In-class Writing Prompt

Think back to a time in your life when you worked with others in a meaningful way. Maybe you were on a sports team or a community organization. Describe this collaboration. How did you and your partner(s) work together towards a common goal? How was labor divided? Did different people have different roles? Were there more experienced peers that helped those with less experience? Give as many details as possible.

In groups

Share your in-class writing with your group and consider the following together: Compare your collaborative experiences with each other. What similarities do you notice across your experiences? What differences?

After sharing our writing as a group, we’ll look together at Fitzgerald and Ianetta’s excerpt from The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors that focuses on authorship studies (you can find this piece in Brightspace). This excerpt gives a brief history of how authorship has been understood over time, how the early history of authorship, beginning with the classical period, understood writing as divinely inspired. Through the Renaissance and Romantic periods, authorship “evolved” and was seen as writerly genius and a marker of originality. Have you ever felt the effects of these old myths about writing and authorship in your own lives? Or does your writing today–within the networks of social media & document sharing–look totally different than this western history of authorship?

Final Discourse Community Analysis Check-in

We’ll take some time to answer questions about the the Discourse Community Analysis that’s due on Tuesday, October 8th before class.

Homework

READ Bruffee’s article “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind’” (available on Brightspace) before next class. I will divide the article into sections and assign groups of students to focus on separate parts to present to the class.

FINISH the Discourse Community Analysis that’s due on Tuesday, October 8th before class.