11:00 am section
Link to Group Information
1:00 pm section
Link to Group Information
How Participation Works in This Class
In addition to your participation in our larger Monday and Wednesday class sessions, I will also be factoring in your participation in the group meetings that will happen on Wednesdays during class time. That is, this quarter you’ll be working with your classmates in small discussion groups every Wednesdays. (There should be 4 or 5 people in each group.) You’ll have the opportunity to work in different locations during these times, but the important thing about these meetings is that they will involve everyone in the group meeting in person together for at least hour or so.
What Happens in Group Meetings
You’ll primarily be using these group meetings to workshop and discuss things – namely the course content, including readings, websites, complete group activities, etc. Essentially, you’ll be working with your group members to write together, talk about the course material, and help each other grow – both as writers and as people.
Your success in any course (and more generally, with anything in life) depends upon your active participation. Participation can take many forms, though, and we all learn (and thus participate) in unique ways. For instance, making space for every participant in a conversation to speak can sometimes be more valuable than taking the lead yourself. Participation in dialogue means not just speaking up often but also listening to and talking directly with your peers (asking them questions, extending their ideas, reconsidering your own point of view in terms of what they say, helping create an environment where everyone feels empowered to learn from one another).
Recognizing Participation
In order to recognize the unique forms of participation that each of you bring to the table, your participation grade will be based on a “Participation Notebook” that you will write in once a week (after you meet in small groups). In this document, you should reflect on your group discussion and activities with specific emphasis on your contributions.
- When reflecting on your participation, you should write at least 150-200 words that respond to the following two questions:
- What was your most meaningful moment of participation in your small group this week? Why?
- What questions or concerns do you have that you didn’t get to share? (This question is optional.)
A good portion of your participation in the course this quarter will come from the meetings you have with your small group and these notebooks.
If you address the questions above with evidence of good-faith effort — writing at least 150-200 words that demonstrate that you engaged with the activities and that you worked with your group and then thought about that interaction — and complete any additional work for the week (initial thoughts activities, brainstorming, peer review, etc.), your participation notebook is considered “complete” each week.
How to “Submit” this Work
We’ll be using a Shared Class Google Drive this quarter, which is where all of your writing assignments will be completed. In that folder, you can create a single document labeled, “Participation Notebook” that you add to on a weekly basis (this tends to be the easiest and most popular option), or you can create individual documents for each week (that are also clearly labeled). As long as it is in your Individual Folder in our Shared Class Drive, you should be good to go. (If you would like a more private option for your Participation Notebook, please just let me know. That is also an option.)
Participation notebooks are due by the end of the day, Friday of each week.
(adapted from Palmeri and Dubisar’s “Participation as Reflective Practice“)