This week you will be watching three TED talks and reading another article that all intersect with our big umbrella topic of organizational culture. (Think of this like a Venn diagram:
Venn diagram
I think this can be a helpful analogy because it is much the same tactic that we take in research: we are not simply looking for the one “perfect” source but rather for a source that interacts with our ideas in someway that move them forward. And the more voices we hear from in that research (the more perspectives we incorporate), the more likely we will arrive at a fuller understanding of the topic we’re examining.
For this week’s discussion I would ask that each of you respond to question #1 and then either #2 or #3. Please categorize your list as “Discussions/ Homework” and tag it with “weekof6/28,” “unit 1,” and [your name].
We use the term “rhetoric” to discuss how we make arguments (what we do and how and why, not just what we say). Since a hefty portion of your work in this upcoming Expanding the Canon blog post hinges on rhetorical analysis, let’s do some practice–working with one of the TED talks for this week (Heffernan’s, Fried, or Salecl), talk to us about what you find interesting in their rhetorical approach. How do they engage the audience? What kinds of strategies do they use to explain their ideas? What do you think is interesting or significant about the way that they present their arguments and appeal to their listeners?
Choose one of the talks that you watched this week and examine how this speaker works with evidence. What kind of evidence do they use? How do they explicate the connections between their evidence and their claims? Be specific. How do they walk the audience through their argument? What are some of their argumentation tactics that you find effective? Note that you will need to watch the talk at least a second time, and take notes while you are doing it; you can also access a full transcript of the talk on the TED website.
Choose one of the talks, and discuss how this presenter adds to our body of knowledge around organizational culture. Who is the speaker/author, and what kind perspective do they contribute? (You may need to do a quick Google search to get a sense of who they are.) What kind of connections do you see between this take and other things we have been learning about organizational culture? If you were to make a Venn diagram (or a few) articulating the connections between this text and other ones that we’ve read, what would it look like? You can have some fun with this using an online Venn creator like this one or by sketching it out by hand and incorporating the image(s) into your post):
Please post your responses by the end of the day on Wednesday, 6/30, and respond to at least 2 of your classmates’ posts by the end of the day on Saturday, 7/3.
As you’ve probably noticed, you’re submitting all of your work this week through the blog, including the summaries, rather than through Blackboard. That’s by design. Summary is a crucial skill for research writing, so we’re spending a fair bit of time practicing and reflecting on it. You’ve had a chance to receive some private feedback, and now it’s time to open up your audience a bit–this way you’ll have the opportunity to give and to receive feedback from one another.
You can learn a lot by seeing how others summarize the same text as you–what they prioritize, how they define the source, what works well in their approach that might be different from your own.
Moving forward in the course, much of your writing work will be public in this way–on the blog, with your classmates reading and responding. That will provide valuable experience with writing for an authentic audience, which in turn will help you to improve your rhetorical agility. That’s a key aim of this course–to think about the ways in which writing and research are situational, flexing and adapting our work to our distinct purpose, audience, and context.
Now, obviously, this requires a degree of trust, and in a fully online setting where we don’t see one another’s faces and don’t have those same kinds of human interactions that we’re accustomed to in a classroom setting, we will need to work intentionally to build that trust. Trust will make it easier to put our writing out there, to accept constructive feedback, and to offer up our own valuable insights.
Here, I think that our growing knowledge of organizational culture can be a real asset. We know that cultures are built–they don’t just happen–and that they are manifestations of our shared values. I propose that we take a little time this week to reflect on what values we want to be sure we enact in our class community, in this organization that we’re making.
I’ll go first–one of the features of this section that I really value and that I’d like to build on is your openness about the diversity of your backgrounds and experiences. As a group, we represent different generations, different professional fields, different geographical areas, different ethnic and racial groups, and I really appreciate how you’ve been willing to sharing those differences and the unique perspectives you’ve developed as a result. I hope you’ll continue to do so. I think that communicating from where we are–honoring and acknowledging how we are situated–is really important.
Would you please chime in and comment on this post with your thoughts about the culture you’d like to see us build in this online community? What value do you propose we share? What practices do you propose we try to enact? What would you like to see us do/not do/prioritize/avoid?
Now that we’re getting our feet under us in terms of what organizational culture is, why diversity and inclusion are part of the conversation, and how thinking about rhetorical situation can help us to engage with complex texts, it’s time for us to build on that.
As a group, we’ve all been working with the same set of texts, and that gives us a shared foundation of knowledge. What I’ve tried to assemble here is a set of texts that function as a canon–works that are essential to an understanding of the subject matter, important and influential works. But there’s so much more out there to explore, and that will be your primary work for the week–looking around to locate an additional text that you think should be part of the canon.
Canonical works are substantive–building on careful and thoughtful research. They provide new insights and ideas, and don’t simply re-present known information. They work well for their audience, so that they can contribute to the world of knowledge.
Chances are you’ll need to look at several articles to find one that does all this and that meets the particular criteria that are set forth on the
The SU libraries’ website is a good starting point. You can use the Advanced Search functions there to help filter the results so they meet some of the basic criteria to start with (i.e. adjusting the publication dates, limiting the types of publications, etc.). You’ll find a number of useful tutorials on the library site if you’re not already familiar with using it. This search tips page is a good place to start.
(A quick note on using SU libraries vs. Google Scholar–you’ve already paid for the SU services and won’t ever bump into a paywall; on Google Scholar, you often will. The library also provides free research support, which you can’t get on Google.)
So, where to begin? Here’s an overview of your tasks for the week:
Reading assignments:
chapters 2 and 3 of TSIS
chapter 1 of Rewriting by Joe Harris (PDF on Blackboard)
“Understanding key D&I concepts” (PDF on Blackboard)
your selected article (that you plan to contribute to the canon)–to write an effective summary, you will need to read this carefully and probably more than once. Be sure to consult the close reading handout and the handout on summary.
Discussion/writing assignments:
write a 100-200 word summary of either the Kaplan and Donovan article from this week OR the Austin and Pisano article from last week, and submit this on the blog (categorize as “Discussions/Homework”; tag with “K&D” or “A&P” as appropriate, along with “weekof6/21,” and [your name] (due Weds., 6/23)
respond to at least 2 of your classmates’ discussion posts on the blog (due Sat., 6/26) write a 200 word summary of your selected article. Include a link to or PDF of the article you’re working with, and reference the author and title of the text you are summarizing. Categorize this as “Expanding the Canon”; tag it with “summary,” “weekof6/21,” and [your name]. (due Sun., 6/27)
This week you’ll begin injecting into this conversation about diversity and inclusion that we’ve been reading about. Each of you will suggest an article to add to this body of information, so that we can all continue to expand our understanding of the issues. Please be sure to reread the last page of the the Unit 1 assignment sheet (linked below).
First, a quick refresher on rhetorical situation. This is the idea that everything is written by someone, for someone, for some purpose, and within some broader context. Considering these different elements of a text can give us a window into how the text works, why it looks the way it does, whether it is likely to be successful for its intended reader, etc. You’ve already seen rhetorical situation represented in visual form like this:
Just a little something to keep in mind as we move into discussion for the week–we’ll be thinking a lot this week about how authors respond to their writing situation in order to produce successful communications, and in particular about how an author’s audience connects to his/her purpose in writing.
On to the prompts–this week everyone should respond to the 1st question and then select 1 of the other 2 to answer. Responses should be >150 words each. Please tag your responses with “unit1,” “weekof6/21,” and [your name]. Categorize as “Discussions.”
It’s time to get moving along with your unit 1 assignment. For this assignment, you will be adding to the set of sources we’re reading about diversity and organizational culture (which amount to a canon of sorts–a collection of important texts). We’ll expand this canon by suggesting additional valuable resources. So, for your first discussion post this week, please tell us a little about how you’re doing that: what kinds of material are you looking for? what topic are you following up on? what sort of expert(s) do you think we need to hear from? how are you looking (i.e. what particular databases or search tools are you using)? what techniques or strategies are proving helpful?
This week’s readings move from the theoretical conversation about diversity that unfolds in the pages of scholarly journals to the practical–consideration of what is actually involved in creating and maintaining a diverse workforce, this time through the lens of (dis)ability. Let’s start to put the pieces together, as we’re adding to our growing foundation of knowledge: construct a they say/I say sentence (or series of sentences) that connects one of this week’s readings about disability inclusion with one of the readings from the last 2 weeks. (There are a number of templates in chapter 2 of TSIS that might help you with this work.) You are welcome to include yourself as an I in this formulation, but you may also choose to use 2 theys here–i.e. While Austin and Pisano contend that…. Kaplan and Donovan suggest that… Be creative, and use this work to further your understanding both of the texts you’re employing, as well as your own perspective.
In chapter 1 of Rewriting, Joe Harris asks us to consider a writer’s project when we’re trying to make sense of a particular text. That is, he encourages us to think of “something far more complex than a main idea, since it refers not to a single concept but to a plan of work, to a set of ideas and questions that a writer ‘throws forward (Latin, pro + jacare)” and to recognize that “a project is something that a writer is working on–and that a text can only imperfectly realize” (Harris 17). Thinking in these terms, how would you characterize the project that Kaplan and Donovan undertake in “Key D&I Concepts”? That is, what do you think they are “working on” in this article? (Review Harris’s steps at the bottom of page 15.)
Now that we’ve gotten to know each other a bit and have gotten our feet wet, so to speak, in what organizational culture and diversity & inclusion efforts are all about, we’re going to spend this week deepening our knowledge of those topics AND beginning to think about some writerly concerns.
In this post, I’ll lay out a little more info about the week’s assignments and point you toward some additional resources that will help you to complete those tasks. Please read on for more.
Reading assignments
“The impact of organizational diversity policies on minority employees’ leadership self-perceptions and goals” by Gundemir et al (you will use SUMMON on the library website to locate and download this article)
“Neurodiversity as a competitive advantage” by Austin & Pisano (on Blackboard)
chapter 1 “They Say” of They Say/I Say
Writing/discussion assignments
100-200 word summary of Gundemir et al (working with the guidance from the handout on summary, on Bb and in the blog post linked below) [due Weds., 6/16 through Bb]
200-300 word comparison of Gundemir and Austin & Pisano article, focusing on how the pieces differ in author, audience, purpose, and approach [due Sunday, 6/20 through Bb]
discussion posts in response to this week’s prompts [due Saturday, 6/19]. See this post for details
Check out these additional resources
read through thisblog post (and check out the embedded links) for some more background on genre and summary
read over the Close Reading handout linked below and also available on Blackboard (click on the Handouts tab there)
Everyone should respond to the 1st question and then select 1 of the other 2 to answer. Responses should be >150 words each. Please tag your responses with “unit1,” “weekof6/14,” and [your name]. Categorize as “Discussions/Homework.”
Please post your responses by 6/16, and then read through your classmates’ posts and my comments and respond where you wish.
Graff and Birkenstein (in the opening chapter of They Say/I Say) remind us that in researched writing we are always starting from what others are saying. That means we must first be able to fairly and accurately represent the ideas of others. They suggest a number of different shapes this might take. Try out one of their approaches from chapter 1 to craft a statement about some piece of Gundemir et al’s argument. Write a sentence or two using this approach, and then explain what you’ve done and how it went. Did you find this approach to framing useful? How/why/why not?
How do this week’s readings from Gundemir et al and Austin and Pisano add to your understanding of diversity in organizations? Draw some connections between these readings and the texts we examined last week–-how is this broad topic starting to take shape for you? Are there ways that you find yourself able to connect to your own experience to these Big Picture concepts (i.e. as a member of the SU community and/or as an employee/intern in another work setting)?
These articles we’re reading this week have rather different purposes. Gundemir et al raise important questions about the impacts of how diversity is framed (as either valuing individual differences or as de-emphasizing individual differences). Austin and Pisano examine the opportunities and challenges that a specific type of diversity (neurodiversity) brings to workplaces. While heading in different directions, both articles ask readers to consider the social implications of workplace decisions. Explain and respond to their conclusions about the ripple effects of diverse workplaces. In other words, help us to understand how and why their ideas matter.
And finally, please tell us a little something about your week–a highlight, lowlight, or lesson that you care to share; a picture that captures your current mood; maybe a pop culture or news item that you’re excited about.
Mine? I’ve got a new kayak that I can’t wait to try out. No pictures because the matching one is a Father’s Day gift for my husband, and our camera rolls sync….
Summary is a task that you’ll encounter often in research-based writing–as an author, you’ll need to explain the essence of a text that you have worked with in developing your own ideas. Writing an effective summary means offering your reader a genuine understanding of the text, not just a list of its greatest hits. Your reader needs a little context–
what is this text?
what is the author doing in it?
what are the key ideas we should take from it?
and then what are you going to do with it?
Because you’ll need this skill regularly, we’re going to practice and use it regularly–we develop writing skills just like any other kind of competency, through examining models, trying it out, and repeating the drill.
You’ll find a handout on Blackboard that offers some more explanation of writing effective summaries. It’s also linked here: Handout on summary
Let’s think about this in terms of the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies article we’re reading this week. If you were going to explain this article to someone else, it wouldn’t be enough to say that Gundemir and her colleagues talk about some of the pros and cons of workplace diversity. We wouldn’t know anything about who Gundemir is and why we should take her word for it. We wouldn’t know whether this article was grounded in good research. We wouldn’t know whether the idea that there are more fruitful and less fruitful ways to frame diversity is central to her argument, or a kind of tertiary point that she mentions. We wouldn’t understand what the article is.
A summary like this, however, would offer us a lot more value: In her article…. from the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, Seval Gundemir, an organizational psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, examines how companies’ diversity policies affect the way that minority employees view their own leadership potential within their companies. She reports data from 2 different studies that she and her colleagues conducted. She finds that…..
Notice what that summary does–it offers a quick biographical blurb about the author (which tells us that she’s an academic), lets us know that this is a scholarly article (written by a scholar for other scholars in the field), gives us a window into her data set and methods, and then lets us know what she’s arguing. If we know all that, then anything else that you share with us from the article will be a lot more meaningful. We’ll get why it matters and what evidence there is to back it up.
Because effective summary is so essential to writing about research, we’ll be practicing this skill quite a bit in the weeks to come.
Why it’s important to think about genre
This is a term we’ll use quite a bit throughout the course, so it’s worth taking some time to discuss what it means. We often think about genre in relation to music or movies, where we’re accustomed to using it to refer to different ‘types’ of media. These genre labels communicate something to consumers, shape expectations for what that media will be like, and serve as handy sorting mechanisms for us (what we like, what we don’t, what we’re in the mood for, how we would describe something to another person, etc.)
When it comes to genres of writing, that same sort of understanding applies, but it’s worth pushing beyond this simplistic idea of ‘categories’ (as though they’re just sorting buckets) to understand how and why genres take shape.
crayons sorted into buckets
For starters, genres tend to responses to recurring writing situations–in other words, the same kind of need keeps popping up and we can use the same sort of text to meet that need. Let’s think about applying for a job. That’s a recurring situation, right? Lots of people find themselves having to do that. And there are ways that writing can help to make that situation work.
Now, job application materials–resumes and cover letters–didn’t just emerge spontaneously. They took shape because readers and writers found them to be useful ways of meeting that situational need–front-loaded documents that quickly communicate a job seeker’s qualifications, skills, and experiences. AND they’ve taken the fairly standard form that they do (consistent across many decades) because that pretty standard approach to organizing and formatting makes it possible for the reader to plow through a whole bunch of these documents pretty quickly, while still finding what they need.
Thus, we can think about genres as responsive and organic–developed to meet the needs of writers and readers and changeable depending upon circumstances. They’re not fixed, not static, and not simply interchangeable. We need to match genre to situation–thinking about our readers, about our purposes, about our publication/delivery venues.
Everything you do as a writer is a choice. And our choices are shaped by the situations in/for which we write. This rhetorical situation consists of a few key components, illustrated in the diagram below:
Diagram showing rhetorical triangle of a text–subject, reader, writer
Understanding the rhetorical situation of texts helps us as readers understand what to expect from them and how to read them. And for us as writers, understanding our audience and purpose will help us to craft texts that work for our readers, meeting their needs and expectations and providing them a clear path to understanding.
The texts that you’re reading this week come from 2 rather different genres–Gundemir’s article is a fairly typical scholarly text, written by academics for an audience of other academics in their field and providing the sort of intensive research and analysis those readers demand. The other text by Austin & Pisano is from the Harvard Business Review, a publication with a much broader audience of professionals. They turn to HBR for quick insights into topics they might be interested in and are generally not looking for the same kind of deep-dive. When you know what you’re looking at, it’s much easier to navigate through it.
Now, because most of us are not organizational psychologists (I presume), Gundemir’s text isn’t really designed for us. We have to make our own path through it. There’s a handout on Blackboard (also linked here: Handout on Reading Scholarly Articles ) on how to wade through sometimes dense scholarly articles like this one.
As this is a fairly small, discussion-oriented course, it will be helpful for us to get to know one another a bit. I ask that you each create a post telling us a bit about who you are.
What you share is ultimately up to you, but here are a few baseline suggestions:
what else are you doing this summer besides taking this course? other academic work, internships, employment, etc.
what brings you to this course in an online setting?
if you’ve taken a fully online course before, what advice do you have for your classmates who may be doing this for the first time?
Additionally, since I think we’ve all come to appreciate the value of seeing other people even more over this last weird year, it would be great if you would share a picture of yourself. If you prefer to share an avatar or an image that reflects something of your interests/identity rather than your face, that’s cool, too.
I’ll go first: my name is Karen Oakes, and I’ve been teaching here at SU since 2002. I teach in the Dept. of Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition. I’m also a writing consultant with the Maxwell School and the Service Learning Facilitator for the Writing Dept. Additionally, I’m on the faculty of the History Dept. at SUNY Oswego. I’m teaching online courses at both universities this summer.
When I’m not teaching, I can be found parenting 2 very busy teenagers, teaching a 16-year old how to drive (yikes!), and trying to squeeze in some time for travel and hiking and kayaking.
I’ve been teaching online courses for the last 15 years, and my biggest piece of advice would be to stay mindful of the schedule. I like working from a print copy of the schedule because it helps me to keep an eye on the Big Picture–not just what’s due this week, but how this week’s assignments fit into the larger workflow. That makes it easier to spot potential conflicts or challenges in advance, and plan ahead for them.
Now it’s your turn–please create a post. Include a title that contains your name. Please categorize this post as “Discussions/Homework,” and tag it with “weekof6/7,” “introductions,” and [your name]. Decide now how to name yourself for your tag, and kindly stick with it throughout the summer, so that each of your posts will carry that same tag. That way your work will be fully searchable.
We’ve got a mix of assignments this week as we gear up for the course and get familiar with the platforms. Please see below for a quick rundown of the week’s work.
by Wednesday, post a brief introduction to yourself on the blog (see this post for more details)
read this week’s assigned texts–a couple of brief pieces about organizational culture, and the preface and introduction of They Say, I Say
by Saturday, respond to 2 of the discussion prompts below (here on the blog)
by Sunday, submit your analysis of the introduction to They Say/I Say (in the Blackboard Dropbox)
We’ve got 2 primary goals for the week–to familiarize ourselves with the course and with each other, and to begin developing a shared base of knowledge. Each of the above activities will move us along toward those goals. Please also read through the syllabus and Unit 1 assignment sheet, linked below and also available on Blackboard.
Discussions on the blog will serve as class discussion work throughout the summer. For this week, please respond to Question #1 and to either #2 or #3.
Create a new post for your responses. Categorize it as “Discussions,” and tag it with “unit1,” “weekof6/7,” and [your name]. Each of your responses should be >150 words. Once you have posted, please review your classmates’ posts and comment on at least 2 of them (>75 words each). You should complete this work by the end of the day on Saturday, 6/12.
What are some of the researchable questions that this week’s readings raise for you? In other words, what issues do these readings make you wonder about? What questions would you be interested in exploring further?
Anytime we learn about something new, we start from where we are. Use your own experiences to respond to one of these articles–draw some connections between your experiences of work and/or school and the claims/ideas that these authors raise.
Select one of the definitions from “What is organizational culture and why should we care” OR one statistic from “Why diversity matters,” and discuss what questions this sparks for you? What do you think is interesting or significant about this idea? In other words, how does your look at this article open up questions about what organizational culture is and why it matters?
Remember: In order to keep our blog organized, it will be important for us to use categories and tags appropriately:
categories will sort posts into different locations (pages) on the blog
tags will make posts easily searchable.
When you click the “+” button to create a new post, your text editor window will have boxes for Tags and Categories in the right menu.
