Research Question and Academic Discipline (10-15 min)
I’ll give you feedback on your research question criteria explanation as well as your reflective annotated bibliography entry (more on that later in class).
There are different kinds of intellectual work that gets done at a university. And there are definitely a few different ways of categorizing them, but here is one way we are going to test out:
- Humanities: using methods of criticism or interpretive analysis as well as historical research that thinks about questions of human activity and culture. The humanities make room for questions that are deeply reliant on contextual circumstances that are difficult to observe on a grand scale. E.g., English, History, Philosophy, Cultural Studies.
- Natural Sciences: using observation and experimentation in quantitative and qualitative ways to measure and attempt to understand things that happen naturally like the ways bees pollinate vegetation or how matter changes state. E.g., Biology, Chemistry, Physics.
- Social Sciences: using quantitative and qualitative methods (e.g., experimental, observational) that resemble methods in natural sciences to study human activity and culture. E.g., Economics, Political Science, Sociology, Psychology.
- Technology and Formal Sciences: Disciplines that focus on abstract systems or heavily technical stuff (admittedly, this is kind of a mish-mash of stuff). Logic, mathematics, computer science, etc. all focus on high abstraction for systems to think with. E.g., Engineering, Computer Science, Logic, Mathematics.
- Arts: Art makes knowledge! Writing a play, using graffiti, making a film, etc. Any arts can also be a way of thinking in the university. E.g., Graphic Design, Photography, Fiction or Nonfiction Writing, Filmmaking)
I’m curious about the spread of research questions that we have for class. On this Google doc, post your research question in the category of academic disciplines that you think best fits your research question.
You can draw from multiple areas! Interdisciplinarity is good! But it is also nice to think about where your “home” is for a given research question you have. Will help ground what secondary sources you uncover or even any primary sources you analyze (and how you analyze them).
Documentation Style (20-25 min)
Different kinds of academic disciplines have different kinds of values and priorities. And we see this even with how information is cited! That’s why there are several different kinds of documentation styles.
In this activity, we are going to figure out what those values might be based on the requirements in certain documentation styles.
In groups of 3-4, you will be assigned one of four possible documentation styles (there are more, but here are 4 of the big ones–IEEE is another big one, for instance):
- APA
- Chicago
- CSE
- MLA
For your group, note the following on this webpage from the UW-Madison Writing Center page on the right menu bar:
- Tense of verbs introducing source information for in-text citation: past or present? (e.g., “Foucault argues that…” or “Haraway theorized that…”)
- What information is prioritized in in-text citation? (e.g., year, page number, paraphrase of information, summary, direct quote)
- What is the method for in-text citation? (e.g., parentheses when source is mentioned in sentence, parentheses at end of sentence, footnote, endnote)
- What information is prioritized in reference list? Think about what comes in the first three to four positions in most reference list entries (e.g., name of author or authors, year, title of work, journal, pages, publisher)
- Think about how the information is formatted in the reference list (e.g., first name included or just initials for author in reference list? how is the reference ordered–alphabetical, order in which source appears in text, chronological, etc.?)
- Is there any flexibility involved in how you can cite things, format the reference list, etc.? If so, what?
- What other formatting is required? (e.g., title page structure and information included, where and how page numbers appear, headings, tables, figures)
- Note any “tips” that stood out to you from the handout you clicked on for in-text citations or for the reference list (or for anything else).
As you hunt for this information as a group, make sure a group member is writing down what you notice about your documentation style in this Google Doc! Take about 10 minutes to work this out.
Okay, let’s look at what each group wrote up. After comparing your documentation style to the notes the other three groups took on their documentation style, take about 2-3 minutes to do some individual writing to respond to the following questions:
- Why does your documentation style have this verb tense, or this information prioritized, or this method of expressing a citation? What advantages or disadvantages are there to this?
- Which disciplines (e.g., humanities, physical sciences, social sciences, history, English, engineering) do you think would benefit from your documentation style? Why?
After you had some time to think about this, we will take 5-10 minutes to discuss your thoughts.
Think more about your research question, the kinds of scholars you are going to engage, and the right documentation style that would work best for you and your research.
Writing Group Coordination (10 min)
Based on our midterm survey, I wanted to make sure we made time today for you to coordinate with your Writing Groups to plan for getting drafts to each other and to set deadlines for getting feedback to one another. This is for the Rhetorical Analysis final draft, which is due on November 5th.
Reflective Annotated Bibliography (5 min)
Since you tried this format out already for the assignment you had due today, I won’t spend too much time on this prompt. I’m going to give you feedback on this, so look for that, but I want to know just generally: How did it go? Do you have questions? Things you aren’t sure about? This was a practice run for the larger Reflective Annotated Bibliography assignment due November 12th.
I’m interested in hearing how long it took you to complete the entry since I haven’t done this assignment with students before. I have a Zoom poll so fill it out to let me know how long it took. I’m curious about this because I don’t want you to do this for every source you cite if this takes a really long time to do.
Next Time (2-5 min)
-There are no Writing Group meetings with me on Tuesday, November 3rd nor is there anything due that day since it is Election Day. Wanted to do that in case you needed time to vote or just wanted some time to relax–I feel like Election Day should be a national holiday!
-You should also look over the feedback I gave on your Midterm Learning Narrative. Just sent those back through Blackboard earlier this afternoon. Your final paper for the course will be more-involved version of this kind of writing.
-The final draft of your Rhetorical Analysis is due by 11:59pm on November 5th. Again, make sure you are all set with your Writing Groups to be prepared to have some feedback from one another to revise for the final draft. Don’t forget that the final draft will be submitted on our website, following some genre conventions of blog post/article (see prompt for instructions, lesson plan from 10/22, and Learning Module 6).