Posts
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10/29: Returning to Your Collaborative History
Access your recent blog post, BP3 where you wrote about your history of collaboration within a discourse community and used Bruffee to help you reflect on your collaboration. Give your post a re-read and think about if this collaboration experience is something you want to develop for your next major assignment, the Collaborative History Project. In pairs or small groups, share your posts with each other. Identify the questions you have about the Collaborative History Project and how you want to present your own history of collaboration within a community. Go back to your writing from class on 10/22 where you reflected on your recent collaboration in-class. Since you will be…
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10/24: Introducing the Collaborative History Project
Modes of Collaboration We’ll take a little more time today to review the readings you presented last class. Wendy and Yuantong will kick us off by presenting on Beck’s and Ofgang’s pieces. We used our class time to discuss collaborative writing and the ethics of working with A.I. HOMEWORK Carefully READ instructions for our next assignment, the Collaborative History Project and come to class with any questions you have. Take a look at this example of the Collaborative History Project from ENGL 201W in Spring 2024. It might also be helpful to look brieflt at these models of collaborative writing: McNamee & Miley and Efthymiou & Zea.
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10/22: Group Presentations
You’re leading class today! I’ll give you time in each of your groups to reconvene about presenting your assigned reading(s) to the class. As a reminder, 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. Individual Writing Take a few minutes to reflect on how this recent collaboration worked. How would you describe the goals of your group work for today’s class? How did your group structure work or divide labor to fulfill your goals? What did you do together? What did you…
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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…
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10/8: Kenneth Bruffee Introduces Collaborative Learning to College English Teachers
RHETORICAL SITUATION We’ll begin by orienting ourselves to Bruffee’s “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind’” (available on Brightspace) by understanding the rhetorical situation of this piece. We did this with Gee earlier in the semester; specifically, we will chart what we know about the author, audience, and text to take stock of the information we have going into this reading. Group Work In your groups, (quickly) answer the following questions. You should use textual evidence from Bruffee’s article, and I welcome you to use any relevant personal evidence, as well: Within your groups, you will need to assign the following roles: scribe, presenter, and observer. After you’ve developed an…
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10/1: The History of Collaboration
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…
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9/19: Working With Artifacts & Genres
I’ll be using the words artifacts and genres interchangeably today as we move through an exercise in preparation for Project 1, the Discourse Community Analysis. HOMEWORK Your in-class writing in response to your artifact/genre is a draft of BP2. As a reminder, here is the prompt: According to Johns, genres enable communication within a discourse community and represent the “values, needs, and practices of the community that produces them” (56). What is the genre or artifact that represents your discourse community? Who is the author? For whom, specifically, is your genre composed? How does it represent the “values, needs, and practices” of your discourse? Finish composing BP2 in a post…
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9/17: Discourse & Conflict
Review Project 1 We will review your Discourse Community Analysis project, and I’ll address questions or concerns you have. What does conflict look like? So far we’ve talked about discourse communities in ways that are relatively neutral; however, power, struggle, and conflict can also be a part of existing in and moving between communities. As people move between discourse communities where they practice new ways of engaging with people, texts, and languages, values and beliefs can sometimes be in tension. For example, Johns presents examples of people feeling alienated from their families as they become more literate or fluent in academic discourse communities; alternately, Johns offers another case of a…
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9/12: Discourse Communities, Genres, and Power
We’ll focus on two goals today: understanding Ann M. Johns’ text “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice” and assigning Project 1, the Discourse Community Analysis. Take a look at Johns (52-53) for some examples of recreational and professional communities she gives. Take a minute or two to list some of your recreational and professional communities. Discourse Communities & Their Genres In class, we defined genre as ways to classify or categorize written or graphic communication. Johns indicates that “communities use written discourses that enable members to keep in touch with each other, carry on discussions, explore controversies, and advance their aims; these genres are their vehicles for communication” (56). Johns…
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9/10: Understanding Gee’s Theories of Discourse Community
We’ll begin by reading a couple of paragraphs of Gee’s “Literacy, Discourse, Linguistics: An Introduction” (1989) together. Group Work In groups, you will be assigned a section of Gee’s text to closely read. Using the materials provided to create a poster, please produce the following: Each group will share their work with the class, and we will take any questions, critiques, or additional readings of Gee before moving on. Individual In-Class Writing Gee describes Discourse as “a sort of ‘identity kit’ which comes complete with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act, talk, and often write, so as to take on a particular role that others will recognize”…
