Attendance, Participation, and Activities – 10 points: This class is unique in that it is highly dependent on the participation of all of the attendants.  Participation includes maintaining your blog, arriving to synchronous meetings on time, sharing your reflections on each day’s materials, playing an active role in online and in-class discussions and activities, and offering thoughtful insights of others’ opinions, both online and in synchronous meetings. Your opinion is valuable and your insight will help to make the class a democratic, practical, successful experience.

Notes (12 posts @ 5 points each = 60 points): Notes are due Thursdays before 2:30pm on your blog. No notes can be submitted after the deadline, since they’re meant to be used for our class discussion. But to allow for unexpected circumstances, you’re welcome to work ahead, and you only need to complete 12 notes posts total, leaving you a week off of your choosing. These notes should be written in bullet pointed, informal style, and may be written in whichever language you’re most comfortable writing in. Consider them an opportunity to summarize the main takeaways from class materials, organize your thoughts, play with new ideas, and come up with questions that you think need to be discussed in class. You are also encouraged to include your own examples or illustrations. Please follow these instructions:

1. Create a new post on your blog for each week of notes. The title of the post should be the week’s theme– i.e. “Communicating Citizenship”
2. The first few lines of each reflection should clearly state the authors or titles of the materials assigned. Each week’s notes should respond to all assigned materials for that week.
3. Include both summary + analysis. Engage with multiple parts of the material. Summarize the main ideas and then analyzing them by challenging, tying together, adding to, questioning, or illustrating with examples.
4. Respond to the week’s prompt available in the course schedule page.
5. Include at least one short quote (with page # where applicable) from each material.
6. Finish with at least two thoughtful questions about the week’s theme.
7. At the bottom of your notes, give yourself a grade (i.e. 4/5) using the rubric below. I’ll email you if I adjust this grade.

 Why do we post notes? The notes assignment is designed to help you build a bank of your own reflections about a diverse array of materials related to communication and migration and to flex your analysis muscles. Each bullet point can help you distill main ideas and give you fodder for your final project. They aren’t designed to be beautiful pieces of writing, and you do not need to spend time making sure they are grammatically or stylistically perfect. The goal is at the end of the semester as you are writing your final paper, these notes act as supporting evidence of everything you already know about communication and migration. You can borrow quotes, ideas, and questions from your notes to write your final paper.

Peer Review (5 points): In the last month of the semester, you will be grouped with a couple of your classmates for a peer review of the final papers.  You will read and comment on these peers’ papers, helping them to strengthen their work.  To receive credit for your peer review, you must upload both of your edited peers’ papers (using Track Changes view in Microsoft Word), as well as the peer review worksheet for each peer in your small group (see class calendar).  Peer reviews must be posted by the deadline; late reviews will receive zero credit.

Final Project (20 points): Your final project will be comprised of a narrative analysis of a migration-related artifact of your choosing.  To assist you with the paper writing process, we will engage in some practice narrative analysis in class. The paper should be 8-10 pages in length, use Times New Roman, 12pt, double-spaced font, and 1-inch margins.  To receive credit for your final paper, you must turn in your paper on Nov 12, and submit a revised version after peer review on Dec 10. See instructions here.

Final Project Presentation (5 points): Your paper presentation should consist of a filmed five-minute overview of your final paper using both audio and visuals.