Overview for Week of 7/13

We’re wrapping up Unit 2 this week, and your primary focus will be on assembling your research portfolio. This set of texts is kind of a checkpoint on the way to your research project, an opportunity to assess what you have to work with and what you might be able to make from it. It’s not an end in and of itself, but rather a stopover.

A few reminders about the items that the portfolio will contain (taken from the unit 2 assignment sheet )

at least 6 annotations (2 paragraphs each, 1 of summary, 1 of discussion)
focusing flowchart
research plan
complicating your research activity
rounding out the conversation worksheet
your unit 2 reflection (see assignment sheet for prompt)

In short, this portfolio will represent your research progress, from the inception of your idea, through locating and considering sources, and including your efforts to broaden that conversation to better understand the issues under consideration.

As you advance towards this goal, then,

be sure to read through feedback on the above assignments and your discussion posts (I’ll get you feedback on your draft annotations ASAP)
refresh your memory on writing an effective summary (review this handout on summary)
review the rubric and assignment overview on the unit 2 assignment sheet
email me with any questions

Read on for the week’s agenda.

Reading

“Individual change won’t create gender equality in organizations”
your assigned jump-out link from that text (check out the announcement on Blackboard for details)

Writing

write your unit 2 reflection
complete your source annotations
assemble your research portfolio. This will come in as a single blog post with embedded PDF files. Check out this post for instructions on how to do that:

Instructions for creating a blog post with embedded links and files

respond to this week’s discussion prompts by the end of the day on Friday (this is a 1-day extension). See post below:

Discussion prompts for Week of 7/13

Note that I’m pushing back the next assignment (the research proposal) to next week, so that you’ll have some more time to work through your ideas. You can look for more info on that in next week’s overview on Monday.

July 13, 2020

Discussion prompts for Week of 7/13

In this article, Alison Wynn (a researcher at Stanford) summarizes her own recent article, in which she analyzed the findings of a year-long case study of a Silicon Valley tech company’s gender equality initiative.

As is typically the case with summaries, an author is trying to do justice to the original text (representing it for what it is), while also working toward their own distinct purpose. Here, for Wynn, that is bottom-lining the findings for a different audience and objective–trying to open up a new kind of conversation around the role that organizations (and not just individuals) must play.

Pay attention to how she works with research in here. Within this article, Wynn provides a lot of linked resources, which function both as a sort of bibliography (here are some of the sources I’m working with…) and as a reading list for those who want more (if you think this is interesting, check this out….). Consider the first one, which links to this article, itself a compendium of a whole bunch of different sources.

The State of Women in Tech 2020

Giving her readers access to this lets Wynn build upon that informational foundation without taking up a lot of space in her text. It also gives interested readers a lot more to work with (and a lot more reason to trust Wynn as knowing her stuff). Each of you will follow up on one of the other resources she links and give us a sense of what’s in there and how it’s valuable (both to Wynn and to us, readers who might be looking to use this new knowledge).

Also pay attention as you read to her section headings–she’s setting up a careful logical chain. These headings are kind of like breadcrumbs (think Hansel and Gretel) for the reader to follow Image result for hansel and gretel breadcrumbs

We can learn from that, of course, about a way to organize our ideas to make them as usable as possible for our readers. As we head into Unit 3, that’s going to be an important consideration–not just writing for ourselves or for me (a teacher reader), but for an audience who needs to hear what you have to say and needs to be able to act on it or make use of it in some way.

Once you’ve read through Wynn’s article, follow up on your assigned link (see the announcement on Blackboard for those assignments). Then, post your responses to these 2 questions (everyone should answer both):

Give us a capsule summary of the linked article/resource that you explored. What is it? what’s in there? what’s valuable about it? what does it add to Wynn’s article?
Who do you think would most benefit from reading this article, and why? (in other words, who do you think her target audience is or ought to be?) Select one passage (a sentence or two) from the article, and explain why you think this segment would work especially well for that group of readers. Please quote the passage in your response.

July 11, 2020

Instructions for creating a blog post with embedded links and files

For the research portfolio, you will be submitting multiple documents all in a single post. Please follow these instructions to get everything in there so that it’s easy to read.

Your Unit 2 research reflection (answering the prompt on the assignment sheet) will be the body of the post–just create a post as you usually would on the blog.

Title your post with your name and “Research Portfolio”
Categorize it as “Research Portfolios”
Tag it with [your name], “unit 2,” and “portfolio”

Add these PDF file attachments within the same post:

6 different annotations (please post them individually, so I can easily see what’s there)

Your supporting materials: focusing flowchart, complicating your research, and Rounding out the conversation exercises (the same things you submitted on Bb, but saved as PDFs and attached here)

Here’s how to do this:

make sure your documents are saved as PDFs (this makes them easier to read because they will just open without a download)–you can do this in Word or Pages or Google Docs in the “Save As” options
make sure you’re using the regular text editor window on Expressions–what you see when you click +New -> Post (so that you have full functionality)
when you’re ready to insert your files, click on the “Add Media” button
you’ll have 2 options–“Drag files anywhere to upload” or “Select Files.” Choose “Select Files”
Choose the first file that you’re uploading–then you’ll see the Attachment Details menu on the right side of your screen.
Name the file using the Title box in that Attachment Details menu–choose something usable and easy to understand like “Annotation 1.”
Click the blue “Insert into post” button on the bottom right–this will take you back to the regular text editor window, where you’ll see your file as an embedded link, listed by the title that you gave it

Repeat this process for each of the file attachments (there should be at least 9 attachments–6 annotations and then 1 for your focusing flowchart, 1 for complicating your research, and 1 for Rounding out the conversation)

Add this embedded link:

link to your Research Plan post (updated if need be to reflect current direction of your project)

Here’s how to do this:

Locate your Research Plan post on the blog (this was due back on 7/5). If it doesn’t reflect the direction you’re currently heading with your research, please add a comment to the original post that explains what you’re doing now. Go to this post (not just to the list of posts), and copy its url. You’ll need that for the next steps.
Working within the same text editor window as the above process, click “Add Media” again–you’ll see the same screen you were just on
Click on “Insert from url” in the left menu–a box with “http://” will appear on the screen
Paste your url into that box (note that you might end up with two “http://”; delete one if that happens)
Enter a usable name into the “Link Text” box–something easy to understand like “Research plan”
Click blue button “insert into post” on the bottom right

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!