Checklist for all Activities

Checklist for Finishing up IDS 121

The good news is that we can have until Monday (June 13^th) for everything! I found out from the registrar that there is a later deadline than I thought for me to turn in grades, so I can give everyone until Monday to finish up all the work.

There are some grades that you won’t be able to work on further, but most of your course grades can be revised through Monday. See below for a checklist that outlines what can/can’t be revised. Keep in mind that if you fell behind in the class, it won’t be possible to raise your grades beyond a certain point, but I’ll try to be as understanding as possible, without compromising or disrespecting the hard work of those who were able to keep up with the class and do stellar work – and there are definitely some of you who impressed the heck out of me, even in this short space of time! From folks who started at zero, completely confused, and managed to produce some good solid, work, to those of you who were able to hit the (virtual) ground running and create ideas and research projects that would be impressive in a semester-long class, I truly appreciated the effort that you made to do good work. So thanks to all of you.

I’ll be available throughout the weekend, to comment on your projects or other work, or discuss your grades, so post to the discussion group but don’t be hesitant to email me personally if you need me.

I’m so sorry I’ve fallen behind on posting grades. But I’ll get grades for Lab Notes and another round for the POLs posted today. That way if you want to do extra work to raise your grade, you’ll still have time. I will try to post revised discussion grades by Thursday night, but you really won’t have time to raise those grades, so they will pretty much stand. But you have until Thursday to do some posting if you need to “catch up.” I’d suggest trying to help out those who have asked for help with their projects (mostly it seems like people looking for “research subjects” to interview or fill out surveys).

Below is the list of activities for the course, with a 1^st column that updates my actual expectations for the total 4 weeks, a 2^nd column that lists due dates, then a 3^rd column that lists the percentage the activity is worth for the whole class (count 100 points as the total class grade).

Remember my grading scale when looking at your grades:

· 93 á = A

· 83 – 92 = B

· 73 – 82 = C

· 63 – 72 = D

· 63 â = F

Course Activities

Lab Notes I expect you to basically document the entire 4 weeks of work in as much detail as possible, although you can be informal in tone and style. It’s as if you a showing me your private lab notebook from the experiment that was this class. Please try to dispense with “wow, I learned a lot” (although I hope that is at least somewhat true) and focus on detailing exactly WHAT you actually discovered. If you didn’t keep up with your notes and you fill them in later, they usually won’t be as detailed and they will more retrospective (looking back at learning) rather than describing active learning. Grades for these kinds of notes will definitely be lower in most cases.	Due Dates All Lab Notes should be complete by Monday, June 13th. If you had trouble with Sparklix (some of you did) you can turn in your full set of notes in the dropbox that I’ve provided in Blackboard.	20%
Daily Discussions In your discussion posts you should have been shooting for 30 per week (although this is not a firm number than I used to determine grades). Rather, I do count, but I look at more at quality of posts. When I gave out initial grades, I gave some explicit instructions for improvement, which I will then use to alter the grades (up or down) based on how well you adapted my comments to your posts after the first grade.	Overall – You are shooting for 120 posts, but more importantly GOOD POSTS! I will grade discussion posts for the final time on Monday, but since the class is over on Friday (June 10th), that will be the last day that you can post. Uneven posters (i.e., folks that tried to post a lot in the last week or so because they fell behind – should expect to receive lower grades).	20%
Proof-of Learning Reports You did four of these. I expected you to use the comments I gave you, and improve your posts based on both my comments and on your reading of other POL reports done by your peers.	You should have 4 of these reports when you finish the class. Final POLs are due Monday, June 13th.	20%
Genre Reviews This activity got kind of jumbled, cause we ran out of time. So I’ll be looking at posts you made to the genre discussion board (where you asked or answered questions) as well as how you completed the assignment I gave when I asked you to report on your understanding of either the POL reports or the discussion posts (as a genre in which you tried to succeed). These were posted to the Genre Discussion space, and you can find instructions on my requirements for this assignment on the class blog archive http://cyborgidentities-isu.blogspot.com/2011_05_01_archive.html under the post for May 31st.	You can work to complete your genre reviews until Monday, June 13th. Post to the genre discussion forum please, or I might miss your post!	10%
Original Research Project We really didn’t have time to do all the “activities” I had planned that would lead up to your projects! So I’ll just be grading the projects themselves. Keep in mind that if you had particular troubles/challenges, etc. with your projects, you could note these in your lab notes – possibly a detailed account of things that went wrong could influence your grade in a positive way – a failed experiment can still be productive!	Due Monday, June 13th. I MUST have a copy (whether you send to me via email or put your project online and send me a URL) by Noon!	20%
You Are Here There were two YOU ARE HERE assignments. One was assigned in the first week (completing the quiz) and one was assigned in the 3rd week (the annotated Bib). Both assignments are now “closed” in blackboard, but I will accept annotated bibliographies (although I will not grade late turn-ins as high) sent to me via email. Don’t forget to put IDS 121 in the subject line of your email – this will make sure I don’t miss your assigment.	These assignments should already be finished. You can complete the Annotated Bibliography late, but grades may be “docked” for late work.	10%

Everyone:

Last week of the semester -- we need to get the projects finished and wrap up all the activities. Later today I'll be posting a clear checklist of what you need to think about during this last week.

However, there are a couple of things about this week that I want you to know:

(1) Discussion Posts: There are No new readings for this week. I made this decision because I want to give people the time to work on the projects, rather than have you do extra readings. What you can do instead (and I recognize that 30 posts is probably not doable, so don't worry too much about number of posts this week) is be active in the the "project topics" discussion forum. Your work in this forum can count toward your "genre reveiws" grade and your discussion posts grade for this week.

(a) You can use the Forum to post updates on the stuff you are learning as the result of your research for your projects. If we all read these, we'll get a good sense of what everyone is working on, and that's a good way to keep the connection you've all be forging going during this last week.
(b) You can also respond to posts about project topics/ideas/plans that folks are making -- help them think through ideas, pose questions, etc.
(b) You can ask questions about your own projects -- if you need help with anything, post your questions there.
(c) You can respond to questions/problems that others are having as they work through their problems with projects.


(2) Projects. Projects are Due On Friday by Noon. This will give me time over the weekend to get the projects looked at and graded. I expect to have grades in by Tuesday (Jun 14th) at noon. If you are doing something that needs special technology (move, sound files, etc.) please let me know so that we can make sure everything will work correctly!

(3) Catching up on all the other Activities (if you got behind in any activities, you have until Wednesday to catch up. I'll send out the "check list" later today to let you know exactly what you should have completed. Final POL reports and lab notes and discussion posts should be completely by Thursday morning at noon (to give yourself a final day to complete projects).

(4) Grades. I'll have grades for evertything posted by wednesday, so that you can comment and let me know if you have questions. Here is the grading scale:

93.0 and above will be an A
83.0 - 92.9 will be an B
73.0 - 82.9 will be a C
63.0 - 72.9 will be a D
Below 63 will be an F

You should be able to see all your points in gradebook (in Blackboard) by Thursday evening -- I'll update grades will your final week's work. Then all that will be left will be the final project grades (worth 20 points).

That's it for now -- I'll post later with a checklist for the class t0 make sure that everyone is on target.

Cheers,

joyce

Hi Everyone:

Hope you all had a pleasant weekend -- If you're in Illinois, you experienced the "summer-without-spring" syndrome that is the midwest. Up here in Michigan we experienced it even more abruptly -- a really, cold, wet, rainy spring and then suddenly 92 degrees and thunderstorms. But after 42 and rainy for what seemed like months on end, I'll take it.

This week (week 3) we start moving into the home stretch of this class. You'll be doing three things this week:

(1) Readings: The readings will begin to taper off slightly, so that you can focus on your genre reviews and your research projects. I've still got a few readings, and you'll simply follow the same structure (read, post, shoot for 30 entries). However, I would be REALLY happy if you would all also start posting about your own research. Stuff you are reading and and finding out about your topics. Keep in mind, though, that your audience for these posts is different -- because they won't have read what you've read. So you will need to write these posts differently: the primary difference is that you'll want to make connections between your readings and the stuff we've done for class (because that's the common ground, right?). So you'd help readers to see connections between the discussion that have been going on for the last two weeks, and the ideas that you are now working with. I'll be really impressed with folks who can start discussions about topics where readers have to make that connection/leap, because I think it will take some skill to create posts that are interesting.

The readings for this week include the following:

• This website offers overviews of research methods that might be helpful to you as you work to design your research project: http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/index.php (this website isn't like a standard reading --since you won't all want to read up on the same kind of research. But you can read and then post to try to start discussions about designing your research project -- because I think this is the help that most of you will want over the next week!)
• Wu, Dezhi, & Hiltz, Starr Roxanne. (2004). "Predicting Learning from Asynchronous Online Discussions." JALN, Volume 8: Issue 2. pp. 139-52. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B0vrL-DffM_dZWJkMzg0MGItMjNmOS00ZGM5LWI3NTItYWI2N2Q0NGJmMDIz&hl=en_US&authkey=CM75uZMC
  
• Richardson, Jennifer C. & Swan, Karen. (2003). Examining Social Presence in Online Courses in Relation to Students' Perceived Learning and Satisfaction." JALN Vol. 7 Issue 1 pp. 68-88. (download from google docs: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B0vrL-DffM_dOThlMzk0ZWItZjdmYi00ODY1LWFjZGItMjFlZDdhOTE4Mzky&hl=en_US&authkey=CMeBu9oO )
  
• Smith, Matthew J. (1999). Strands in the Web: Community-Building Strategies in Online Fanzines. The Journal of Popular Culture. Vol 33, Issue 2. pp. 87–99. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B0vrL-DffM_dNTdkN2U0NjItMjViOC00ZWQ5LTkwYzQtMGI4MDEzODlkYjAz&hl=en_US&authkey=CKjO2NQE
  

(2) Genre Reviews: During this week, I would like the members of the class to create some genre reviews of the genres we've been working with (Discussion Boards and Proof-of-learning reports). One particular GOAL of this activity is to help cement some of the things you've (hopefully) been learning about writing in these genres. I've given all of you reports where I discussed your performance in these genres. What I would like you to now do is to pick features of these genres (things you've been working on that I mentioned, but even better, things you've discovered from your own readings) and create a discussion post of 2-3 paragraphs where you use examples from the genre (the blogs or the discussion posts) to highlight where you have found this genre feature and how/why you think it is important to success in the genre. Let's take the example of "using people's names to address them personally" in the discussion group. Is this something you would advise a new member of the class to do? explain why or why not (using specific quotes/examples from the discussion posts to show how you think this technique works or doesn't). A secondary GOAL for this activity is to help me when I teach this class again. I'd like to understand better how participants in the class understand the genres we're engaging in -- Not just in terms of trying to do the work to get the grade, but in how you understand what "success" looks like in these genres, based on your readings of your peer's work.

Genre Reviews are due by this Friday -- you can post your reviews to the "genre review" discussion forum. Remember that your post should (ideally) be an in-depth discussion (2-3 paragraph) of one particular feature that you think is really important for successful writing in the genre.


(3) Research: You should be beginning work on your research project this week -- This is pretty much solo work at this point (although you can use the research project discussion forum to ask questions). But please, please, write to me (email) if you are confused about this project or stuck in trying to do things like (1) refine your topic, or (2) design your study, etc.


Don't forget to keep up with your Proof-of-Learning Reports (due each weekend) and your Labnotes (which I will be providing feedback on this week).

Hey everyone --

I know that we haven't had much discussion yet about the final project and what I'm expecting, so I've drawn up a genre description so that we can start discussions from there. I've put in online as a Google Doc, so you can find in here:

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0vrL-DffM_dNjk3YjZiNmYtNDkzNS00ZWJkLWE5NDItMDE1MDBiMzBiNzdk&hl=en_US&authkey=CNXv--cD

Hopefully, this document will give you a sense of your choices, for selecting a topic, coming up with a method for your study, and figuring our how you want to present what you find.

We'll have time for questions -- but please read the genre description first, so we're all starting on the same page.

Cheers,

Joyce

Work for the Weekend

Everyone:

I hope that you are all going to have an enjoyable weekend. I wish we could just take the weekend off, but the 4 week class doesn't really allow for that! However, I've kind of tried to create a plan that will give you a chance to take a breath as you move on to next week's assignments and towards your research projects.

So read carefully -- these are the activities you'll need to complete.

(1) Finish up the two last readings on online dating stuff (I attached them to an email yesterday) Post in the discussion group -- remember your goal of 30 posts for the week and also try to employ some of the suggestions I made in my email.

(2) Go the the Discussion Forum titled "project topics" sometime over the weekend and make a brief post that describes your project idea -- doesn't have to be formal, just get something up there!

(3) Complete the "You are Here II" Assignment -- The Due Date for this is next Tuesday. You'll find the assignment in the folder titled "Readings & Assignments: Week 2." This assignment is to create an "annotated bibliography" for your project. I've created a "sample annotated bibliography," so you can see what I'm expecting -- you can find it in the "Readings & Assignments:week two" folder or you can link to the google doc version here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B0vrL-DffM_dYWE0MDJkNmQtNGYzMS00NzViLWFkZWUtNTNlOTE3YWYzNTEy&hl=en_US&authkey=CIns3bgE

PLEASE NOTE: You can turn your assignment into the drop box in Blackboard that I've created, but you could alternately place your bibliography on your blog space if you would rather do that.

(4) Finally, as you begin your research on your topic, let me know if you find an article that you think might have wider appeal -- that you'd like me to assign so that we can all talk about it. This is a GREAT way to get your topic out there and have the group help you think through it. But we can only have so many, so I'm only going to be able to use the first 5-6 good suggestions I get. So you should jump on this if you'd like the class to help you with your project!


Grades & Grading: I will be looking at your labnotes over the weekend (I'll have comments to you by Tuesday) and I'll also be taking a second look at your Proof-of-Learning reports so that I can give you feedback (I'll have that to you by wednesday). Then, towards the end of next week, we'll be doing a 2nd round of review of the discussion posts -- but this time you will be doing them (more on that next week).

Everyone:

Sorry -- I did forget to attach the .pdf readings for today and tomorrow! But it's ok. I just won't assign any extra readings over the weekend, so you can push things back a little since you are getting these readings late. Also, I've finished posting grades for the proof-of-learning blogs and sent out emails with comments, so be sure you've gotten that email (and read it) before you post your proof-of learning for this week. And Let me know if you haven't gotten emails for either the POL reports or the discussion posts.

I will look at the POL reports again on Monday, so you have until Monday (June 1) to get the 2nd report done, ok?

Over the weekend I'm going to be looking at the Lab Notes -- If I can't get in to your Sparlix site or I have problems finding/readings your notes, I'll contact you. We'll make sure noone gets penalized for Tech problems with these notes, because the Sparlix technology seems a bit wonky (hard to use) for some people.

It's these readings (and I've just sent out an email where they are definitely attached):

For Thursday:

Scholarly article (I will send as .pdf):
Baker, A. J. (2008). Down the rabbit hole: The role of place in the initiation and development of online relationships. In A. Barak (Ed.), Psychological aspects of cyberspace: Theory, research, applications (pp. 163-184). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

For Friday:

Scholarly article (I will send as a .pdf):
Houran, J. & Lange Rense (2004). Expectations of Finding a Soul Mate with Online Dating. North American Journal of Psychology. Vol 6, No. 2, 297-308.

Discussion Forum Grades posted

Hey everyone:

I've posted the discussion forum first grades. I also send individual emails with comments and suggestions, so let me know if you have questions, and let me know if you didn't get an email!

My responses were individualized to discuss your particular contribution, but overall I can say that their are two things I'd like to encourage overall:

(1) When you see that you've become part of an "exchange" (that is, people are responding to a post you've made) try to see what you can do to continue to extend the conversation (keep it going). This might be done by expanding the discussion (making new point or arguments) and it can also be done by challenging (respectfully) the ideas or assertions of others

(2) I'd like to see more direct citations in these posts (of other posts, readings, and outside materials). I don't want you to think that you need to bog down every post you make with a load of citations, but in general I think we could move somewhat away from just creating a dialogue about what we think, to create a "network of ideas," that connects what we think more directly to what others (within this class and outside of it) think. So I want to encourage everyone to think about that and see what you can do in the next week.


Also -- I'm starting to comment on the Blog's right now, and I'll do these in the same way. I will read the post you've made, and send you an email with comments and suggestions, and then post a grade in Blackboard. Again, let me know if you have questions.

I also PROMISE that I will post something further (I'll email it too) about the research projects today, so that you can all move forward in selecting topics -- I'd like everyone to have a topic selected by Monday.

Finally, I want to note that I hope you will use my comments and suggestions in both your lab notes and your "proof-of-learning." Remember that you are not just learning about the topics, you are also learning about the genres we're using (in this case the discussion forum). So if my comments made you think about how you might alter your posts, or if you spend some time looking at the posts of others and thinking about how your could use their techniques to improve your posts -- PUT THAT IN YOUR LAB NOTES. This is evidence of your learning. If you are planning to try experiments to see if you can encourage others to respond more in the discussion post, then make note of that, along with examples of your posts and the posts of others. It's think kind of thing that I will ultimately be looking for -- and will be grading for.

So, look for more emails from me today.

Cheers,

Joyce