Wednesday, March 5

Interview Practice: Talking to Strangers and/or People You Know (15 min)

Thinking about your idea for a research project, who is one person who could be good to talk with?

It could be someone to help guide you on tips for where to look or what to focus on in your writing. Or, it could be someone you would want to interview for your research project. Or both.

Read “Step one” in this source about using an interview for a research project (this is also relevant if you just want to talk to someone for tips, too, if you are not going to incorporate an interview into your paper)

Examples of people to contact:

  • one of your old guidance counselors or teachers on what the climate of your school was at a given time
  • a former principal about tips on how to look up how funding for schools works
  • a family friend who works in a private industry or public service that is relevant to your project
  • a newspaper reporter who covered a story relevant to your research project
  • someone at Baruch who works in a program you are researching or who was around during a particular historical time period of interest to you
  • former students at a school you are researching
  • a local expert on education policy or research
  • someone at the NYC department of education
  • someone at your former school district office or another district office of interest to you
  • Something else! This is not an exhaustive list

Once you decide on a person to contact, write down some other things you need:

  • their contact information
  • if you are going to email or call them (or something else, if appropriate, like texting or direct messaging on social media–would only do that for people you are already friendly with or close with). Explain why (e.g., do you know this person is bad at email? do you know they hate the phone?)
  • if there is someone who can help introduce you to this person (e.g., a former teacher who knows the principal well and can vouch for you and/or set up an introductory email)
  • A brief 1-2 sentence script that:
    • introduces yourself
    • explains what you are working on
    • politely asks if you can speak with them about your project
    • signs off and thanks them for their time/consideration

Finally, write down two possible interview questions (just for practice, whether you interview this person or not). See Step two of this source on interviews for research projects. Other considerations for writing interview questions:

  • Make sure your questions are open-ended and cannot be answered with “yes” or “no.”
  • Ask questions like “what do you mean by that?” or other questions that can be follow-up questions after their initial responses that can help clarify positions (even if you understand what they mean, asking this kind of follow-up question can elicit a clearer answer as they polish up their response in a better way)
  • Be thoughtful of ordering of questions, especially people you are talking to who were directly involved in something you are researching. They could get defensive or hesitant to speak with you. So, ask “friendly” questions like “what are you proud of in your work” or “what are your values” or lighthearted and less serious questions like “what did you want to do when you were a kid” that gives people a chance to not be in that defensive position too much.
  • Asking short questions is better than really long questions that can be confusing to interviewees. If a question has too many components, you will get answers that are disorganized. Short questions with follow-up questions help break things down.

Think about small talk and starting the interview to build a rapport. Include a reminder about purpose of interview. One more step: build into the beginning of your interview something like, “is it okay if I record you so I can reference it later for my paper?” [how would you record? let’s talk about that].

Interview Practice: Conducting an Interview (30 min)

What are some topics you all feel you could be interviewed about? What do you feel like an expert in? Think about that.

Because I don’t want you too comfortable, I’m going to randomly assign you a partner. When you interview someone, it should feel a little awkward and uncomfortable because it is a performance and it is with someone you don’t know super well.

Once you are with your partner ask them about their expert subject. Review Step three from the resource on interviewing, write two questions, and try it out! Interview each other.

One more step: build into the beginning of your interview something like, “is it okay if I record you so I can reference it later for my paper?” [how would you record? let’s talk about that].

Okay, let me have two volunteers. One person to interview and another person to be interviewed. Come up to the front. Let’s try it out.

What are your thoughts on our brave volunteers?

Look back at your questions for your potential contact person for your project. How might you revise them? What do you think?

Searching for Academic Sources (30 min)

Other than talking people, you’ll be doing some reading. This will be review for some of you, but it is a review worth taking the time for.

Okay: ACADEMIC SOURCES!

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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. If you select “Articles,” you can check the box that will only include academic journal articles.

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 research project. Do this for 5 minutes. Share with a partner what you found and why you think it might be a good source to use.

Next class, we will talk about searching for sources from the wider internet, which the Carillo and Horning reading will be helpful for thinking through.

Podcast Post Set-Up (10 min)

For the remainder of the semester, there will be 4 “podcast posts” to Brightspace’s discussion board.

Each of you will write one of those 4 posts. When you are NOT writing a post, you are commenting on the post.

This space is for us to write out ideas for our collaborative work on the podcast.

The first podcast post, due March 12, will be about some ideas for the podcast. These are short post that are supposed to be pretty informal, just getting ideas out and asking questions, etc.

So, let’s sign up for a Podcast Post here.

Podcast Roles (5 min)

Producer: coordinate norms for collaboration, coordinate task schedule, create meeting agendas, coordinate meetings, take meeting minutes, coordinate deadlines and reminders for all group members, stays in touch with Prof. Libertz. Will help with other things: research, fact-checking, script writing support, ideas, coordinating and conducting interviews, etc.

Narrator: record self narrating episode while re-recording as needed, to include: monologues, commentary while transitioning between segments, reading end credits. Will help with other things: research, fact-checking, script writing support, ideas, coordinating and conducting interviews, etc.

Script Writer: writing and revising drafts of scripts, mapping out organizing the structure of the episode, coordinating feedback from group on script. May help with other things, too, as needed.

Audio Editor: editing multiple audio files together for the podcast episode (e.g., narrator monologues or commentary, interviews, music, sound effects), thinking about volume, audio quality, etc. May help with others things, too, as needed–especially early on when there is less for audio editor to do.

Start thinking about the role you would like to take on. And, if there is another role you might want to create that you think could be useful.

For Wednesday, March 12, your private writing will be a space to reflect on taking risks, your history of comfort in group projects and creating things in general, and a reflection about your identity.

Specifically:

Of the roles of producer, narrator, script writer, and audio editor: What role sounds most interesting to you? Why? What role do you think you could succeed in most based on your past experience? Why? What role most relates to future goals you have in life? Why? Consider, also, the “Digital Participation Gap.” What possible way could that help you think about a role you choose? Why or why not? Answer all of these questions.

Next Time

  • Lateness
  • Research proposal meetings today after class and at 12:15pm.
  • Rhetorical Analysis Draft AND Cover Letter by Thursday night
  • Grade boost planning! See grading contract
  • Read Carillo and Horning on Monday
  • Reaction post on Monday
  • Keep thinking about podcast
  • Podcast Post 1 and comments on March 12
  • Private writing on March 12 about roles