• I thought that both the second short essays and the final were pretty good, and I have to say that I personally feel better about this arrangement than what I’ve done in the past.  What I mean is I think that there are more opportunities for success and better chances for students to learn and engage with this stuff with several shorter projects rather than one big one (e.g., a final “seminar” paper).  If you have thoughts on that, I’d be curious to hear what they are.
• Overall, I thought folks handled the final well.  I don’t make any comments on them, mainly because my goal at this stage is the same as yours:  I want to finish.  But if you have any questions or concerns about the grade on your final or the overall grade for the class, please know that I would be happy to talk with you about it in the winter term.  I am always willing to over your grade and try to explain things as best I can.
• Sooner than later, I’ll be taking down the various comments/posts on the English 505 web site, mostly in preparation for the next time I teach the class, which will likely be in 2012 (I think Derek Mueller is scheduled to teach it in the Fall 2011 term).   So, if there are any comments, posts, etc. that you are particularly interested in keeping in some fashion, go and copy them now.

I think that’s about it.

You’ve been a great group to work with, and I hope you thought the class was as interesting as I did.  I’ll be starting on as the writing program coordinator in January, which means I’ll probably be working with many of you on things like offering advice, programs of study, etc.  And of course, I’m also teaching other classes (English 444 in the winter term), directing projects, and generally hanging around.  So for those of you continuing on (I think that’s all of you, right?), I am sure I will see you again in the new year.

• I haven’t heard much from folks about the final, so I’m going to assume that’s going okay.  Accurate, I hope?  In any event, if you do have any questions or concerns about it, by all means, contact me and ask.  That’s why I get paid the big bucks.
• I just finished commenting on the revisions that folks did of the first projects and posted them back to emuonline, so if you did a revision (and you know who you are!), go ahead and look.  Along these lines, I also just opened up the dropbox for the final.  Up next:  audio comments on your second rhetorical analysis essays.  Which leads me to my next and last point:
• You of course have until Friday to hand in your finals (remember!  5 PM Michigan time on December 17!). When you hand in your Final, I will hand back your second rhetorical analysis with my comments– though I should point out I probably won’t be done commenting on these until Thursday evening, so if you hand in the Final early, you might have to wait a bit.

I think that’s it for now.  Resume your hard work!

I think it’s reasonably straight-forward, but of course, if you’ve got questions or want to talk about it at all here, feel free!

A couple of thoughts to get you going:

• As I mentioned at the beginning of the term and as clear in the syllabus, this final is actually worth a fair amount, 30% of the final grade, or the same as the two short rhetorical analysis essays.  So for those of you who have been in some of my previous classes, the stakes of this final are quite a bit higher than they are for courses like English 516.
• It’s a comprehensive final– everything we’ve read and discussed is fair game.
• I haven’t decided this yet, but the format will probably involve four essay questions, one (or two? I’m not sure) longer questions that everyone has to answer, and two (or three) shorter essay questions where there will be a choice of options.
• Regardless, the length of these essay answers will be strictly enforced and the aim is for preciseness in language (e.g., not a lot of “filler” here) with lots of citations/references to readings.  The long essays will probably be capped at 500 words (about 2 typed pages) and the shorter essays will probably capped at 250 words.
• Finally, while I make no promises about using any of your suggestions for test questions or areas of the test, I would say you’re better off making suggestions to me than not.  So suggest away.

What do you all think?  What questions do you have about the process, and what questions might you want to see on the final?

Second, be mindful of the schedule for this peer review:  begin Monday (or early Tuesday), finish Wednesday (or early Thursday), and the final version needs to be posted to the emuonline dropbox for the second rhetorical analysis no later than midnight Friday, December 10. Then what will happen is on Friday (probably before midnight), I will post/make available the final for the course.  The final will be due on Friday, December 17, and when you turn it in, I’ll have the audio comments on the second project available for your enjoyment and reflection.

Okay, more about this peer review after the “continued” part.

First, here are the groups:

Group 1: Graham P.,  Adam H., Lauren G., Emily V.

Group 2: Ashlee W., Brian S., Rebecca M.

Group 3: Jeffrey P., Mia M., Kayla B., Nicole J.

I’ll send each group an email message so they have each others’ email addresses (if you didn’t already).

Now, as far as the logistics of this goes: we (meaning myself, Ashlee, Adam, Mia, and Kayla) talked about this at The Corner the other night, and the suggestion/consensus was to leave this part of things up to each writer.  If you want to post your essay to Google docs like we did last time, do so and share that link with the folks in your groups, that’s fine.  It has the advantage of being a single document that everyone can comment on together.  But if you’d prefer just to share an old-fashioned Word file or a PDF, you can email that to each other too and then each person can make comments on it.  In other words, it’s the writer’s choice as to the format of the draft.

I also think the writer should try to get the ball rolling on her or his peer review by trying to point the review into a direction of some sort– for example, what are you most concerned about with this draft?  What part do you like the best and/or like the least?  What sort of feedback are you looking for?

My main advice for all of you– besides this long post about the first short projects– is think theory first, framework second.  The goal of these assignments is for you to demonstrate some mastery of the understanding of the theory, which means I am less interested in the example you are working with (e.g., the BP oil spill, Facebook, manuals, cell phones, etc., etc.) and more interested in the theories you’re working with (rhetorical situation, the nonhuman, visual rhetoric, Paradis, etc.).  So make sure that is front and center in your work here.

• Friday, December 3 at midnight (or so) your revisions on the first project are due. I’m sure by the time you’re reading this, you know that.  Be sure to have them posted!  Hand them in to the emuonline web site
• Saturday, December 4 at 5 pm at The Corner, we’ll meet (informally, unofficially) at The Corner to talk about the second short writing project and the final, and of course anything else that comes up.  See you then!
• On Monday of next week, we’ll begin peer review on these second projects– I’ll set up groups by some time on Sunday at the latest.
• By Wednesday of next week, you need to wrap up your peer review on the second project.  Also, by about this date, be sure to let me know what grade for participation you have earned for the second part of the term!
• Friday, December 10, your second short rhetorical analysis is due! You need to post the revised and final  version of your second rhetorical analysis to emuonline by this date.
• Also on Friday, December 10, I will post the final for your to start contemplating an writing.
• Friday, December 17, is the “end of time” for the course, meaning that’s when the final is due, and it’s also the last day you can possibly turn in anything else for the class.

Second, I wanted to let you all know that I will be catching up very soon on various class related things.  I’ve fallen behind in my own readings/participation here both because of a crushing number of meetings with students and colleagues, and also because today was the every semester “Celebration of Student Writing.”  This is for our English 121 program (aka “freshman comp”).  I put together a short video that my students shot and I edited that I thought I’d share here.

In any event, only six of you have voted, so for the rest of you:  please do vote, even if it means none of the times work for you (so I at least know for sure that there are some folks who aren’t going to make it under any circumstances).

Conveniently, the teacher can make changes to help herself or himself under such circumstances, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do here.  Go and check out the schedule page for all the details, but let me summarize them for now:

• I’ve dropped the last reading from Bolter and Grusin’s book Remediation. I’m kind of bummed about that because I think they make some cool arguments for our purposes here, but I sort of feel like at this point it’s kind of tagged on, and I think that everyone has plenty to work with/think about for the second short rhetorical analysis and for the final.
• I’ve stretched out the readings a bit on the ones we’ve been talking about lately on the visual, and that’s mainly personal– I’m behind and want to catch up a bit.
• I’ve added a requirement where each of you send me an email by the Wednesday before Thanksgiving at the latest! where you give me a short “pitch” about what it is you are going to do your second project about and why.  This need not be elaborate, but give me an idea about what you are thinking about analyzing and through what theoretical lens you are thinking about analyzing that phenomenon.
• I’ve sent up a doodle calendar for our last optional gathering at The Corner– here’s a link to it. That’s kind of a tricky week for me (and potentially for you too) because of other commitments such as the MA Celebration for recent graduates (that’s on Thursday, December 2), commitments in our lives (I have something at my kid’s school I need to attend on December 2 that will keep me away from the MA Celebration, unfortunately), school, etc.  So the potential days here include Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.  Check the one that works for you.

I think that’s it for now.  Questions, concerns, etc.?

But that’s all done.  A couple of important details after the “continued” part.

Your grades and audio comments are on emuonline.  What you do is log back into emuonline and you can find my audio comments either in the “outbox” part of the dropbox or on the gradebook.  The audio file is an mp3, which should be easy to listen to on your computer.  I would encourage you to read your essay while listening to my comments of me reading the essay aloud and offering commentary.  Let me know if you have any problems finding the files or getting them to work.

To be honest, I was kind of disappointed with these projects.

Just to remind you: the goal of this assignment was to minimize the scope of what phenomenon/topic/idea being analyzed so that you could spend your time and effort on working with a particular aspect of rhetorical theory to that issue.  The idea here was to use a “lens” of rhetorical theory to view some phenomenon and to make some sort of claim about the way rhetoric “works,” given that specific rhetorical lens.  My intention in these shorter projects was two-fold:  first, I wanted to minimize (though not eliminate) the research burden for your topic/phenomenon, not to mention the search for theory from beyond our class readings.  Second, I wanted to lend a focus as to what sort of theory– what lenses to pick, if you will– were available to analyze texts, because at the end of the day, the purpose of these writing assignments is for you to demonstrate your understanding of the theory that we are reading and discussing.

In other words, we’ve spent a lot of time this term reading and discussing rhetoric, especially as it applies to issues of science and technology.  The purpose of this assignment was to give you an opportunity to demonstrate that you have done this and that you are able to use this experience to analyze a phenomenon and make some sort of point.  I was interested in whatever phenomenon you analyzed, but I was most interested in seeing a level of mastery with rhetoric as a tool for analysis.

Now, for the most part, the phenomenon that folks picked were small and manageable, though there were some problems there.  While I wanted to minimize the amount of research required for explaining your topic, I didn’t want to eliminate it.  In some cases, the lack of research or explanation about whatever it is you were discussing made it difficult for me to see your point; in other cases, the phenomenon being analyzed was probably too broad for the assignment.

But the place where I saw some serious problems was in the rhetorical analysis itself.  Most projects missed the mark of demonstrating “mastery with rhetoric” as a tool for analysis.  I found it a little odd the extent to which folks focused in on ethos and/or pathos– I’d say this was the approach taken by about 80% of you, I suppose because it is easy to apply to a lot of contemporary events and because we did read a fair amount about both.  Regardless of that, this is a good example of where I saw in many of your projects what I can only characterize as a surprising lack of understanding and explanation of the concepts.   Even though ethos was a concept discussed in many places in the Crowley and Hawhee book, even though it was directly and indirectly discussed in a number of other readings, many of you more or less limited your discussion of ethos to a definition– that is, you quoted Crowley and Hawhee’s definition of ethos (in many cases, only from the glossary!), and then proceeded to make your case without ever referring back to the text.  That’s really not a whole lot different than looking up a term in the dictionary and then using that “research” as your sole basis for an argument.  It’s certainly not what I was intending by an assignment asking you to analyze something.

Now, I think there are basically three causes for this– or, more accurately, it’s a combination of these things:

• Folks just haven’t done the reading. While the discussions we’ve had on the class web site have been pretty good, perhaps they have been deceiving/misleading in that many of the comments do not actually indicate the level of reading of the material that I had originally thought to be the case.  Or, another way of putting it:  some of you are perhaps “winging it” a bit more than I thought when it comes to commenting on the readings.
• Folks weren’t able to take “the next step” and do an analysis on their own. In other words, perhaps the problem is not (at least not exclusively) about not covering or not understanding the readings and discussions.  Perhaps the problem was that there was some kind of disconnect between reading an analysis of how kairos or ethos or whatever “works” in relation to DNA or the Challenger Disaster or what-have-you and actually writing one of these analysis yourself.
• Folks just ran out of time and/or budgeted time poorly. I say this because I sense a bit of “rushed” finish in many of these projects.

Now, of these three possibilities, the most difficult one to address is the first one.  If you haven’t been keeping up the reading and/or doing the reading as thoroughly as you should, it’s awfully hard to make up for that now.  Furthermore, it is not going to get any easier; after all, the reading for the second part of the term is more demanding and the final will be based on the assumption that you have read the material closely throughout the term.

The second and third causes are more easily addressed.  I am happy to meet with people about revising this project and hopefully, this experience has better prepared you for the second short rhetorical analysis.  And if you didn’t budget your time properly before, well, don’t do that again, and now you know better.

I will give you the opportunity to revise this project though.  There are four simple rules for such a revision:

• You need to meet with me to discuss a revision, either in person, or, if that won’t work, via Skype.
• You need to come to me to discuss a revision with some sort of a plan– if you come to me and say “I want to just fix what you told me to fix,” then my response will be “what might that be?” So the best thing you can do (if you want to revise, at least) is to listen to my comments while reading your essay, write up some notes, and then make an appointment with me.
• You have but one opportunity to revise this– that is, no showing me a copy and then saying “is it an A now?” and then showing me another version.
• Revisions of this first short rhetorical analysis are due by midnight on December 6.

And I should also mention that there won’t be a similar opportunity for a revision with the last short project because of time constraints.