The good and bad

As with a few other things in class, I find myself simultaneously impressed and disappointed by my students.

I am mostly impressed with the topics they've been choosing. I was expecting to have to whittle down immense, broad topics like abortion, gun control, and marijuana into smaller, more manageable topics. Instead they've chosen focused topics that they are interested in and will make for some intriguing literature reviews. A geology major is researching about the Utah government trying to seize control of public lands. Another student is exploring whether supposed steroid users should be allowed in the baseball hall of fame. One of the topics I'm most interested to read about is whether deaf infants should be given auditory implants that replicate hearing. The majority of society says yes; segments of the deaf community (the "proud deaf") say no.

Now for the disappointment. Their research skills. For a generation brought up on the internet, I'm amazed at how little of it they actually understand. In our exercise on finding sources, 95% came up with "Google it."

Which isn't a bad start. But that's all they had. They didn't know where to go from there.

I showed them Google Scholar. We went through JSTOR and the library databases. When they came back for the next class, many reported that they hadn't been able to find anything. Apparently they had clicked on an article and when the full text didn't immediately appear, they gave up. I had to show them ways to keep searching for the articles.

Most of them had no idea what The Onion was. Most of them seemed surprised that there was actually fake news on the internet.

It's interesting that the characterization I most often hear about this generation is "they may have a lot of weaknesses, but at least they're tech-savvy." They're tech-savvy, but only to a point.

Research

So what is surprising you about a) their topics and b) their research skills?

Changes I would make

Workshopping has generally gone well, though I've seen several things I'll do differently next time. Here's a brief overview of what we've done:

• I've had the students bring in 3-5 pages each workshop session. They print off three drafts to share with the other students.
• With the exception of the final workshop day, I've broken them up into groups of three to four. On the final day we picked 3 or 4 drafts and went over them together on the overhead.
• The students circulate their drafts through their groups, each student making suggested changes, additions, and cuts. These drafts are then turned back to the original student.

We discussed the benefits of this in class last Monday: the sharing of ideas, exposing students to new approaches to writing, class-wide involvement. I won't go into that anymore. Rather, here is what I would change next time.

• Be more strict with the workshopping. I allowed the students who hadn't brought anything to workshop to participate and give feedback to the others in the group, thinking at least this would give them exposure to some of their peers' writing. Although there were only two or three in each class, this weakened the quality of the workshop overall as the students didn't take it as seriously (many didn't bring the minimum page count) and those who did weren't able to review other works. I think I'll go with Tyler's strategy next time and just dismiss whoever didn't bring material.
• Outline workshop expectations further ahead of time. The students didn't know exactly what to expect from the workshops because I wasn't sure either. It took the first day to know just what I wanted to do. Now that I know, I can outline this for them sooner next time.
• Give a better explanation of the component parts. I had figured they had a pretty good idea of what to do in the introduction, body, and conclusion before we started workshopping, since we had spent a good deal of time discussing it. I was wrong. The first introductions we drafted were along the lines of "In Mr. Mickel's class we have discussed eight different articles. They are about education," or "On a bright, spring day, eight renowned authors walk into the Cafe Ville Belle to have a conversation about education."
• One change I can make to remedy the above is to characterize the first workshop not as "the introduction to your lit review," but as "a 3 to 4 page discussion of the issue, why it's important and what the debates are."

I'm looking forward to workshopping the second lit review so I can implement all these changes.

Workshopping

Well, Tuesday went well. I had them bring in the main point of each article, so they had them all together, and the list of groups they had decided on along with which authors they put into each group. Then they made sure that each other had the main points right and that the groups/authors made sense. I went around to each group and answered questions to guide them on organization.

That all seemed productive and useful to them, but I told them to bring in 4 pages on one of the groups/themes they had chosen so that we could work on the organization within one group and that did not work as well.

Each class only had about 11 or 12 people show up, but part of that could have been the snow. Of those that showed, only 4 or 5 brought any writing to workshop. I told the rest that if they didn't have anything to work on, then it was pointless for them to be there.

Did either of you have large groups of students just fail to show up on the workshopping days with anything to work on? The ones who came and didn't have anything didn't seem like they didn't know they were supposed to bring something, they just didn't do it.

Workshopping

How has workshopping been going?

Picking a Fight

I'm getting the feeling that my classes are a little intimidated by the concept of a lit. review. Not because lit reviews are necessarily harder to write than other papers, but because the students simply haven't written anything like it before. To help them get a feel for what a lit. review really is, I started a premeditated argument with them.

After closing up the Wilson article I brought up the Grammy Awards last week. We talked a little bit, then I said, "I'm sorry, this is a little off the topic, but I just have to say--the music you guys like is horrible. You have really bad music these days," and started an argument on music. I gave the usual cranky-older-generation reasons for why their music sucks: real music isn't made with a computer, current lyrics are nonsensical, band names don't make any sense, that kind of thing. I was lobbing them softballs really, hoping they would argue with me (the best part was bitching about how all the bands today are into drugs, unlike, say, Led Zeppelin and The Beatles).

I arranged with a student beforehand to take notes on everything that was said, as well as who said it, then had that student come up when the argument was over. I then mapped out (in flow-chart form) the argument we had had, asking the general topic (music), my stance (their music sucks), and the different debates and discussions that ensued. We also attributed statements and rebuttals to whoever offered them.

From there I explained how the argument we had just had, as well as its accompanying chart, was the same thing they would be doing in their lit. review. They would need to know what the main topic was, what the major debates within that topic were, who had said what and how they related to each other.

It worked even better than I had hoped. The concept seemed to click with them in a way that other discussions we had had about lit. reviews hadn't, and the students were fully engaged and even excited. Not to mention the enjoyment I had berating their music.

Turns out a lot of Weber students know a surprising amount about Led Zeppelin.

We'll see how the workshopping goes next week. Like Tyler, I'm interested to discuss the best ways to do this on Monday.

Transition to Lit. Review

I've been touching on this by asking them how different articles would respond to each other, but have not done too much as most of the class time has been spent making sure that they all understand each article.

My plan this week is to talk about how to put these articles into camps or points on a spectrum and what those camps/points could be. I'm also asking them to write the summary for Thursday that encompasses all of the articles in this discussion. I'm hoping that they will be able to come up with what amounts to their first page or so of the literature review.

One of my students asked for an example of what a literature review looks like. I had deliberated on if that would be more helpful or confusing, but have decided to show them an example and some resources I found online with guides on how to write a literature review.

I'm interested to hear other ideas for the work-shopping sessions. Most of my students have not been able to give each other much feedback in the group settings because they don't know what is good or bad about each others papers.