Classroom Observations

As part of your experience this semester, I'm asking that you observe three of the same writing class in action (choose from 1100, 1200, 3810, 3880, etc. or even one at a community college). You should, of course, get the teacher's permission, explaining from the outset that you're there to observe, take notes, and to think about what a researcher might find in such a place on which to conduct a study. Please let the teacher know that you will not use his/her name or the names of students, nor any other identifying information (course section number, time, etc.), and that the only ones who will read your notes and reflections will be your professor and other students in this class.

Format: While you're in the class, you should take notes in a double-entry format where the left column is a "factual" recording of your observations and the right is your reflection on those events, either at the time or later. "Factual," in this instance, refers to such information as what a student or teacher is doing, what order the class moves in, where the teacher stands, how he/she talks, how many students are present, how many are male/female, etc — descriptive data. The "reflections" column, however, offers you a place to think through what you're seeing, ask some questions, jot down some thoughts on possible research projects that might answer questions you're having.

Finally, you should write a brief, two-page, single-spaced reflection on your field notes. In this reflection, you want to think of connections you make among those notes — from both observations — and note possible research methodologies or studies that you might use to conduct research to answer questions that arose during observation. The goal here isn't to construct one research question or study, but to think of the possibilities and discuss them in relation to the phenomena you observed while in the classes.

Due Date: March 7, 2007

Annotated Bibliography (PhD Students)

Using the "rhetorical précis" as a model, doctoral students will create a 10- to 12-entry annotated bibliography as their midterm assignment. Each student will choose one of the following 'emerging' methodologies to research and on which to construct their bibliographies:

• Feminist Methodology (you might apply this to another one or think about it abstractly)
• Critical Discourse Analysis
• Rhetorical Analysis (may include Visual Rhetorics)
• Assessment
• Ethnograpy in Digital Environments
• Usability Studies
• New Media Studies (may include Visual Rhetorics)
• Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines (WAC/WID)

Significant to this project may be to look both at classic explanations and critiques of the research method(s) as well as innovative or expanding conceptions. For example, the Ethnography in Digital Environments bib would need to look at Geertz's early work on traditional ethnography and "thick description" for obvious reasons, but would focus primarily on more recent work on digital spaces. This move to recognize the past, present, and future will be especially useful in making the doctoral students methodological "experts" in the second half of the semester so that they might lead discussion as we move into the "Research in Electronic Environments" section of the course.

I would like the doctoral students to post their bibs on Drupal, as well as turn in a paper copy to me on the night that these are due.

Due Date: March 21, 2007

Midterm Presentations (MA/PhD Students)

Around midterm, students will each have 15 min. to present their work to the rest of the class. MA students will share their discoveries from their Midterm Exams, leading the class in a further discussion of the connections they made in constructing those texts. PhD students will share copies of the Annotated Bibliographies and discuss what they learned in the process.

The primary goal of the presentations is to present the class with the "new" knowledge you've constructed, especially for the PhD students who have read up to 20 new texts. How do those texts complicate what we've read already about methods/methodologies?

There will be no assigned reading for that week so that students may prepare for their presentations (in whatever fashion they choose: PowerPoint, handouts, note cards, lecture, etc.).

Due Date: March 21, 2007

Midterm Exams (MA Students)

Question 1: (50 pts.)

Throughout the beginning of the course, we looked at various “traditional” research methods in composition studies: case study, ethnography, teacher-research, textual-discourse analysis. For anyone paying careful attention, it must have seemed that the first three of these overlapped in several ways. Write an analysis of the chief similarities (overlaps) and differences in these methods and methodologies. (Here, I’m relying on Sandra Harding’s distinctions between the “activity” and the philosophical or epistemological “assumptions” underlying that activity.)

In framing your response, you might use Marilyn Sternglass’s “case study exemplar” (or one you’ve read from another class) as one text for foregrounding these distinctions, pointing out how Sternglass’s project might have been different were it an ethnography or a product of teacher-research – or might it be more accurately characterized as teacher-research? Why not?

While you need not rely on Sternglass’s article as a focal point of your response, choosing some other method of development, your analysis should articulate the differences and/or similarities of these three methods based on the articles we have read for class.

Question 2: (50 pts.)

Consider the following scenario carefully and write a response that uses various texts from our historical methodologies section of the course:

You have decided to conduct historical research on composition and/or rhetoric at East Carolina University using the archives at Joyner library. You have access to the various texts we saw when we visited the archive, as well as other texts that you’ve found through various finding aids at the library and through conversation with the Archivist. Using the articles we’ve read, explain what theoretical and practical problems you might have as an historian of composition and/or rhetoric, using an archive like the one at Joyner. You will want to explain, as well, how you might attempt to produce or compose valid histories given the problems that you highlight in your analysis: what steps might you take to answer some of challenges to archival historiography?

Requirements:
Length: 5 – 6 pages for each question
Format: MLA Style, with Works Cited page

Due Date:

Major Projects

The primary outcome for your Major Project should be your understanding the complexities of conducting a particular research project of your choosing, paying particular attention to how your chosen methods and methodologies might assist and simultaneously create (productive) tension in the research itself. These projects will be developed in consultation with the professor and will be drafted and workshopped as part of class.

Your finished products should do the following:

1. propose a research question relevant to Composition and Rhetoric (broadly defined in consultation with the professor);
2. survey a sampling of the published research already available;
3. articulate methods and methodologies to collect and process the data; and
4. demonstrate an awareness of the possible ethical or scholarly concerns for a researcher who might conduct this project.

After midterm, students will write short proposals for a research project, conference with the professor, and then begin work on the four parts of the Major Project.

The first two parts of the assignment involve your identifying a "gap" in the research or identifying how a particular project might further established thinking. Parts three and four address your awareness that any research project involved ethical choices/dilemmas and that any method/methodology, no matter how well-intentioned, can be envisioned to have drawbacks or create problems for researchers. Working out these often productive tensions is a key component of becoming a disciplined and responsible researcher in the academic community.

Proposals and Drafts Due according to the Schedule
Draft One Due: April 18, 2007
Final Draft Due: May 2, 2007

Presentation of Major Project

On the last night of class (?????), all students will be given 20 minutes to present their research projects to the class in four distinct parts:

1. Background: Students should explain how they came to be interested in this particular research question or topic and discuss how they wound their way through the research (5 min. max).
2. The Gap: Students should offer the class a type of "lit review" wherein they explain what the background literature has shown them and where they found gaps in the previous scholarship. For this part of the presentation, I'm particularly interested in your ability to problematize, to see how conversations surround research questions and where you might "put your oar in" as part of this conversation (5 min. max).
3. The Study: Students should finish their presentations by explaining the research study they might undertake in order to answer their research question (fill the gap, or partially fill the gap). Student might share copies of Interview Questions or Survey Questions they have designed, or they might share copies of evaluative criteria/outcomes/rubrics that they'll use to assess written texts -- whatever products they might design to help collect data.
4. Discussion: Students who are presenting will then stand for questions from the audience. They should perceive of this as a peer-response type activity, just as they might find at a professional conference, where the questions and answers might help revise the Major Projects before they are finally due the following week.

Presentations make up a part of the grade for the Major Project, serving as a "draft" in the process.

Students who need any audio-visual equipment for their presentations (i.e., laptop and projector, overhead/transparencies, etc.) should let me know two days in advance of the presentation.