New Topic: Surveys

For those who missed our last class before Spring Break: we peer-edited our unit 2 essay, consisting of all three components (the pro-Bush text, the anti-Bush text, and the comparison).

Those who were here got full points for peer-editing.

If you’ve missed that session, you will have to find a peer editor on your own; preferably somebody who also missed class. If you take somebody who has already peer-edited an essay, let me know who it is, because this person gets extra credit! (S/he needs to show me the edited paper. It can be online, or a hard copy.) Show me your peer-edits either as a hard copy, or email them to me (only those who have missed class; the others who were here on March 7th are fine).

DUE DATE for ESSAY UNIT 2: Monday, March 23rd
Please submit ONLY HARD COPIES in class!

NEWS: I will exchange unit 3 and 4, because we need more time for the survey involved in unit 4, so we will start with this unit. Unit 3 deals with a movie of your choice, and will take less time; that’s why we’ll do this at the end of the semester (the fun comes last!!).

Today, we will introduce our Unit 4 topic: a research essay, involving a survey you create on your own.

This is the MOST IMPORTANT unit of our semester, for which you will get the most points. Look at our syllabus again: it is a Formal Research Paper including a SurveyMonkey.com survey as attachment, citations from 5 external research articles (two from your textbook, one from Morris Library, one from ERIC, and one from JSTOR; and an annotated bibliography about those 5 articles in MLA style (6-8 pages ~ 300 points ~ 30%).

FIRST STEP:

We will learn how to do professional online surveys with SurveyMonkey.com.

We will create a sample survey together in class.

This sample survey will deal with a topic we already talked about: SynchronEyes. Look at our blog: Jason, a consultant and former teacher who works for SynchronEyes has posted a comment on our class blog.

I contacted him and told him we really have some more questions, and that we are going to send him a survey to fill out. He’s awaiting our reply.

Your task: whole class work

1)
Brainstorm questions you want to ask Jason about SynchronEyes (can deal with ethics, privacy, or technological possibilities). Make sure you don’t ask things that are already published on the homepage of SynchronEyes SynchronEyes
for example, under the FAQ section!!)

2)
Create online survey on smartboard


HOMEWORK for Wednesday, March 19th:

1)
Peruse your dark blue textbook and pick one topic of your choice from the Table of Contents that deals with either

a) feminism
b) gay and lesbian rights
c) genetics and enhancement
d) liberal education and contemporary culture, or
e) race and class – social inequality.

2)
Pick two essays from your topic. For example, if you picked “feminism,” you could take the essays “Mission No Longer Impossible – Or Is It?” and “Reconstructive Feminism.” Read those essays.

3)
Prepare a handwritten or typed assembly of questions about your topic that you would like to ask other people. Bring those questions to class – they will become your survey. The questions should deal with what you generally want to know about your topic, and with something you gathered from reading the two essays.

4)
Write me a short email MEMO describing which topic and 2 articles you chose, and what aim your survey will have (what you want to find out about your topic).

CLASSWORK on Wednesday, March 19th:

1)
Find three research essays dealing with your topic (one from JSTOR, one from ERIC, and one from Morris Library).

2) Underline the passages you want to quote in your own paper (at least one per essay). Email me your quotes (the text, and the citation for your Works Cited page, so I know where your quotes come from!).

3)Email me the links to your research essays for approval.