10/10: Your History of Collaboration
We’ll begin today by revisiting Bruffee. Do you have questions or thoughts about the article?
We’ll look together at p. 642, where Bruffee offers a definition that is related to how we’ve understood discourse communities: “A community of knowledgeable peers is a group of people who accept, and whose work is guided by, the same paradigms and the same code of values and assumptions.” Think about the work you just completed in your Discourse Community Analysis assignment. How does this definition align with or deviate from Gee’s and Johns’?
INDIVIDUAL WRITING
Think again of the many discourse communities in your life, but this time think specifically about when you’ve collaborated “in a community of knowledgable peers” (Bruffee, p. 642) toward a common goal. You might want to continue thinking about the community you just wrote about OR you may want to think of another one.
- Take a couple minutes to write about one or two times when you’ve collaborated with “knowledgeable peers” in a specific community toward a common goal.
- What was the goal that you worked towards?
- What did you teach your peers?
- What did you learn from your peers?
- Describe your accomplishments during this collaboration.
This is a draft of BP3.
LOOKING AHEAD
We’ll assign reading groups today. You will spend some time dividing labor in your group and making a plan for how you will get work done over the next week.
We will not meet in person until Tuesday, October 22 because Tuesday, 10/15 is a Monday schedule, and class on Thursday, 10/17 is cancelled (I will be at a conference).
HOMEWORK
FOR TUES, 10/15: WRITE BP3 (no less than 300 words) about your history of collaboration within a discourse community. In your post, quote Bruffee and explain the quotation in your own words. Include a citation, as I’ve done below. Remember to engage some of the questions above: What was the goal that you worked towards collaboratively? What did you teach your peers? What did you learn from your peers? Describe your accomplishments.
FOR TUES, 10/22–READING GROUPS: For the next week, you will be working in small groups towards a presentation of your group’s assigned reading:
- Group A-Jenna, Tyler, Willian: Read Deborah Brandt’s excerpt from her book The Rise of Writing. This excerpt explores ghostwriting, paid writing that an author does (or multiple authors do) that will ultimately be attributed to a different author or organization.
- Group B-Arman, Ishtiaque, Nicolas, Omar: Read Andrew Marantz’s and Aímee Morrison’s articles about writing with artificial intelligence.
- Group C-Andy, Beatriz, Ellen, Francesca, George, Kaz, Robert, Yianna: Read Julie Beck’s and Erik Ofgang’s articles about collaboratively writing with other people around a common interest.
In class on October 22, your group will present their assigned reading(s) to the class. You should summarize the reading(s) you’ve been assigned, identifying the author’s/authors’ main claim(s), any controversies they bring up, and important takeaways of the reading(s). I encourage you to choose relevant quotations as evidence in your presentation. Take a few minutes today to chat with your group members, share your contact information, and discuss how you will divide work over the next week.
REMINDER: We will not meet in person until Tuesday, October 22 because Tuesday, 10/15 is a Monday schedule, and class on Thursday, 10/17 is cancelled (I will be at a conference).
Work Cited
Bruffee, Kenneth. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” College English, vol. 46, no. 7, 1984, pp. 635-652.