Assignments: Course Journal Entry

Deliverable

A 500-word journal entry, written into the class’s shared Course Journal Microsoft Word document, and read aloud by you during the following class meeting.

Due Date

Each classmate will complete a single journal entry at some point during the semester (see the Schedule section in the Course Journal).

The purpose of this assignment is to

• Give you a way to influence the course’s ongoing exchange of ideas in lasting, written form.
• Develop our collective sense of the course’s trajectory, as each entry will articulate connections between conversations and ideas from week to week.
• Develop a functional computing literacy of contributing to multi-author documents.
• Contribute to a collective body of knowledge that you can take with you after you finish this course.
  • I will e-mail you a PDF of the completed Course Journal after all entries have been completed.
• Provide you with a resource for your larger projects in this class (you can cite your classmates’ entries among your sources).

Assessment Criteria

Within a week of your reading the course entry aloud in class, I will record the grade your entry has earned according to the rubric linked here, based on the following criteria:

• Completion, Length: what percentage of 500 words have been completed
• Completion, Question: whether or not the entry ends with a question
• Completion, Demonstration of Functional Literacy: does the entry demonstrate the required functional understanding of Microsoft Word through the use of Styles?
• Effectiveness as a Record: how effectively does it record key points of the past week?
• Effectiveness at Relating Ideas: how effectively does it relate the week’s conversations to other ideas in the course (e.g. previous Course Journal entries, previous conversations, or the course’s overall themes)?
• Clarity of Author’s Voice: how well does it express the specific, individual perspectives and opinions of you, the writer

Special Notes

None.

Instructions

These instructions work like bumpers in a bowling alley: they do not guarantee success, but they limit the chances of things going wrong. Particularly if you are very comfortable with this type of project, you can follow your own path towards meeting the assignment’s criteria. But do skim these in any case, as they may include important technical formatting information.

1. During each class meeting:
   • Listen carefully to the discussion. You should do this always, but particularly when it’s your week to write in the Course Journal.
   • Take detailed notes. Attend to the flow of the conversation: what contributions and comments spark more ideas. Why?
   • If someone says something that you think is particularly insightful or well put, write it down in quotation marks. You can incorporate these into your entry.
2. Before drafting your entry:
   • Reread your notes.
   • Skim the previous Course Journal entries.
   • Reflect on the class meetings. What have we learned? How have our understandings of a text, character, concept, or theme changed over the course of the week?
   • Plan your entry: write down two or (at most) three ideas that are most essential for the class to remember.
   • Outline your entry: your entry will be comprised of two or three paragraphs. What are the topic sentences for each paragraph, and what evidence (e.g. lines from the text or comments from the class meetings) will you use to support those topic sentences?
3. Drafting:
   • Open the Course Journal document.
     • Note: You may wish to first draft your entry in your word processor of choice, and then copy and paste it into this document.
   • Type today’s date in long form (e.g. “December 30, 2021”).
   • Format that date as a Heading 1 style: click on the Styles button, and select Heading 1.
   • Below the date, type your full name (e.g. “Robert Nguyen”).
   • Format your full name as a Subtitle: click on the Styles button, and select Subtitle.
   • Below your name, type your entry.
   • End your entry with a question. The class will attempt to answer it after you read your entry out loud in class.
4. Revise and Proofread
   • Before the due date, read over your entry and ensure that you have clearly communicated your ideas and that spelling, punctuation, and grammar are correct to the best of your ability.