MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

FOR MARCH 30-APRIL 3

Greetings, dear science writing students.  This post tells you want to do for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. My goals are the following for us as a class:

• Learn to Write to a prompt in ELI Review and Review -- in groups I select -- each other's writing.
• Prepare to develop a Revision plan in ELI Review, based on the feedback you receive.
• Focus on a set of short slide presentations about audience analysis as a life-long skill for thinking about writing for the many occasions of life that require such responses.  Spend about a half hour looking at these:
  • Set 1: Audience/Context/Purpose (Aristotle's Rhetorical Triangle)
  • Set 2: Audience Analysis and Relationships
  • Set 3: Booth's Two Triangles of Audience Analysis
• Touch base a bit about how the class is being revised and talk about fewer assignments, a final project, and grades.  We will do this by some Google Docs that I host. I will be in these documents between 9-12 on Monday and UPDATED Wednesday (to be linked later).  You can ask questions beforehand or during the time I will be there or read the documents later.  In this way, the process is like the Office-Hours-in-the-Sky approach we use. But, I am calling these documents Monday ASK ME ANYTHING and Wednesday ASK ME ANYTHING.  I think we have lots of questions about how this semester will resume and continue, as well as end.

Technology and platforms

• We continue with this class journal and I suggest that you start here each day and week to be clear about what we are doing.  I will try to link here to the two other platforms, namely, Google Docs/Slides that you are already familiar with and the new platform:  ELI Review.

Time and place

• I am moving to asynchronous vs. synchronous.  Here are my reasons: we are all under wildly new circumstances regarding family, living conditions, work responsibilities, and our other courses. Moving to a largely asynchronous setting is more fitting for this occasion that we find ourselves in.  I am sad to not be together with you all (9Am, 10AM, 11AM crews). Yet, as I revise the course into what is do-able, realistic, just, kind, fair, and appropriate, this is the way forward that I choose.
• ELI Review, where we will conduct our writing, reviewing, and revising together makes this possible.  

For Monday:  Please access ELI Review by a code.  The code should be circulating on groupMe.  Ask for this code from your colleagues.  Email if you still need the code, at either address.  The code allows you access to ELI Review.  Once you are in ELI Review, I suggest you poke around and learn how the site works. 

As of 6:07 today, 27 people are listed on the roster.  I need to see all of you on the roster no later than 8AM on Monday March 30.  There, you need to complete the assignment that is named "SOFT OPENING for WEEKEND: MEDIA Curation of two slide sets." This link will take you to ELI REVIEW, IF YOU ARE ON THE ROSTER AND LOGGED IN.  Read the directions and complete the short assignment by 1PM on Monday (please ignore the due date on that task for now).  Once you complete the short assignments, I will see that you have completed the task.  Then, I will assign a review task for you and your classmates based on that short assignment.  That review task will be due on -->

Wednesday, by 1PM.  UPDATED: Thursday, 2020-04-02 11:45 pm. Then, we will have some experience using ELI REVIEW.

Friday: I will host a session on Friday, in a Google Doc UPDATED!.  This will take the form of Office Hours in the Sky, with me being there between 9-1.  I WILL CHECK THE DOCUMENT again by 5PM.  Here, I am supporting you as we did earlier in the semester: Helping you before you turn in a major assignment.  You are familiar with how that sessions works.  The topic will be about your article review assignment underway before campus closure/spring break.  For Friday, by midnight, you will need to post that document into an ELI Review Writing Task prompt that I will release on Friday morning.   UPDATE:  I posted on Tuesday AM, so you can have more time to think about this, ask me questions, and prepare your document for Friday,

Process comment: This week, we practice ELI Review, prepare to share our article review documents in ELI, and generally get back into the swing of things.

What we are NOT DOING: We are not using ELMS, nor ZOOM, now.  

Advice:  Take a deep breathe.  Join ELI Review.  I will have more to say how we proceed after this week.  And, I want to hear from you.  I have some ideas about how to learn together, but we are a writing community. Let's spend the week together and see what we develop together.

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TASKS for the week:

1. Join ELI Review and spend fifteen minutes learning basics.
2. Complete the ELI Writing Task linked above by Monday at noon.
3. Look at the audience analysis slides linked above.
4. Complete the ELI Review Task, where you comment to a colleague on their slide.
5. Prepare to post your article review to ELI by Friday at midnight.
6. AND: Rest, eat good food, spend time outside in spring sun, exercise, be connected to people you love.