Thursday, September 23, 2004
Draft Workshops
As I mentioned in class, I want to experiment a bit with the form of our draft workshops so you can devote more time to each others' papers. Here's what we decided to do today:
1. Each person will spend the time in class reading one of your group member's papers and composing two questions/suggestions/issues for the author to think about. This can be something as narrow as a specific suggestion like "try reverse outlining this paper because it seems disorganized" or a question as vague as "your paper seems biased toward the Kerry side; how might how change the paper to sound less biased?" If you want to work together with the author to compose these suggestions that would be great, but there does need to be a written record of what was accomplished in the workshop.
2. You will then take the paper you read in class home and answer the draft workshop form questions for that paper on your blog. You can also feel free to add other comments to your post or to write notes on the paper (just make sure to give it back to the person next class). For Thursday draft workshops let's say the answers to the draft workshop form must be posted by Sunday evening.
We'll talk on Tuesday's class about how this is going. One of the most immediate problems I see is that this system may not work for Tuesday draft workshops as it would be difficult for people to get the workshop questions answered and still leave time for the author to work on the paper before Thursday's workshop. However, we'll talk about that next week. In the meantime just give this method a try and see how it works.
Also, if you did not have a draft in class today and did not exchange with one of your group members you can't complete this assignment.
As I mentioned in class, I want to experiment a bit with the form of our draft workshops so you can devote more time to each others' papers. Here's what we decided to do today:
1. Each person will spend the time in class reading one of your group member's papers and composing two questions/suggestions/issues for the author to think about. This can be something as narrow as a specific suggestion like "try reverse outlining this paper because it seems disorganized" or a question as vague as "your paper seems biased toward the Kerry side; how might how change the paper to sound less biased?" If you want to work together with the author to compose these suggestions that would be great, but there does need to be a written record of what was accomplished in the workshop.
2. You will then take the paper you read in class home and answer the draft workshop form questions for that paper on your blog. You can also feel free to add other comments to your post or to write notes on the paper (just make sure to give it back to the person next class). For Thursday draft workshops let's say the answers to the draft workshop form must be posted by Sunday evening.
We'll talk on Tuesday's class about how this is going. One of the most immediate problems I see is that this system may not work for Tuesday draft workshops as it would be difficult for people to get the workshop questions answered and still leave time for the author to work on the paper before Thursday's workshop. However, we'll talk about that next week. In the meantime just give this method a try and see how it works.
Also, if you did not have a draft in class today and did not exchange with one of your group members you can't complete this assignment.
