Guest Speaker (15 min)
I’m going to come around and give you credit for your journal.
Presentation on NYC and CUNY-related project.
How did research factored into you doing this work? What kind of writing have you done to incorporate this research and how have you reshaped your writing depending on your audience?
Introduction to Research + Research Project + Research Questions (30-45 min)
Read the following:
“Section 5: Introduction” by Seth Graves
“The Research Process” by Seth Graves, Lucas Corcoran, and Kamal Belmihoub
Across both readings, post at least three annotations related to connecting your personal experience to research you’ve done (based on how research is described in the readings).
In December, you will turn in the first draft of your research project. By the end of the semester, you will turn in another draft.
For now, we are going to co-create a prompt for a research project. I want to do this first by referring back to the learning goals for the course. Let’s find the syllabus: where is it?
I also want to talk to you about the work you did on AI so far in rhetorical analysis and what excited or interested you in your literacy narrative writing, too. We are going to research something about technology and write about it. I think the easiest path is AI. You already have two sources you can work with ready to go. But we don’t have to go in that direction.
What are your thoughts? Here are the two options, as I see it:
- Research your topic connected to AI (easier)
- Choose a new topic to research that somehow relates to technology and/or writing (a bit harder, will take more preparation, but can be done)
Finally, I find it important to collaborate in research–research can be done in a solitary way but I think even solitary research is at its best when there is at least regular conversations and writing to others about the research topic. So I’d like to keep you all in groups. On November 11 and 13 I will be meeting with you as groups to talk through ideas for your research projects. If we go with the AI option, then your groups are already formed. If not, then we might have to re-form groups.
So, let’s talk. What are we thinking?:
- Parasocial relationships and AI. How young teenagers are falling in love with AI and forming relationships
- How technology is affecting child development
- Online literacy rates, misinformation
- AI and limitations on creativity
Now that we have a rough sense of what we are doing, let’s talk research questions. See this handout about developing research questions. Let’s talk about this and get started. You will have to come to our meeting with some ideas about research questions on Nov 11 or Nov 13.
What are the groups? I’m going to meet with each group now to find a time to meet together that works for everyone on Nov 11 or Nov 13.
Group 1: Eva, Luke, Andre on morality/economics/risk and AI
Group 2: Nathaniel O., Garson, Bhavjit, and Ethan on socializing and AI
Group 3: Deona, Azrin, Kory, Kareem, and Kaitlin on technology and child development
Group 4: Rachel, Luciano, Wilson on digital literacy and education
Group 5: Abdel, Yamini, and Fernando on AI and limitations on creativity
Reading a Rhetorical Analysis: Balancing Lens With Analysis (30 min)
Read the draft I’m going to pass out. Like I always say: I choose drafts I admire. It is doing something cool. I only had a little time to skim through your drafts so far, but this draft was very strong in how it stakes out what its lens is and how it blends that lens with the reading. I think, like many of you, the work in revision will be one of two (or both) things:
- Being clearer on your lens and how it informs your analysis
- Having more analysis about specific parts of the text
I think this draft is strong on the first item listed above. The second one needs some work, though there is much promise here so far!
So:
- tell me how it is strong on that first list item: Being clearer on your lens and how it informs your analysis
- tell me what is working so far on the second item (Having more analysis about specific parts of the text)–and where we might push it forward. To do that, you should also have handy the text it is analyzing, which can be found here: https://openai.com/index/planning-for-agi-and-beyond/
Finding and Evaluating Sources (30 min–if time to do any of this!)
I need a volunteer to offer up a topic. Right now, we are going to try to find a source on Google and then later on Baruch’s library website (if time).
Okay, open up Google or any other popular search engine. Let’s think about some keywords for this topic (below tips adapted from former student Maria Frants’ project for ENG 2150 to come up with tips for finding information online):
- Think about your topic. What are some words or small phrases that can describe what you are trying to research? Tip: Think of synonyms!!
- In searches, use quotation marks around a short phrase “” and all results populated will include that phrase
- In searches, use Boolean Operators- simple words (AND, OR, NOT or AND NOT) used as conjunctions to combine or exclude keywords in a search
- AND: both keywords will be present in all result documents
- OR: one or both keywords will be present in all result documents
- NOT or AND NOT: all result documents will contain the first keyword but will specifically exclude documents that also contain the second
Tip: Use parentheses () as a way to combine boolean operators for an even more specific search
Example: Searching (pollution or deforestation) and climate change returns documents containing: pollution and climate change; deforestation and climate change; pollution and deforestation and climate change; but does not return pollution or deforestation when climate change is not mentioned.
Let’s see what comes up. How do we decide what to click on? How do we decide how to adjust our search?
Try finding some sources on your own that could be useful for your next paper. Do this for 5 minutes. Share with a partner what you found and why you think it might be a good source to use.
Okay: ACADEMIC SOURCES! (if time)
They will likely be more challenging to read because they are written primarily for other experts, while you are experts-in-training as students pursuing a bachelor’s degree. You will have to take things slow and learn a kind of reading that we have talked about before when reading difficult things. This kind of reading are almost exclusively arguments about trying to claim (albeit partial and limited) knowledge about something after an extensive effort and trying as hard as possible to understand it.
Since this work is so much effort and so much care is put into it, lots of safeguards are utilized, namely peer review. Academic books and journal articles have editors who review submissions and then, if they deem that it fits the journal’s mission and they see it as potentially good work, they send it off to reviewers. Reviewers are other experts who review what is sent to them and decide if the submission should be rejected, accepted, or if they have feedback for the author to use to revise and resubmit the piece. Quite often, submissions are either rejected or the submission is sent back to the author to revise. This review process gives another layer of scrutiny to these scholars’ work, which is why writing produced by academics is more likely to be of higher quality than popular sources. However, that high quality comes with a price of being fairly technical.
So how do you know if something is an academic source? Well, two questions to start, depending on what type of text it is:
- Is it a book? If so, it should be published by a book press housed at another university (e.g., University of Minnesota Press, Harvard University Press, University of Pittsburgh Press) or by one of the few private academic publishers (e.g., Routledge, Parlor Press). These presses have different “series” that correspond with different academic fields (e.g., sociology, economics, Black studies, rhetoric, biology) and these different series have editors who work with reviewers.
- Is it an article? If so, it should be an academic journal that is usually housed at a university or non-profit. For instance, a journal in my field called The Journal of Basic Writing is housed at CUNY and is co-edited by two professors at CUNY, one of whom is Cheryl C. Smith from Baruch’s English department (and another Baruch professor, Lisa Blankenship, is an associate editor). Academic journals always have editors who are academics in a field that the journal specailizes in. There is usually an editorial board with several other academics who help out, as well.
So, you could, of course, just skim journals and book series that are in fields related to your topic to find academic sources. You could also use different combinations of keywords and Boolean operators like we went over earlier to find them through the library’s website.
So let’s do that now. Let’s throw out a keyword and try it out.
First we:
- Define our search (usually “Books + Articles” works)
- Type in some keywords
- Hit enter
- And then start browsing the lists. Make adjustments just like we talked about when looking at popular sources (e.g., using quotations, using Boolean operators). You can also use filters on the side or “Advanced Search” to add more criteria to focus your results.
Next Time
-Class cancelled on Monday! We are starting to figure out our final projects. You’ll meet with me and your group on Monday or Wednesday (or another day if we can’t find a good time).
-So, yeah: meet with me! Bring a draft of your research question.
-Here is the prompt for your next weekly writing in your journal for at least 10 minutes, due Nov 13: Re-read the last 6ish weeks of journal entries. What stands out to you as most important? What have you valued reflecting about most? How have things changed for you since you wrote that entry or entries? Essentially, what I want you to do in this journal entry is to reread your past reflections and see what has had the most meaning and value for you so far. What stands out to you and why?
-By end of day on Thursday, November 14 you are going to send me a revised version of your research question.
-Nov 18 is your second draft of your rhetorical analysis.