Blog 2: Teaching Artifact Proposal

The material that I plan to revise—my Teaching Artifact—is the final research assignment for my Writing I class. I want to adapt it to use in Writing II, which I’m teaching next semester. My main goal when revising this assignment is to allow students more freedom in how they present their research. Right now, the assignment is to write a 7-pg research paper. While I want to leave students that option, I also want to open it up to invite less traditional methods of composition—students could present their research as a podcast, for example, or they could create a website. I think that inviting students to think of composition as something beyond just writing papers for class is a really important part of my job as a writing teacher, and I hope that this assignment will help do that. It will also encourage students who might have really exciting skills that maybe fall outside of structuring a traditional essay to bring those skills to play in the class, and it might encourage students who are traditionally “good” writers to move outside of their comfort zone and create something new and interesting.

The current assignment sheet is pasted below–the prompts would probably be different for the revised version, as it would be for a different class.

Major Project 3 / Research-Based Argument

Your final project of the term asks you to learn more about a topic related to the course theme or one that arises for you from the course readings. You’ll investigate the topic, form a guiding question for your research, and attempt to answer the question, using course texts and sources outside the course. You’ll integrate these sources into your own writing, ultimately coming to a (perhaps tentative) conclusion or claim (thesis) from your research and learning.

I encourage you to take this assignment in any direction you like—research a topic that you are genuinely interested in and excited about. It does not have to relate to anything that we’ve read or discussed in this class. If you’re looking for places to start, though, looking back at some of your earlier assignments and prompts might be helpful. You might write an essay about code-switching, conducting personal interviews and reading articles that would help you form a thesis about how code-switching works, when and why it might be necessary, and when and how it can be harmful. Your literacy narrative or analysis project might have raised questions about language, culture, or the histories of a particular text or movement that you want to explore further.

If you’d rather work on something new, and don’t have anything that you’re particularly excited to research in mind, here are two prompts that you’re welcome to use:

1. In “The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about how the stories that she read as a child did not contain characters who looked or lived like her. As a young reader and writer, she internalized the idea that characters in books must be white, upper/middleclass, and from a certain background. Using Adichie’s talk as a jumping off point, you might research a specific aspect of representation in literature/film/other media. Why does it matter if people (particularly, perhaps, young people) see people who look/live like them? What studies have shown that representation matters, and how? You might focus on the push to diversify school curriculums, children’s literature or television, museum collections, or something else that isn’t listed here.

• In her essay “The Egg and the Sperm,” Emily Martin shows how language and narrative infuse gender stereotypes into scientific discourse, even on a cellular level. Think of other cases where something similar may be happening, and research one of them. How does language—and how do the stories that we use to frame our understanding of the world—imbue other discourses that are supposed to be unbiased with bias? What values do words bring with them, and how does that shape discourse? You might think about another aspect of science or medicine, or an aspect of technology, schooling, or political discourse.  

Essays should be around 7 double-spaced pages, and should cite roughly 7-10 sources.

Final drafts of essays will be graded based on:

• Argument: Is the thesis clear and compelling? Is it backed up with evidence? Are the stakes of the argument clear? (25%)
• Structure: Does the argument progress and flow logically? Are paragraphs clearly marked with topic sentences? (15%)
• Research: Does the essay have enough sources? Are they peer-reviewed, or otherwise from trusted sources? Does the author acknowledge sources that may be biased, or otherwise flawed? Do they interrogate the sources critically? Has the author clearly done research from numerous sources, from varying backgrounds, and not just tried to find sources that support one viewpoint? (25%)
• Grammar, structure, etc. (10%)
• Editing: Has the author taken the feedback given by the professor and by peer reviewers into account when editing the essay? Have they made meaningful changes to the essay that clearly improve the above categories? (25%)

Your grade on the final draft of the research project makes up 30% of your course grade.