For this post, I want you to describe your ongoing research process and describe your experience with one new source you find in your search.
Now that you’ve identified the issue you want to focus on this semester, it’s time to dig deeper into this issue. I like to think of this step as immersing yourself in the conversation.
What conversation?
Good question. The conversation about your issue. The issue you’ve identified didn’t emerge out of thin air. It has a history. Many people have contributed ideas and taken positions on this issue or variations on it. Kenneth Burke famously described the act of entering a scholarly conversation as showing up late to a party:
Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.
Philosophy of literary form: studies in symbolic action 110-111
To “listen for a while” you need to find the very best sources for your project, moving beyond what you can discover with a search engine (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo etc.). Your goal is to figure out who has been saying what so you can confidently “put in your oar” (that is, say something yourself). So far, most of you have Googled to decide on the issue you want to pursue this semester. But search engines use algorithms to produce a ranked listing of all relevant results (and the websites that show up first are the ones who have paid for that position or employed SEO experts to improve their rankings). Library resources are useful when you want to move past the websites interesting in selling you something.
Research Strategies
By the first deadline for this assignment, I want you to have added at least three new sources to your research notes organizer. Try one (or more!) of these strategies as you search:
Describe your dream source
Knowing what you’re hoping to find can help you figure out where to look for it. I’m happy to brainstorm about this with you during class.
Read sources cited by your sources
This could mean tracking down sources cited in a Wikipedia article or finding what has been cited in the sources you’ve already got in your research organizer.
Search library databases for high-quality sources on your issue
I recommend starting with the QuickSearch bar on the library homepage, but you can also look for specific databases related to the subject area you’re researching by browsing through the Library Guides (also called libguides) organized by subject on this page.
If you find a source that isn’t free, request it through Interlibrary Loan
The process is explained here (with links to the forms). Remember, the “article requests” option allows you to request a scan of a small part of a whole work (a journal article, a book chapter, etc.)
Chat with someone at the library!
If you’re not sure where to go first, you can chat with someone at the library! Click on the chat bubble in the top right corner of the library homepage.
When you’ve finished, draft a post in OpenLab including as much of this process as you would like. This might mean including a link to your research notes, or it might just mean sharing which of these strategies you tried and how it went.
Compose a Post
You can use the following headings in your post!! Make sure you address each section in your draft. You have the option to share your post with your classmates or keep it private so I’m the only one who sees it.
Describe your research experience
Share anything noteworthy about where you looked or what you discovered
Select one new source to look at closely in the post
You don’t need to pick any particular type of source–just a new source that you haven’t included in a previous post. The source can be written, but it could also be a video or audio recording. It might even be something interactive.
Describe your initial experience reading this source
Provide a detailed description of what it was like to read (or watch, listen to, or interact with) this source.
Classify your experience
Choose one of the terms in our experience glossary or propose a new term
Describe the features prompting your experience
This will most likely be a direct quotation (or a screenshot or screen recording), but it could also be paraphrase of some feature that is hard to quote.
Try to determine what technology the author/creator used to create the specific feature you’ve identified
Technology: the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area
–“Technology” Merriam-Webster Online
I share this definition to emphasize that technology applies to more than industrial machines and computer software. Authors use specialized knowledge to accomplish their goals…they create metaphors, refine thesis statements, and create charts to convey large amounts of data.
Deciding on the particular technology an author used to create the source you’ve experienced is challenging! My only request is that you make your best effort to determine how that thing was made. The person or people who created your source might have used a technology that is in our Technologies Glossary, or you might find a new technology that we can add to our glossary.
To Sum Up
Part 1: Draft your post on our course website
- Come up with a creative title (don’t include the assignment name in your title)
- Set a featured image (this could be from your chosen source or something else!)
- Share a link to your research notes (if you’re comfortable sharing!)
- Describe your research experience
- Describe your experience with one new source (describe, classify, describe, determine)
Part 2: Expand your post, making sure the finished product includes
- A creative title that doesn’t include the assignment name
- A featured image
- Set the category for your post to “Conversation”
- A description of your research experience
- A description of your experience with the source you found most helpful (describe, classify, describe, determine)
- A list of works cited (if you cited anything)
- An attribution statement for your featured image (TASL guidance here)
FAQs
- How will you grade this? This assignment is graded on a pass/fail basis. If you engage with the task and turn in a project, you will get 100%. This sort of project is likely new to you, so things will be confusing! Do your best and I will give you feedback so you understand the expectations going forward.
- Do I have to share my post with the class? You can choose to share your post with classmates or share it only with me (set your post to private if you only want me to see it).
- Can I use generative AI? I usually say no to this question because I think this is the time to follow your own inclination to find an issue that matters to you (not discover what others already consider important). But I’ve realized that students only build AI literacy skills by engaging critically with generative AI. Instead of asking you not to use generative AI, I’ll say that generative AI is a source and needs to be treated as such. If you use it, it should be because the conversation you had with generative AI is the source you’re thinking about in the assignment.
- Can you share an example of what a finished product is supposed to look like? I wasn’t able to create a post this time. I do encourage you to look at my previous example posts and any posts your classmates have shared (on our site or during a revision workshop).
Extra
If you’re interested, here are some videos to help us think about how humans use technologies to make things
