Blog 19: Planning a Workshop

In light of today's class, what do think you need to work on for the workshop on Thursday? Make a plan!

To be perfectly honest [interesting phrase lol], I did not have much difficulty with the short analysis paper nor am I worried about being able to write my research paper for this class. As long as I have my information and time, I can write this essay, no problems, guaranteed. However, from the concerns I usually get from tutoring for these kinds of assignments as well as the commentary I have overheard in class, it seems like people are having trouble with creating a research question themselves as well as the appropriate categories of analysis. Moreover, they seem to not understand how this entire class has been building up to this particular point; everything we have done has been in preparation for the ideas, concepts, and language necessary to talk about our research. The way most of the class was talking about categories of analysis was like we never talked about before. Scary and disturbing. (>_<)!

These comments I am making are general statements that do not necessarily apply to everyone in the class. Rather, this applies for the majority. Why is this happening you ask? Well, in my humble opinion, I think too many people are distracted when they are in class and/or do not see the relevance of the information presented to them until they are forced to use the information themselves. Therefore, my suggestion for a "plan" is to have people actually create parts of the paper. Have them put the information to use. Also, I think too much of this class has been group work, and although I do understand the value of collaboration, I do not think the people I have been working with care to really engage until they know they will be graded individually. Therefore, I propose individual work that can allows for people to talk to each other if they need to discuss it, but pushing each person to work on their own. Maybe something along the lines of peer response. Not sure.

I realize this is not much of "plan", but that may be because I really want to create my own plan for this. I want to research and get started on this and ask relevant questions as they occur to me. I want to create a plan for myself. Maybe that's the plan for Thursday: individually create research plans. Yes. Lovely.