At DACC, students in ENGL 102 are offered the opportunity each semester to further their understanding of the academic research process through a guided project before undertaking independent research projects for the remainder of the semester.  The topic of the guided project is usually determined by the instructor, although some instructors leave it to the students to choose a topic they wish to explore as a class.

This fall, my ENGL 102 class began the term by discussing what it means to be literate in the 21st Century.  We read narratives which discussed the experience of becoming literate in the traditional sense and used them as a point of departure for a deeper understanding of what literacy means and what the ability to decode meaning from a text or other artifact allows someone to do in academia and society. 

Image from geeklawblog.com

From there we looked at how recent technological innovations have changed (at least in the minds of some scholars) the idea of literacy in recent years and have changed the demands placed on students doing research and writing. We didn't focus on technical or computing skills, but rather on the increase in skills needed in the areas of analysis and critical thinking brought about by society moving from the era of mass communication into the information age.

Image from NancyRubin.com.

At this point, students were divided into collaborative learning groups and charged with coming up with a research question to guide their group's work over the next several weeks. Their topic had to be related to our studies up to that point, require research and analysis of several sources, and result in an informative post appropriate for the WR Notebook. 

Each group chose their topic; analyzed the rhetorical situation surrounding the WR Notebook; met with Dr. Lindemann from the DACC library to strengthen their research and source evaluation skills and to use Library 1 Search and Google to accomplish scholarly research; compiled a body of credible research for their topic using Noodle Tools and evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the sources within that body; compiled working bibliography lists and a works cited page in MLA style for the sources used in their post; worked to write, share, and edit their drafts through GoogleDocs; peer reviewed the posts of the various groups; explored various strategies for revision for clarity, audience awareness, mutability of form, and to meet their deadline; and learned to edit their posts in the online-blog environment.

Image retrieved through Google Images.

It has been a long ten weeks.  It has been a short ten weeks.  Above all, it has been a busy, crazy, frantic ten weeks (but in a good way, of course!).  They've learned a good deal about research, source analysis, writing, working effectively in a group, and about themselves along the way.  What follows in the four posts listed below are the results of their efforts. We hope you enjoy them.  We hope you find something of use there among them.

And to my students who have hung in there in this grand experiment with me over the last ten weeks, I hope you enjoy your weekend--because we start the whole process over on Tuesday with your independent projects!

Thanks for your hard work! And, thanks to Dr. Ruth Lindemann for her patience, guidance, and knowledge!