Wednesday, November 19

Today you each took stock of how many observations you had, and briefly reflected on how those observations connected to your project.

I revised the blog assignments - from what is listed on the calendar - to posting reflections on what you are finding in your observations + tutoring sessions. Post an overview of what you observed + some analysis of materials that connect to your session. This way - if your session connects to one of your classmate's projects - that individual can contact you for a copy of your notes. By analyzing each others' observations - hopefully - you will each be able to come up with enough material for your projects. The object is for you to come up with about five posts documenting your sessions. You can use these posts to: let your classmates know what you are working on; do some brainstorming about which sections of your data you will analyze in depth; write short sections that you can use in your papers. These blogs should be posted at the rate of 2 a week from now until the beginning of December.

We also took a look at the New England Writing Center Association's call for papers for their spring conference. Their theme is "reduce-reuse-recycle" which connects to many of your research projects - in that you are looking at how writing center pedagogy is applied in new situations and new contexts. We can talk about putting a panel more towards the end of the term.

You may have noticed that I did not do the presentation on the reflective paper; I have decided I would rather have you put your energy into your research projects. The reflective writing will be short and informal, and we will work on it as a class as you put together your portfolios.

You need to take not that the draft for your research essay should be posted on your blog December 3. This is a real deadline. At the end of the term, I have a lot of grading and am not able to be flexible about deadlines. Throughout the term I have been pretty easy about deadlines, but this will not be the case in December. If the draft for the research essay is late (not posted on the due date) you will lose credit.