Tracy+Guild


 * Tracy Guild: Structured Discussion for Online Psych 1 Class **// (I welcome edits/feedback/suggestions from my classmates.) //
 * Task: ** Participate in Discussion Topic Related to 1 of 4 Research Paper Topics Chosen
 * Objective:** To prepare students for writing a research paper by encouraging them to think critically about their topic as well as to support each other through the research process and to stay on track with their timeline.
 * Method:** Asynchronous

Read the 4 topics listed in Assignment 1, Research Paper Part 1, and select one of these topics. Email your instructor by the end of Sunday Week 1 with your topic selection. You will be divided into groups based on your choice of research paper topic. You are required to post 3 times per week, one initial post and 2 responses to your peer’s postings each week. Write a discussion post about your initial thoughts and opinions about the topic you selected for your research paper. Include your reasoning for selecting this topic as well as your initial ideas about what you will look for in your research. Write a discussion post about your research for this topic. How did you find your sources? Are you happy with what you found? Did anything surprise you? Will you be looking for more? Do have any questions about the research process? How do your original thoughts/ideas/opinions tie into the information you found from your research sources? How does all this relate to what we are learning in this class?
 * Instructions:**
 * Week 1: Initial Thoughts and Opinions**
 * Week 2: Research Findings**
 * Week 3: Tying it all Together**
 * Additional notes:** You will be graded on the quality of your posts as well as the quality of your response to group member’s posts. This will account for a significant portion of your grade.

Critique of Tracy Guild's Online Assignment by Cindy Reading Cindy/Tracy 1. Does the activity consist of more than just questions and answers? Yes. On reading the instructions, the students might think it is merely a question and answer activity, but my experience is that doing an “initial thoughts and opinions” activity really sets the stage for some deeply critical thinking. In my English 1A class this semester I had assigned an “observation” essay for the first essay: the students were to observe something culturally significant and then write a four page paper on it. Before they did the initial observation, I had them write a journal entry in class about what they expected to observe, what they thought they would learn, how they planned to keep notes, etc. As the students were writing these journals in class, I literally saw their faces lighting up as they realized they were setting the stage for some critical thinking. Our discussion after this one little journal was one of the best class discussions I’ve ever had! 2. Is it content-focused? Yes. I’m assuming the topics are clearly outlined in the “Assignment 1” referenced (they are not outlined here). 3. Does it require learners to respond to each other and build on one another’s thoughts? Yes. I think your questions four Week 2 are great…students might be confused about what to write at this point, but you make it absolutely clear what they are to be thinking about/discussing. 4. Does it require team members to demonstrate critical thinking? Yes. Good critical thinking practices at each stage of the assignment. 5. Is the team required to produce a synthesized response or end product? Yes/No. Not a “product” at the end, but I think the conglomerate of postings is the synthesis. 6. Are team members held individually accountable for their contributions to the discussion or project? Yes. I know you borrowed this idea from p. 72 in Conrad (I bookmarked this page, too!). On the example on this page, the authors included grading criteria that is more specific than yours…you might consider implementing something like that. Also, if you outlined the research paper on a separate document, you should probably make sure that you reference this aspect of the assignment on that document as well. I try to be as explicit as possible at every juncture of every assignment with my students because inevitably somebody “didn’t know they were supposed to do that part.” Overall, GREAT assignment and one I would incorporate into an English class.

Critique of Tracy Guild's online assignment by Catherine Hendrickson

I love your assignment, and it is clear that you put a great deal of thought into the progression. Speaking as a librarian, I have found that frequently when students reach the "Week Two" part of your assignment they have a bit of difficulty with narrowing and/or broadening their topic. You might suggest to them that when "brain-freeze" suddently hits them, that they examine the positive and negative influences of politics, religion, economics, and/or sex (gender) on their topic. I have found through the years that almost every research topic has aspects of these influences. In addition, encouraging your students to critically research both sides of whatever topic they choose will not only help them find more references, but the end result will be more robust.

Tracy,

What’s great about this activity is it addresses something that you have already stated is a challenge in your course—that you have so much content to cover. In instances like that, you can split up the “coverage” in the way you have done here by having groups process the readings and analysis in a “jigsaw” way (not all students have the same set of information). You have added a twist by providing a means for the groups to leverage one another’s knowledge and development of their own project through this collaboration.

The one element I would have you think about is how you leverage the knowledge development of each of these 4 topics among all of the students. I know they have a research paper, but you probably wouldn’t/couldn’t expect students to fully read one anothers’ papers. But you could have one of the following options (or others that you might think of):

· Each week each group cobbles one significant sentence that summarizes the most important aspect that they explored on the topic to the “home” page for this wiki project. You would have space for each of the 4 topics on this page.

· Each week each student writes one key sentence to contribute to this page

· At the end of the term, when the papers are due, students each write a 4-sntence abstract and post (I don’t like this one as much because it’s not as useful for the students’ learning process to get this at the end)

· Other ideas?

LeeAnn