[A] Assignment Week 3

Assignment 3: Based on what you’ve written and considered over the last two weeks, create a rough draft assignment sheet. Format it in a way that makes sense for you. Below are some guidelines to help you with drafting. Due Friday, 8/5.

1) Include a brief description of the assignment 

  • What are students making?
  • Will they create/edit an entire resources in one semester, or just a part of a resource?
  • What subject-specific topic does the assignment address?
  • What makes this assignment “open” (describe how this assignment can be re-used, revised, remixed etc.)?

2) Include guidelines and learning goals

  • What content or features of the resource-to-be-made/edited are essential?
  • What parts of the assignment do you want students to prioritize?
  • What are your responsibilities in this assignment and what are the students’? 

3) Include some (tentative) dates for when major milestones of the project need to be completed

8 thoughts on “[A] Assignment Week 3

  1. Nitza Milagros Escalera

    Assignment 3:
    1) Include a brief description of the assignment
    The students in the class will begin to create a glossary of terms that appear in the readings for weeks 1 through 4 of the fall semester.
    The terms on which students will focus are found in the readings for LLS 325 titled the LatinX Experience of Criminal Justice.

    During Weeks 1 through 4, students will read materials that address the following topics:
    • Getting to Know the LatinX, Latin American, Hispanic U.S. Community
    • An Overview of Socio-historic and contemporary issues of the LatinX experience with the United States (U.S.) Criminal Justice System.
    • LatinX Invisibility in the News, Movies, T.V., Internet and Data Gaps
    This project is the beginning of a course glossary that students in any LLS 325 will have available in subsequent semesters.

    2) Include guidelines and learning goals
    • What content or features of the resource-to-be-made/edited are essential?
    • What parts of the assignment do you want students to prioritize?
    • What are your responsibilities in this assignment and what are the students’?
    3) Include some (tentative) dates for when major milestones of the project need to be completed.

    Thursday, August 25, 2022 Students are provided a list of the terms they will work on. This list will also be posted on Blackboard.
    Students will also be provided a list of encyclopedias and dictionaries they can utilize to define the terms. This information will also be posted on Blackboard.
    Students will be randomly assigned to groups to work on this project.

    I teach 2 sections of LLS 325. The list of terms will be divided between these two sections. I will also take responsibility to define a number of the terms. Students and I will have access to the same google document where they will be able to
    post their work.

    September 6, 2022 First rough draft uploaded by student groups. Editing will continue throughout the semester.

    This assignment is open because it is the starting point for a glossary booklet that can be used by any student taking LLS 325. This first version of the glossary will be shared with other department faculty who teach LLS 325.

    Reply
    1. Michael Schoch (he/him/his) Post author

      Hi Nitza,

      Thanks for sharing this plan to create a glossary. I like how you’ve thought out what your role will be as a facilitator/instructor and how you’ll share the resulting work outside of the class. Also, your ideas to use google docs and assign students to groups randomly both seem like good ways to keep things straightforward and reliable.

      Reply
    2. Michael Lynch Salazar (He/Him)

      I’m totally going to use this for one of my classes where I used to assign flashcard vocabulary terms and nobody would ever make the 200 flashcards which they had all semester to make. Very creative! I think they will enjoy this much more.

      Reply
  2. Andrew Hernandez

    Question 1:

    For my class, ANT 315: Systems of Law, Justice and Injustice Across Cultures, students will be building toward co-creating a survey that evaluates their own philosophical orientations toward law. The purpose of this assignment is to address students’ own orientations toward the law in order to ground their thinking/positions at the beginning of the term. Ideally, this will help to situate them regarding the theoretical readings we will engage throughout the semester. At the beginning of the semester, I will provide them a list of statements. These statements include:

    Laws are made to help create order in society, and so they must be obeyed.

    All persons are equal under the law; whether rich or poor, they will receive the same treatment under the law.

    Each person who breaks a law must suffer the consequences with reasonable punishment.

    Morality cannot be legislated.

    It is sometimes justifiable to break a law.

    The best way to change an unjust law is through civil disobedience—to break the law.

    The bodies of all dead soldiers should be treated honorably, even those of enemies.

    Students will indicate if they strongly agree, agree, have no opinion, disagree, strongly disagree to these statements. Afterward, they will discuss their responses with a partner, justifying their opinions with examples, evidence and reasons. Upon engaging in this peer discussion, students would write a brief “My Philosophy of Law” statement. At the end of the semester, students would engage in the same activity (survey, discussion, written philosophy statement) and assess if their orientations toward law has changed as a result of diving into critical theoretical texts about the law.

    At the end of the semester, students will have the opportunity to evaluate the statements in the survey and suggest revisions, additions and/or deletions for future semesters so that new students can make the best use of the survey and critical self-reflection.

    Question 2:

    The most essential component of this assignment (and thus, the parts students will prioritize initially) are the survey statements themselves. As listed above, I have drafted the initial statements. But, these are also the statements that students will edit/remix to best help future fellow students to evaluate and self-reflect upon their own philosophies of law. It will be my responsibility to help students to self-reflect both on the survey statements themselves, as well as the subsequent discussion and “My Philosophy of Law” statements. I anticipate that some students my not have much experience with such critical self-reflection, so I will need to organize some supportive, scaffolded questions to guide their thinking such that they will eventually be able to craft a philosophy statement. Later in the semester, then, I would also have responsibility toward guiding students toward evaluating the survey statements themselves in order to edit/remix them to best refine them moving forward.

    Question 3:

    My goal would be to introduce this survey, discussion and philosophy statement at the beginning of the Fall 2022 semester. Given this, it would already be created for students to do it again at the end of the semester. At the end of this first semester of introducing the assignment, I would also add a section for students to report back on the survey itself, with the opportunity to edit, add to or delete statements. Then, I would take those edits to revise the assignment for the following semester (Spring 2023).

    Reply
    1. Michael Schoch (he/him/his) Post author

      Hi Andrew,

      What a cool idea. I’m curious if you saw an example like this, or if you are riffing/making one of your own. I really like how you start with survey questions, which are simultaneously “simple” yet very loaded and complex. Having students reflect on their answers also seems like a great way to prepare them for the writing process, instead of having them write cold, or try to create an outline. I hope it goes well and would be so curious to see what some of these responses turn into!

      Reply
  3. Michael Lynch Salazar (He/Him)

    What are students making? The students will be making weekly Instagram memes for a class Instagram page for our intro to economics course. The memes will involve artwork, research for a witty quote or phrase and then will be uploaded to Blackboard before being selected and approved to be uploaded by me to the class Instagram page for the world to see.

    Will they create/edit an entire resources in one semester, or just a part of a resource? They will use resources (articles and the textbook) to gather the information in order to build the weekly meme images, but the artwork will be up to them to come up with!

    What subject-specific topic does the assignment address? They can relate their memes to anything we cover in class (current event articles, textbook chapters, lecture notes) and must cover the weekly themes addressed in class.

    What makes this assignment “open” (describe how this assignment can be re-used, revised, remixed etc.)? Anyone can come to the Instagram page, we will use the hashtag #economics for the world to see the page and thus gain a wide audience. Only I will have access to the account since the students will upload their memes to Blackboard, but the Instagram account will be re-used semester after semester and we will build upon the material until there are thousands and thousands of memes which hopefully will go viral after obtaining a wide audience.

    What content or features of the resource-to-be-made/edited are essential? An instagram account, at least one artistic student per group since graphic design is not an area I expect everyone to excel in, and they will be graded on content, no so much the artwork.

    What parts of the assignment do you want students to prioritize? I want my students to prioritize doing the research in order to produce the meme. Worry more about making a witty phrase or joke about inflation, for example, and less about a silly picture of Karl Marx or Adam Smith.

    What are your responsibilities in this assignment and what are the students’? All I have to do is review the weekly memes submitted to Blackboard in order to upload them onto the Instagram page. Some editing on their part may be needed such as spelling errors or perhaps inappropriate artwork which may need changed, but other than that, it’s a completion grade for them and easy grading for me!

    Reply
    1. Bruce Shenitz (he/him/his)

      Michael,

      Very intriguing assignment–you gave a preview of it when I dropped in on your breakout room last week. I particularly like the fact that you’ll emphasize that students will be graded on their research and thought rather than artwork (speaking as someone who’s pretty weak in that area). I know we spoke a bit about student privacy concerns re: instagram, and I realize that since it’s a class instagram site that’s not necessarily an issue. I think the only issue would be around attaching student names to the work when you post it on Instagram; you can just obtain a simple permission statement from them, and offer the option to leave their name off the IG post.

      Reply

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