The bulk of this course is structured around the research questions you have been assigned. For the week of your presentation, the main readings the class will focus on will be the ones your group has selected. Ordinarily, groups will lead class on the Wednesday of their assigned week; my teaching on Monday and Friday will be organized around the particular issues the group has chosen to focus on and the readings they have been selected. I may assign a few supplementary readings, but they will be short—generally things that can be read in the course of a class session.
What You Have to Do (in Chronological Order)
1. Read and summarize for your group a work of recent criticism that relates to your topic
o Deadline: as group pressure dictates.
o Requirements: as I said in class, you probably don’t need to read the book cover-to-cover. Read the introduction, to get a feel for the argument as a whole. Use the table of contents to identify chapters that are particularly relevant for your research issue, and skim those. Check the index for further information about any topics, texts, or authors that you need to know more about for your presentation.
o Evaluation: everyone who e-mails me to let me know which book he or she has chosen and their progress in getting hold of it will get two points. Also, see the annotated bibliography requirement below.
2. Create with your group an annotated bibliography of secondary material related to your topic
o Deadline: Monday of the week BEFORE you are scheduled to present. So, say your group is assigned for Week 7, you must have your group’s annotated bibliography submitted by Monday of Week 6.
o Requirements: Your bibliography should include the following:
§ The books that individual members of the group selected in item 1.
§ Eight additional secondary sources, including at least one more monograph—that is, a scholarly book by a single author.
§ Articles only from peer-reviewed journals or essay collections.
§ No encyclopedias, dictionaries, or other reference works.
§ Citations to all 12 sources in MLA style .
§ 150-word annotations for eight of your entries. Your annotation should briefly summarize the main point of the text and offer a brief assessment of its interpretive argument (not its style, use of evidence, or clarity)
o Evaluation: 10 points (every member of the group gets the same grade. See the grading rubric on p. 6)
3. Meet with me to discuss your plans
o Deadline: This meeting should take place in the week before your presentation (if, for example, you are scheduled to present in Week 8, you should meet with me in week 6). Earlier is okay. Later is not.
o Requirements:
§ All group members do not need to be present—your group can fulfill this requirement by appointing representative to do this part.
§ The more work you have done towards selecting your primary sources and planning your class, the more useful this meeting will be for your preparation, but there are no specific expectations as to what you need to have prepared or cover.
o Evaluation: 3 points to each member of the group if this requirement is met. Exceptions: if your group makes an appointment with me outside of office hours and no one shows, the whole group loses the points. If you have told your group you will be present and you don’t show up, you will individually lose those points. If you are not able to meet with me because of error on my part (I don’t make it to office hours, or I miss/cancel our appointment), your group gets the points even though no meeting took place.
4. Identify and make available two readings related to your topic for the class to prepare and discuss.
o Deadline: The readings must be ready for the class on the Friday before your group is scheduled to present. So, if you are scheduled to present in Week 9, your readings must be ready by Friday of Week 8. If you are providing the class with PDFs of the readings, you must e-mail them to the class by 2pm on Friday. If you are assigning pages from the two books assigned for the class (Shandy or the Blackwell anthology) you must announce the relevant pages in class on Friday and e-mail your classmates before the start of class. If you are distributing hard copies of your readings, you must have them ready to hand out in class on Friday.
o Requirements:
§ You must have at least two different primary readings (primary = written in the later C18)
§ You can have more than two readings, so long as each reading is long enough to prompt fruitful and informed discussion and the total number of pages is not overwhelming.
§ One of those readings can be from the Blackwell anthology or Shandy or some other authoritative modern edition of a C18 work (feel free to ask me what makes an edition authoritative!)
§ The other reading must be from ECCO (details about what that is and how to use it forthcoming in the first assignment).
§ Assign enough text to convey an accurate and interesting view of your topic, but not more than you can reasonably expect your classmates to read and understand in preparation for two fifty-minute classes (only one of which you will be leading). Your own experience of reading unfamiliar C18 prose and poetry will probably give you a better sense of how many pages that means than any number I can name, particularly as the readings will vary considerably in their density and ease-of-use.
o Evaluation: 10 points to every member of the group. If your readings are not available at the start of class on Friday, everyone loses 2 points, and an additional 2 points for each additional day of delay. Your group will lose two points for a cluster of readings that is too long for your classmates to prepare effectively for discussion. Your group will lose 1 point for each PDF file that consists of a long text in its entirety rather than the particular excerpt that you expect the class to read. Your group will lose 2 points if the selections are too short to sustain 2 days of discussion.
5. Make one post to the blog with relevant background and context on the reading (one per group).
o Deadline: The blog post must be available to students by 8pm on the Sunday before your class presentation.
o Requirements:
· The blog post can be any length, and it can include as much or as little background information on your subject and readings as you think your classmates will find helpful.
· Feel free to include any graphics, videos, web links, or other multimedia features that you wish. Just be aware that any videos you plan to embed or link to need to be close-captioned first. As soon as you select (or come up with the idea of using) a video clip in your blog post, e-mail the link (along with the course number, my name, and the date by which you will need it) to Angella Anderson aanders2@illinois.edu, who is in charge of arranging for the closed captioning of classroom videos. Her office is pretty flexible about getting things turned around in a timely manner, but obviously the more lead time they have, the better. Web links and graphics (anything without an audio component) need no special treatment.
· You are welcome to respond to your classmate’s reflections on the blog in advance of your class meeting. It’s a good idea to read the responses as you prepare to lead class—it can give you ideas about how to direct discussion.
· Your blog post MUST pose at least one open-ended question about the readings you have assigned.
o Evaluation: 5 points to every member of the group. You will lose points for posting the blog after 8pm on Sunday (1 pt. plus 1 point for each day late), for failing to include a question (2 points), for including inaccurate information (1 point), or for posting a question that is unanswerably broad or boringly specific (1 point).
6. Hand in a lesson plan for leading class (one per group)
o Deadline: The lesson plan must be e-mailed to me as an attachment by 8pm on the Sunday before your class presentation (same deadline as the first blog post).
o Requirements:
· It must include (a) your goals (what do you want your classmates to know or have thought about by the end of your class?), (b) a brief outline of any factual background you plan to cover, (c) the questions you plan to ask, and (d) the way your group is dividing up the work for the unit.
· There are no specific guidelines for formatting your lesson plan. It’s up to you how and in what order you present the required information, but you should of course make it as clear and readable as possible.
o Evaluation: 5 points to every member of the group. You will lose points for submitting the lesson plan after 8pm on Sunday (1 pt. + 1 point for each additional day late), for failing to include one of the four required elements (1 point each), or for submitting a disorganized, poorly written, or error-ridden lesson plan (1 point)
7. Lead a class session devoted to the readings you have selected.
o Deadline: These student-led classes will ordinarily take place on the Wednesday of the week that you are scheduled to present, though there may be exceptions.
o Requirements:
· Make a good-faith effort to achieve the learning goals you stated in your lesson plan
· Keep your classmates engaged in learning the material for the length of the class period.
· Make effective use of the readings you assigned.
· If you plan to show a DVD clip as part of your presentation, it must be close-captioned. If you cannot locate a DVD that is already closed-captioned, the university will do the closed-captioning for you (see the instructions for the first blog post)/
o Evaluation: 15 points to every member of the group. See the grading rubric on the last page of this handout.
8. Post a follow-up question to the blog after you have led class.
o Deadline: 11:59 pm on the day you lead class.
o Requirements:
· Your post should draw on the specifics of the class you led, the things your classmates says, the conclusions that the class as a whole arrived at.
· Your post must pose a follow-up question for your classmates to answer for credit
o Evaluation: 5 points to all members of the group. You will lose points for posting the blog after 11:59 pm on the day you lead class (1 pt./day late), for failing to include a question (2 points), or for posting a question that is unanswerably broad or boringly specific (1 point)
9. Hand in a short (1-2 p.) assessment of your group’s work, including an analysis of how the unit fits in with other course readings and contributes to your classmates’ understanding of the later C18 (each member of the group hands in a separate self-assessment)
o Deadline: 5pm the day after you lead class.
o Requirements: your self-assessment must include
· Specifics about what you learned about the course material through your group presentation. Avoid generalities like “I learned a lot about the concept of polite sociability” or “I learned that the relationship between the polite sociablity and women’s writing is really complicated,” or “I learned that holding a class’s interest for 50 minutes is really hard.” Try instead to state specific and non-obvious concepts or ideas that you grasped or ways that class discussion and group interactions shaped your understanding of the material (e.g., “In the course of talking about Primary Source X that Group Member Y suggested, I realized that some women found the concept of polite sociability to be a source of empowerment, not oppression as I had thought.”).
· A candid account of what you think the strengths and weaknesses of your presentation were.
· A candid account of what you did and didn’t contribute to the group effort.
· Anything you think I should know about the degree to which your classmates pulled their weight in completing this requirement.
o Evaluation: Each member of the group gets evaluated separately for this one. You will lose points (1 – 3) for cursory or overly vague accounts that convey little information about your group’s learning process or what you individually leanred from the activity. You will lose points for submitting the self-assessment after 5pm on the day after you lead class (1 pt./day late), or for a poorly written or disorganized self-assessment (1 point).
10. Be an active and engaged contributor to your group’s planning and execution of the various requirements for this assignment.
o Deadline: none
o Requirements:
· Respond in a timely manner to communication from your group members.
· Show up when you say you’ll show up.
· Do the things you’ve agreed to do.
· Make sure that you are contributing your fair share to the group effort.
· Treat your fellow group members with respect and consideration.
o Evaluation: Each member of the group gets evaluated separately for this one. 5 points, unless two or more of the self-assessments from your group (or my own observations) indicate that your contributions to the group’s work fell short in some significant way.
Annotated Bibliography Grading Rubric (1 point for handing it in, 9 points as follows…)
Yes | Sort of | No | |
Are your citations formatted in MLA style | 3 pts: only a few errant punctuation marks or minor deviations | 2 points: there’s some inconsistency in the formatting—enough to make entries confusing | 1 pt.: a general ignorance of or disregard for the virtues of adhering to a clear and consistent citation style. |
Do you have the requisite number and kind of citations? | 3 pts: conforms to requirements | 2 pts: one or two sources may be poorly chosen, but on the whole there’s a good overview of relevant scholarship on your topic. | 1 pt.: a substantial number of sources fall short of expectations. |
Do your annotations reflect a thoughtful engagement with the ideas being advance by other scholars writing about your topic? | 3 pts: annotations isolate key ideas and areas of disagreement in the scholarship on your topic. | 2 pts.: annotations make it clear that you read the texts, but there’s little engagement with their substantive content. | 1 pt.: annotations are too vague and cursory to reflect state of schoarship on your issue. |
Grading Rubric for Leading Class (10 points for showing up; 5 additional points follows…)
Exceeds expectations (1 pts) | Meets expectations (.5 pts) | Does not meet expectations (0 pt.) | |
How well have you understood your readings at the surface level of meaning? | Well enough to nudge classmates towards deeper interpretive possibilities | Enough to convey an accurate surface knowledge of the text | Not well enough: the group’s failures of comprehension impede the class’s learning. |
Which interpretive challenges offered by your readings have you taken on in teaching it to your classmates? | Enough to prompt your classmates to read closely and delve beneath surface meanings of texts | Enough to draw classmates into the texts and elicit discussion based on readings | Not enough—there was little substantive text-based discussion of the readings |
How much thought have you given to finding ways to help your classmates connect with this material? | A great deal: well-thought-out questions (and follow-ups) and carefully selected passages to discuss helped your classmates engage with the material | Sufficient thought to advance discussion in a coherent manner through a thou sequence of questions | Not enough: poorly chosen questions and insufficient planning leads to gaps, pauses, and fruitless indirection |
How effectively and appropriately do you attempt to weave the discussion of this material into the broader issues and themes of the course?? | Discussion either clearly weaves this material into other issues, texts, and concepts that emerged in class OR it productively examined the ways the topic doesn’t seem to fit in to the big picture | A few connections emerge in the course of class discussion that helped link this material to the broader context of the course. | Discussion does not touch on connections between selected readings and larger course issues. |
How carefully do you listen to your classmates and incorporate their observations into your discussion of and understanding of the reading? | Very well: discussion is highly interactive, flexible, and responsive to the class’s interest/understanding | Pretty well: discussion proceeds smoothly and no one gets hurt. | Class mostly takes the form of lecture, busy work, or aimless book-clubby meanderings. |
