homework

   	   Links:  Learning        Service Learning        Computers	
	Home

We will use this page to schedule homework assignments. More details on the Learning Journal and other assignments are included on the All Assignments page. I will update this Homework page after every class, so check it for each week's homework, which will also be discussed in class.

Upcoming assignments:

November 4
As discussed in class, write your journal on an article from your field of study. You should analyze how the article represents the field in how it defines issues and problems, argues for solutions or modes of studying those problems, and relates to its intended readers. You are working with similar strategies for rhetorical analysis in your composition courses. If you have questions about how to do this assignment, send me an email by clicking here. Bring your article to class for discussion, as we discussed in our last class.

November 11
We will not have class because of Veterans' Day, but please post a journal entry reporting on the progress of your Service Learning work. You should inform me exactly how many hours you have worked over the last weeks, whom I can contact to talk to about that work, how I can contact the person (for example, phone number), and, most importantly, what you have learned from the work. We will also have conferences this week, on Wednesday or Friday morning. To schedule a conference, email by clicking here.

November 18
A draft of the Exploration of a Field essay is due in class for workshopping.
Click here for details on this paper.

December 2
The revision of your Exploration of a Field essay is due along with your copies of your learning journals. If you want these materials returned to you, you should plan on coming by my office during my office hours on Friday, December 3 from 12-1. You may also include a self-addressed envelope with enough postage to have it mailed to you (unless you live on campus, in which case, postage is not required).

Previous assignments:

For class on September 9
If you have not completed the Self-Assessment, fill it out by Tuesday morning, September 7. All you have to do is fill out a short form, which is reached by clicking Self-Assessment Assignment here or on the assignments page. I will use this information to refine assignments and plan workshops suited to your individual skills and needs.

For class, you should read and be ready to talk about the Learning Strategies materials that are linked to the Learning page. Survey the links, choose several that address problems such as procrastination or studying strategies that seem most helpful for what you need to work on. Read those pages and take notes (and copy them if you want to, or better yet, bookmark them or take down the addresses). After you finish the reading, you should write your first Learning Journal

BRING A COPY ON DISK TO CLASS FOR DISCUSSION. Be ready to discuss which of the Learning Strategy resource links you found most useful when we survey them in class. Also for class, bring the hardest reading that you have to do for another course, and be ready to talk about the reading strategies that you are using.

For our conferences on September 14, be ready to talk about the parts of the course contract, which are outlined below.

For class on September 16, you will write about what you have learned thus far in the semester. As in your earlier entries, you may focus entirely on any of these questions or related issues. Be prepared to turn in the learning journal assignments for September 16 and for September 9 as well.

	How are your classes going so far? What are you learning
	What is your most interesting class? Why does the material interest you? What are you going to do to build on your interest in the material?
	What is your most challenging course? How are you dealing with the challenges? What are your plans for overcoming them?
	What do you hope to learn this semester in your classes?

For September 23, write the Course Contract in the form of a memo to me outlining your work for the semester with paragraphs answering the following questions. Attached to the memo should be a week by week schedule of your exams, major writing assignments, and other work projects.

	What are you major assignments this semester? Describe the writing assignments and the focus of the major exams. Unpack key terms such as "rhetorical analysis" and define them in your own terms to assess if you really understand what they mean.
	What paper from another class will you workshop? What is the assignment, and what will be most difficult about writing the essay? (You will get written permission from your instructor),
	What community agency are you working with each week, or what three agencies have you researched, and what are you doing?

For September 30, you should continue your work with your agency or school this week. In class, we will work on Computer-Based Tutorials. To prepare for class, visit the Computer-Based Tutorials hompage and choose which tutorial you want to do in class. Email me your learning journal for the week and include the title for the Computer-Based Tutorial that you are going to begin working on in class. Your learning journal should report on your community work and answer the basic question of what you are learning about learning. Following forward from our discussion in class on September 16, what are you learning about how cultural, economic or age differences affect our ability to learn together?
What have been your best and worst experiences so far?

For class on October 7, catch up on your learning journals. If you have not completed the learning journals listed below, you have not fulfilled the requirements for the class, so please make sure that you are caught up. In class we will work on a Computer-Based Tutorial on Netscape Composer.

Remember that you are to attend a workshop offered by the library on creating webpages to help you prepare to create one. The workshops are scheduled for October 5 from 4 to 6 and October 12 from 2 to 4. For more information on these and other scheduled times, click on the library's free workshops.

For class on October 28, write your learning journal on your interview of a person from your intended field. This is first part of the three-part Exploration of a Field assignment that can become your major assignment for the semester. Click here for more information on the Exploration of a Field assignment. You can readily set up an interview with a professor in a field you are interested in by going by his or her office during office hours. You should inform the professor of what you want to talk about ahead of time. The interview should not take more than twenty minutes. Draft about ten questions like the ones below, and ask other questions to follow up on what the person says. MAKE SURE TO ASK ABOUT AN ARTICLE THAT THE PERSON THINGS IS VERY IMPORTANT because you will need to bring such an article to class on October 28 and analyze one in your journal for class on November 4.

Here are some questions to ask and to write about in the journal. You may decide to focus on any one of these questions or to pursue another line of questioning if you prefer:

*What do you do? Describe your research and teaching projects. Describe a typical day at work.
*What are the best and worst aspects about the work that you do?
*How did you get into the field? What prompted you to choose this field, where did you study, and how did you decide upon your program of work?
*What do you think will be the major trends in the field over the next five years?

*WHAT ARTICLE OR BOOK DO YOU THINK WOULD BE HELPFUL TO READ TO UNDERSTAND EMERGING TRENDS IN THIS AREA OF STUDY, THE WORK OF THE FIELD, OR EMPLOYMENT TRENDS IN THE PROFESSION?

*What advice would you offer to someone considering the field? What do you think that students need to learn to be successful in the field? What do you look for when you hire people to work in the field?

*What do you think are the most important things that a person needs to develop to be successful in this field?

Do not be afraid to follow the discussion wherever it leads, but have some specific issues in mind to discuss. These should be determined by your purpose: are you concerned that the discipline may be too difficult for you? If so, then focus on what is difficult in work and how those difficulties can be overcome. Are you genuinely unsure about a field? Then ask more wideranging questions about related fields and how the person decided upon a field. If you have decided upon a field, then focus your questions on what you are specifically interested in, and use the time to get specific answers to how to achieve your goals.