麻豆淫院

I want the capstone project for my first颅 year writing classes to improve in quality.聽 The assignment has students, working in teams, design a project that supports a concern/s of an 鈥渁dopted鈥� student organization.聽 For example, students 鈥渁dopting鈥� (meaning studying, via texts, interviews, and interactions with organization activities) the student-颅run Gay Straight Alliance, can produce a poster, film, or give assistance to a sponsored event.聽 (Earlier assignments relate to learning about or advocating for the students groups, which are elected by the class members.)

The results sometimes are disappointing.聽 麻豆淫院 frequently choose to work on the easiest 鈥減roduct,鈥� a poster.聽 麻豆淫院 that work on more time-颅consuming ventures, such as a short film, generally do not have time to produce the high颅-quality and rhetorically informed work that I expect.

Using the ideas promoted in our ASSETT readings, I would like to revise the assignment so that students can maximize the opportunities to learn inherent in the assignment.

Goals

Excellent final projects (one to two minute Public Service Announcements鈥愨�怭SAs鈥愨�� posted to YouTube).

Course Details

This assignment is for first鈥恲ear writing classes, WRTG 1150, which I teach once a semester, one or two classes, 20 students each.聽 Their final project is a capstone assignment, used once for the semester.聽 I want the plan to be implemented for all first鈥恲ear writing courses.

The plan will include:

1. Better temporal planning
2. Use of D2L-delivered lectures on designing films (by Dave Underwood)
3. Smaller assignments that聽build on skills to produce better PSA鈥檚
4. Model lower stakes assignments by making one myself.

The Plan

I need to start students on producing the capstone PSAs much earlier in the semester.聽 To that end, I will have them start assessing PSAs on YouTube., even before their own topics for the PSA have been determined.聽 One assignment will have students view and comment on five PSAs on You Tube鈥愨�恡hey will deliver their assessments via video.聽 I will model the assignment by delivering a video instructional guide to the class.

The rubric I have in place for determining the grading of the projects needs to be improved, although only slightly. So, if scores on the assignment improve, this will indicate that their products (Public Service Announcements) have improved.聽 I also plan to ask a colleague (Petger Schaberg)聽 to show me his measures of film production excellence.

I am also thinking of having students track the number of hits on YouTube鈥愨�恇ut I have to think about this a bit.

I will also ask students to critique my 鈥渕odel鈥� PSA鈥愨�恮hich is聽 a video that discusses what I want them to do for the 鈥淎ssessing Public Service Announcements鈥� assignment.聽 I鈥檓 going to try to make this at home on my own.聽 Then I can have Caroline and/or Amanda critique it before submitting it.

In this project, the proof will be in the pudding.聽 The goal of the doing changing my approach to聽 teaching how to produce much more effective PSAs will show up in improved quality.聽 I will also have students evaluate the other PSA, using the evaluation guides offered throughout the semester.