betajames

If I use Twitter that is in any way detrimental, it probably concerns tweets like this:

Twitter allows for the quick thought and the half-formed idea and I take advantage of this. Perhaps I even fool myself a bit into thinking I've performed scholarship of some kind. Rare is the occasion, though, in which I revisit past tweets deserving of elaboration elsewhere.

As I continue to build and cultivate this particular online space, I want revisiting to be more frequent. Hell, I'll even take requests. So, if you follow me on Twitter (or Google+, I guess) and I posted something you questioned or wanted to see more of, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Of course, writing this quick entry is a rather cheap way of delaying the inevitable, but I hope I'll be forgiven come next week.

Among the ideas behind assignments like Mashup Scholarship and Pop Up Scholarship are that students need lots of practice writing and that they need to perform this practice in different ways. By explaining why and reflecting on how they perform academic writing instead of just producing 4-5 essays over 16 weeks, I like to think that more is happening here. The performance, i.e., the essay, is but one way of showing proficiency. The ability to reflect on that performance before, during, and after is just as important.

Such assignments also challenge how we should conduct ourselves in relation to academic writing. We need not be serious as a heart attack when discussing particulars of the kinds of writing students will be expected to do in college. There is no reverence in Pop Up Scholarship, given how much I encourage students to approach the assignment in much the way Pop Up Video did its own subject matter, i.e., with an affable, critical, knowledgeable, and playful edge. Furthermore, Mashup Scholarship invites students to do what other writing instructors may balk at.

However, both assignments focus on somewhat specific aspects of writing, including audience, grammar and syntax, organization, and source materials. Neither account much for argument or idea development, though, focusing and reflecting instead on the end result over whatever process produced it. This is not to say that my first-year writing courses are bereft of discussion concerning argument, idea development, or writing processes, only that I haven't devised a clear assignment addressing them. I think I might have something for my Fall 2011 class that does, though.

During my first year at UM-Flint, I had the privilege of working with a fourth-year student on an independent study project about comic-book writing. The student's semester-end project was a 25-page script of an origin story for a new superhero. Helping the student get to that point was an earlier assignment in which he reverse-engineered Dennis O'Neil's Batman: Birth of the Demon, breaking it down into constituent parts for further examination, seeing how the frames, panels, and pages fit together, and where O'Neil likely began.

A recent column on plagiarism got me thinking about reverse-engineering again. Even if a student were to reverse-engineer a plagiarized essay, they will undoubtedly still learn something worthwhile in the process, yes? Both Mashup and Pop Up Scholarship as well as some of the required reading in my first-year courses lean toward the idea of reverse engineering. This is something I want to explore more with students. So, similar to Mashup Scholarship in that I ask students to do something they and/or other professors may have reservations about, reverse-engineering an essay asks students to fill in the steps that led to final publication.

I'm still working on the specifics of the assignment, but here's some starting language:

Choose one of the longform articles below or submit another for approval. In an entry this week, provide context for and a summary of your chosen article. That is, note the author, the publication in which the article appears and when, etc. It's pretty much impossible to reverse-engineer an essay you haven't read.

Using either the sample steps provided below or your own identified process, reverse-engineer your chosen article. Over the next two weeks, we will move from revised drafts to shitty drafts to outlines to brainstorming to initial curiosity/perplexity. In other words, we will work backwards until we have reached a satisfactory starting point for your chosen article.

 

I welcome any/all feedback on this. Do you see particular use in devising such an assignment?

I read when I should be writing. I'm often more interested in the ideas of others than my own. Most days, my Twitter profile features many more links to readings than my own original content. The same can be observed of early entries in this space. I posted snippets of articles I deemed worth the time of any visitors here. I even started a feature of sorts called "What You Might Have Missed," shortened to #wymhm for easier archiving and searching both here and on Twitter.

Given the relative wealth of news and information available online as well as the time of day I shared some of that wealth, I thought it worthwhile to compile elsewhere what I offered. This lasted for a while, at least until I read one too many general, passive-aggressive tweets about blogs lacking original content. I gave in to those arguments and stopped #wymhm altogether.

However, I've received the occasional inquiry about bringing #wymhm back. Not everyone keeps the morning online schedule I do, and I think one of the benefits of curation is that it allows us to come to links more on our own time. We don't have to keep such an attentive eye to those we follow online if we know links will be suggested again elsewhere. We don't have to be as concerned with answering in the affirmative to the question posed in the video above. 

The video also speaks to the absurd demand we place upon ourselves and others, how we can become blind to the most practical reading we should be doing, how an awareness of what's happening in the world in terms of events and ideas often isn't as important as reading what will allow us to cross the street and still exist.

But reading isn't just about keeping up with current events and new/old ideas. And curation isn't about posting links on a blog in lieu of original content. Both are important because they allow for better, deeper reflection on the part of the reader/curator. For this reason, not everything I post to Twitter will be part of future entries here, only those items of some persistent importance.

This is because I was privileged to witness a recent back-n-forth online that had conversants bemoaning the lack of worthwhile news about technology. Not much reported today will probably be important or relevant tomorrow, much less a week from now, they agreed. So, my focus for these specific entries will be on sharing those more "timeless" pieces.  

This isn't to write that everything here will be serious, though. After all, the title I gave this space is "Against Multiphrenia," which means that I try to work contrary to Kenneth Gergen's idea of technologies that increase social contact also draw us in multiple and conflicting directions. In other words, a lolcat or two may sometimes be part of an entry or three.

Besides, originality is overrated anyway. The creativity and originality featured via such entries will be in how I contextualize and justify what I share. Articles and items can speak for themselves in their own spaces; that's not what will happen here.

So, #wymhm is now #dyr. I plan to do this on Tuesdays and Thursdays to account for my fall teaching schedule as well as time sufficient for reflecting on what should be allocated. As mentioned in yesterday's announcement, I look forward to sharing with you.

Announcements are funny things. In the time taken to announce something, we could often spend our time better, perhaps devoting ourselves to whatever we happen to be announcing. As a writing teacher, I have an acute awareness of this, often crafting entries that do little more than announce new course materials or the next assignment when I could/should be reading current course materials or assessing old assignments. 

Announcements serve a function, though, given variance in attention and value. We appreciate the occasional heads up on things deemed important. This is what announcements are and do. This is important to me, they say. I want you to be aware of this, to know this, to be prepared for it.

Beyond the handful of invitations we sent, M and I didn't announce our wedding. On a formal basis, this wasn't supposed to happen until after the event anyway, but even on an informal basis there were many we didn't tell. I kept quiet about it on Twitter and in my summer course. When asked why I wouldn't be providing an update on the course project until the last week of July, I only replied that I would be too busy.

The lack of a formal announcement until after the wedding produced a customary amount of congratulatory cards and notes, including a quaint $10 check from M's great aunt. The lack of an informal announcement online produced a similar influx of congratulatory remarks, including a "sweet zombie jesus!" from Ethan Watrall, which remains a favorite exclamation of mine. Some were bewildered, too, thinking they had overlooked a previous announcement. Such a mixture of confusion and surprise occurs when something isn't announced.

Announcements signal intent, too. This is what happened, they say. This is happening, is about to happen, will happen. As the title of this entry implies, I want to announce something about this space: There will be more here more often. I will be resurrecting a past feature or two. I will be writing more focused pieces about my fall courses, my interests scholarly and otherwise. In other words, stuff's gonna be happening here on a more regular basis. Any confusion or surprise resulting from this or that will be because of this or that, not because I didn't announce it first. You've been warned, dear reader, and I look forward to sharing with you.

I’m big on shitty first drafts and writing-to-learn activities. In my view, shitty first drafts are one of the goals of this #560WR collaborative authoring project, if only so that we have something tangible to work with should we decide to go beyond semester’s end. Something tangible sits now on my desk, a hard-copy draft of each of the seven chapters for the Book. 

It’s quite clear to me that all students are quite capable in introducing and integrating secondary source material. That all were able to draw and apply so much from the research pool is a clear, positive aspect of the project overall. The wealth of block quotes and summary provided in these drafts, though, are unnecessary for a Book and instead give the appearance of a lengthy literature review. Furthermore, when aiming for a Book as the end product, I think there needs to be integration and uniformity in the content produced. There can’t be sole reliance on writers writing independently of each other followed by slapping together their 10-page offerings with the expectation it will all work.

Perhaps JS was right all along to suggest something other than a Book (SOTAB) during Week 2. That’s not to imply we’d get away with doing less via a group blog or a wiki, only that maybe we’d be better served by SOTAB. Different forms of scholarly communication have different demands and, based on the apparent reluctance of certain chapter drafts to make arguments, some kind of digital reference or repository might have worked better. I’m not writing now to gauge the depth of my hindsight, though; that’s for after I’ve locked in final grades. I will offer this teaser: Writing a Book is a noble endeavor, but perhaps an unrealistic venture for eight weeks with 14 graduate students. 

I offer that because some chapters revealed writers’ interest in writing what they wanted rather than committing and contributing in a more collaborative way to the project itself. Of course, this may also be related to the frustration and hesitation mentioned earlier. I know that if I’m more comfortable writing about X instead of Y, I’ll do just that even if Y is the main focus of what I’m writing. So, I don’t fault anyone for the chapters drafted. To be honest, I’m impressed we made it this far. 

I provided all feedback to students with the understanding that we are still in pursuit of a Book as the end result of the project. This admission as well as last week’s entry may hinder or even sabotage the revision work of some researcher/writer pairs, but I’m hopeful that a majority will engage, if not humor me. Perhaps their revisions will reveal their own ideas and opinions about the future of this collaborative authoring project. There’s a lot still to be done with the content produced, and I look forward to discussing with #560WR students their ideas and opinions about the project’s future on Thursday, June 30, 2011, from 4:15PM to 6:45PM.