692SupportSurvey

Take-home exercise to do after session 5
This exercise, in addition to helping you get into the swing of the course, continues my own research that began as a member of the Fall 1999 CIT Faculty seminar on "Becoming a Teacher-Researcher" (see http://www.faculty.umb.edu/peter_taylor/citreport.html). (A follow-up to this exercise may be conducted at the end of the semester. My thanks in advance for your assistance.)  The research I'm involving you in relates to the question: By what means can the group function as a support & coaching structure to get most students to finish their reports by the end of the semester?

Exercise, part 1. Review the NOTES ON TEACHING/LEARNING INTERACTIONS. Review the material in the syllabus on "[|Assessment & Requirements]."

Part 2. Guided freewriting: In a freewriting exercise, you should not take your pen off the paper. Keep writing even if you find yourself stating over and over again, "I don't know what to say." What you write won't be seen by anyone else, so don't go back to tidy up sentences, grammar, spelling. You will probably diverge from the topic, at least for a time while you acknowledge other preoccupations. That's OK—it's one of the purposes of the exercise. However, if you keep writing for ten minutes, you should expose some thoughts about the topic that had been below the surface of your attention—that's another of the aims of the exercise. Reference: Elbow, P. 1981. Writing with power. New York: Oxford U. P.

Continue for 10 minutes where this sentence leads off: "The idea of the class functioning as a support & coaching structure to get most students to finish our reports by the end of the semester brings up the following thoughts/ feelings/ experiences..."

Part 3. On a separate sheet to be handed in during session 7 write down about five statements, questions, or reservations about the class functioning as a support & coaching structure to get most students to finish our reports by the end of the semester.

Cardstorming
A group of qq