500 words (1 single spaced page).
- This is not a paper. Think of it more as a journal entry.
- Write informally, but not casually.
  - Guilford College's description of informal writing:
    "Informal writing" suggests writing that is casual, unimportant. The true situation is just the opposite. Informal writing may be the most important writing you do.
    Informal writing encourages independent thought, enlarges your capacity to make connections, makes you aware of yourself as a learner, increases your confidence by giving you a chance to get your ideas right with yourself before communicating them to others, affirms the value of your writing voice, and can serve as a springboard for formal assignments.
    
    Informal writing tends to be: exploratory, digressive, searching, speculative, talky, writer-based, uncorrected.
    
    Types of informal writing: impromptu writing in class, field notes, journal entries, initial drafts of papers, imaginative writing projects your professors will assign.
    
    (source)
- I will not be counting words or pages, but please don't write pages. Yes, for some people that is a problem (looks around shiftily).

The practical details

Submit reading responses for 18 of the reading responses (2/3 of the total for the semester).
- This is to allow room for "life-padding": the unexpected, the poorly timed, the overwhelming, etc.
- I hope this will not leave us with nothing to talk about for the last 6 class sessions. :-)
Submit reading responses on or before the eve of the relevant class session, before midnight.
Two options for submitting:
- Email
  - Send the text of your response in an email.
  - Do not send attachments. Just plain text in the body of an email.
  - Please include your name in the email if it isn't in your email headers.
- Link via email
  - If you would like to blog about your readings or post your responses on the wiki, feel free to do that.
  - If you do this, email me a link to the post.

What I'll do

Read the responses
Note themes, shared confusions, opposite views on an issue, particularly good connections or examples, etc.
Pull out quotes to use in class (I won't use your names)
If I have any lectur-y stuff planned for the session, I'll shape it accordingly

Evaluation

Reading responses are worth 34% of your grade.
Reading responses will be evaluated on the 0-3 scale described in the grading policy.
Rubric for evaluating reading response
Because of their nature, I cannot accept late reading responses (If it's a minute or two late I don't care. 15 minutes late becomes a problem.)
- This is part of why you get 6 freebies.

Note

We will not be able to cover everyone's questions or ideas in every class session. I will try to bring out common questions or themes.
I will also post my notes on themes, chosen quotes, etc. on the wiki, where they all can be viewed and discussed.
Individual students or groups may always add their own questions and discussion topics in the common area of the wiki.
Individual students or groups may also come to my office hours or make an appointment to see me about their questions.

Author: Kristina M. Spurgin <kristina at infomuse removeledot net>

Date: Last updated: 01/12/2009 at 13:09.

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INLS 520 - Reading Responses

Table of Contents

Rationale

How to do a reading response

The practical details

What I'll do

Evaluation

Note