Course Outline
This is a dynamic document. Any printed copy may be obsolete. Check the online version regularly.
The Ability to Work Within Teams
Each week in this class you will be working with others. A short time after the beginning of the course you will be randomly assigned to a team. You are to offer quality feedback to help team members improve the quality of their work. You will not only learn to recognize good writing, quality design, unique ideas and offer help and suggestions on how to improve your classmates' work, but you will learn something about yourself and your peers. You will learn how well you can play in the sandbox.
This creates a community of writers/researchers/learners in our "classroom" where you can learn that written communication is to be read, not just stuffed away in a drawer or to be given to an instructor to be marked up with red ink . This is also done so you can learn that each member of this class can offer you something to enrich your life and your experience. The rule for responding to the work of others is to do so with respect and courtesy. We are here to help each other improve as learners, not to laugh at or judge each other.
The last part of this course will put this into practice. How We Work displays, graphically, what I'm talking about. Instead of writing a concluding chapter individually, your team will assemble the chapter and post it to the Class Web page. (The technical part will come later in the course.) Each member of the team will be able to post to that space, but the team is responsible for the work posted. This then becomes the essence of working together.
But what if you have a team member who doesn't play well? Read Barbara Oakley's article Coping With Hitchhikers and Couch Potatoes on Teams.
Each team member will have access to the site ( the ability to upload and modify) from within their own folders.
The goals of the collaborative component are to help you:
- become familiar with the cultural, legal, ethical, business and technical aspects of writing.
- enhance your research and documentation skills.
- differentiate between credible Internet information (possible resources for serious research) and questionable or biased sources in researching your subject.
- develop your critical thinking skills and enable you to back up your conclusions with evidence.
- discover ways to share your findings in a user-friendly, well organized, Web presentation.
- play well together in the same sandbox
You must work with your assigned team partners to create a comprehensive Website prompted by your reading. Your team may focus this assignment in any way that meets the interests of the team members, as long as collectively the site extends discussions about the Story of Writing. You may use works of fiction, non-fiction, or other media forms (film, internet sites), or not.
Your objective is to create a "web of inquiry" centered around a critical question outlined on an Table of Contents page and extended and developed in a series of inter-related body pages. The Table of Contents page ("homepage") for your web should be developed together and should identify and provide a context for the central problem you will explore with more detailed research. Your Website will develop your arguments more fully through the content on your body pages, and it will integrate the ideas uncovered in your research. Each team member must contribute at least 1200 words to the project to extend the main argument on the body pages. Each team must also provide as part of the Website a collective Works Cited page that documents the research sources gathered to support the critical ideas. Because your Website will be comprehensive and because your research will be reflected in the body of the Website, your Works Cited page will not have to be annotated. Instead, you will use conventional MLA formatting rules to create ONE alphabetized online list of resources.
Be creative in the design and content of your site. Try to incorporate each member’s interests and design a format that reflects them in a fluid and exploratory form. Exploit hypertext forms and aesthetics to link to a diversity of topics and viewpoints, while collecting them under a common critical objective. Try to avoid redundancy in the site. If two team members are particularly interested in the same subject, you both can combine resources to share your ideas and create a sub-set of the Web that is more integrated than other areas. Don’t work in complete isolation from the team. Strive to achieve site unity (textually and graphically) and avoid purely mechanical linking conventions (a repeated "table of contents" on each page, for example.) Since "linking" is one of the defining features of hypertext, you should work to find creative ways to link related information through key words, graphical cues, and critical concepts.
You will also be expected to meet out-of-class using e-mail and SLN bulletin boards to complete the assignment. Each team will be provided with a class webpage workspace that links to the Course web page, and you will have a project folder on the Class web page to "store" files, exchange drafts, engage in discussion etc.
Deadlines
- Your team will select and notify the class by e-mail of your intended outline by April 4th.
- Final projects must be uploaded to the Suffolk server by midnight, May 9th.
Self Evaluation Critique
Each team member must post a 150 word (minimum) evaluation/outline of his/her contributions to the project on the Class Web Page by December 16th. The critique should clearly identify the pages the author created, any other graphical technical contributions he/she made, and provide a brief summary of how his/her contributions to the group project were beneficial to project development and completion.
Web Checklist
Use the following broad checklist as a guide to creating the Web and fulfilling criteria objectives:
- Table of Contents Page: outline critical problem, provide context for argument, create clear navigation links/index to body pages, list author’s names, e-mail addresses.
- Body Pages: explore one or more aspects of your main critical argument in more detail. Each group member should contribute a total of approx. 1200 words to the body pages, but you may subdivide your contributions in any way appropriate to the overall organization of the Web. (One member may make contributions to portions of four pages, whereas another might design two entire pages alone.) All body pages in the Web should provide keyword links to other pages in the Web and to relevant external sites on the WWW (only if appropriate). Additionally, each group member should contribute references (using MLA format) to at least two print and two online sources.
- Works Cited: collect all the sources used in the Web and format them according to MLA guidelines. (Do NOT create subsections for resources used by each author; create only ONE Works Cited page and document all sources collectively.)
- General Hypertext Conventions: create effective graphical/visual information and readable and well-organized textual information, design clear and effective navigation cues and linking conventions, present a unified look for the site as a whole.
- Critical Writing: demonstrate clear critical focus for each of the pages, engage and integrate research sources, extend arguments prompted by class reading and discussion.
Collaborative Web Page Grades
The grade for the project will be based on two elements:
a) Collaborative Grades will be derived from the project, the main critical argument presented on the anchor page, overall site unity and aesthetics, and application of hypertext principles.
b) Individual Grades will be derived from the 1200 word contributions of each member to the site, the quality of research resources, and application of hypertext conventions and aesthetic principles as evident on the body pages designed by each author.And:
- the currency and relevance of your information, including the Works Cited page
- the thoroughness of your report
- the clarity of your writing
- your knowledge about the subject gained through your research
- the organization of your material
- the adherence to correct English
- your ability to share the material to the class on a user-friendly Web presentation
Responsibilities
You will need to sufficiently narrow down your subject and do the appropriate research (Web and print). Provide sufficient detail to support your findings. Include links to all relevant Web sites which can illuminate the topic for your audience. Include a Works Cited page, with links to the relevant Web sites.
Information from sources needs to be documented in MLA style. Observe copyright rules for content and graphics.