- What I did this week:
-This week I had watched some video lectures for some of my classes as well as read some articles required alongside those video lectures.
-I tried going over other ideas on what to write for my research project since my rough draft wasn’t something I was all too proud of.
-I did a lot of studying for my history class to get past the quiz early into the week.
-I also got started on writing another paper I have due for another class. - What went well this week:
-Besides my regular classes and the work I did for them nothing else besides that.
-I still have yet to figure out how to improve my research paper to something more satisfying. - What was hard this week:
-Hardest thing was definitely my rough draft. Even after having calmed down from being overstressed, I can’t seem to wrap my head around the topic itself. It feels boring to research about as well to write, so I’m stuck on how I can truly improve it without it feeling lackluster. - To-do list:
-I have to read, even if I find it boring, up on more information on online classes. As well as adjust the thesis to state online writing classes, because I was definitely confused with the topic to write about in the early stages of writing my rough draft.
-The next thing would be the obvious of just having to study for all my other classes that I have. - Where I left off:
-Pretty much I haven’t really touched my rough draft yet(Meaning all my edits and changes that I attempted to make were immediately deleted because it made the essay worse).
-Although, however, I’ve at least managed to understand how to better state my thesis. I hadn’t wanted to make my paper seem like a copy of one of the chapters from BIAW so I forcefully changed the main idea. Obviously that wasn’t a good idea so I think I should just follow in the footsteps of that one chapter in BIAW. - Honestly, I’m disappointed I haven’t been able to properly revise and edit my rough draft. Although I have a solid idea on what to write for my thesis to truly reorganize my mess of a paper, I haven’t been able to become absorbed in the topic itself. When I can’t allow myself to enjoy researching the topic, I tend to write worse meaning it’s better to not edit my writing than to actually edit it. I don’t trust myself to write something better until I can learn to enjoy the topic again.
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We all know how catastrophic the Covid-19 pandemic had been, whether it be economically or politically everyone around the world was impacted by this pandemic. Due to not having invented any vaccines for the virus, at the time, as well as the high infection rate, governments all around the world had ordered quarantine. Adults were forced to take their jobs home, keeping their outside adventures to a minimum. This quarantine brought many significant changes to a person’s daily life. One such change could be found with all the young people, young people about children that still had to go to school. While adults had to worry about their present daily lives, children were unlucky if their present lives and possibly futures could all be severely impacted. I was a high school student when the covid pandemic hit, and it shouldn’t be a surprise when I tell you how awful school had become because of the quarantine. Basically, schools shut down for a week or so and started back up with some homework for a couple of weeks. I think it was only after a month did teachers finally figure out that they should record their lessons and send them to their students to at least try and have their students learn. However, that story is now a story of the past. Quarantine has passed, teachers have adjusted, students have adjusted, the school has transformed to a normalcy of sorts. So how bad are online classes now? Are they as bad as they were in the beginning? Have they improved from the beginning of the pandemic, or even from before the pandemic? If so, can this be a new option for learning?
To begin, we first have to understand how online learning was like before the quarantine caused by Covid-19. Online learning would usually take on an approach where they would gather many students and stuff them all into one class, such classes were called Massive Open Online Courses or otherwise known as MOOCs. MOOC classes could entail thousands of students tuning in simultaneously. These MOOCs, of course, come with their own downsides and advantages. In a book called To MOOC or Not to MOOC : How Can Online Learning Help to Build the Future of Higher Education? Sarah Porter, she explains how MOOCs can be seen as beneficial to the learning field because it encourages “active learners.” “…the University of Edinburgh had over 300,000 students registered for the six Edinburgh MOOCs that were run in 2013.” Out of these 300,000 students that had registered to join at first, only about 10% of those registered had actually attended. Such an occurrence has filtered out the students that own the initiative to stand up and learn from the other students that have no such initiative. Meaning these MOOCs can help distinguish and offer opportunities to students that can be classified as “active learners.”
- Consider your thesis Does it make a clear claim based on evidence?
-No, it does not. Honestly I think this paragraph doesn’t have a solid thesis that states the main idea in one clear and concise sentence. Instead the introduction seems to slowly meld the entire paragraph to introduce the thesis and yet even then nothing solid is stated. - How can you revise the thesis to respond to your Research Question and make a claim?
(This paragraph is in regards to the Introduction)
-To revise the thesis, I’d have to start with my research question to change it something more relative and specific. Something more similar to the chapter I had based my paper on from BIAW. The topic is way too broad, which allowed for ramblings to appear in my writing that strayed completely from the true main idea of the essay. Originally the orange/red near the end of the paragraph was meant to be the research question as well as the thesis however the entire introduction doesn’t state that. Meaning I have shrink the scale of my research to something smaller. What I would change it to would be to discuss online writing classes. Discard the Covid-19 situation, discard online schooling, and discard the majority of my sources. All of these ideas were unnecessary in the way that it wasn’t required at all to be mentioned. Missing the objective of a research paper. - What do you notice about the distribution of content?
-What I notice about the distribution of content in my writing is that there seems to be no significant problems with mainly the E and A parts of the MEAL strategy. I provide evidence, and I back it up with a sufficient explanation. The M portion of the strategy appears in the beginning of my second paragraph however it isn’t strong because of the lack of thesis statement. Thus, of course, because of the lack of the thesis the L portion of the MEAL strategy doesn’t even exist. It’s hard to link back to the thesis when the thesis doesn’t even exist to begin with. - Are there paragraphs where you’re missing one of the components?
-As stated previously, the second paragraph shown above is definitely missing the L portion while the M portion exists however lacks a thesis to use as its structure. - Are there paragraphs where you have unbalanced components (e.g. six sources but one sentence of analysis?)
If that excludes the issues I had previously discussed then no. The E and A portions of the MEAL strategy are fine, in my opinion. The true problem lies in the thesis itself. It doesn’t really exist in this paper leaving the rest of the paragraphs to ramble on about some vague and irrelevant topic. - Simply put, my plan to revise M-E-A-L in this paragraph would be to just delete it and restart. The thesis isn’t visible enough to be able to support the body paragraphs sufficiently to create a balanced MEAL.
If I couldn’t take this approach then I would start with the first sentence. Instead of beginning with the M I would state the thesis immediately. Afterwards, would I lead into the main idea of this new paragraph. Once that is finished, I would end my paragraph with the L portion of MEAL.
PS: The introduction is honestly a lost cause in my opinion. I’d rather restart from scratch than try fix bits and pieces of it at a time.