Assignments

1. Write a Teaching Philosophy. Read the following teaching philosophies:
a. Teaching Philosophies, H Group, ITA Workshop
b. Teaching Philosophies, ESL 5301, Fall 2013
And then write your own. Assume you are applying for a job in your field where they care about your teaching and want to know how you approach teaching. Write about a page double-spaced, on a word file, and send it to me by e-mail. It will eventually appear here on this blog.

2. Model Dissertation. Go online, and find a dissertation from your field, that you would like your dissertation to look like. We are interested in such features as length, style, sections, etc. When you find one, send the link to me by e-mail; it also will appear eventually here on the blog. 

3. Summary #1 (Due TH 12:00). Pick an article from the ones in the post above. Pick one that you got first or that is not taken (do not pick #4). You may also pick a similar article that you have found and that is about a similar topic. The article should be about a page, and should be news. For this assignment, do not do academic papers or reference (wikipedia) articles. Write a summary of 7-10 sentences plus reference in APA. Double-space the article and the reference, and send it to me by e-mail.  

4. (Sum. Ass't #2) Two summaries, one of an academic article, both about social media. Go after a hypothesis or two...in other words, look into what you want, try to find something we can study, and find things you can use to set up our study and set up things we can actually find out. Both should have references. You do not need to write your hypotheses. 

5. (Sum. Ass't #3) Two more summaries, also about social media. No requirement as to whether they are academic, non-academic, online or not online. Look into the things that will help you make hypotheses: male/female differences, way people use social media, recent trends or changes, different attitudes about social media. We will put the hypotheses separate, and share them; nevertheless, you should remember that we can only measure what people say, or feel; we won't measure grades, or what they do, or how much they actually post.  

6. First draft, Proposal, due TH Sept. 25 at midnight. The first draft must include the Introduction, some hypotheses, and a reference section. It may include as much of the lit. review section as you can finish, the more the better. Remember that the lit. review should make it clear where a hypothesis came from; a hypothesis can come out of nowhere, but it should make us curious if we found anything written about the topic. Our ultimate goal is to have four or five hypotheses; have each supported or at least discussed by several articles; and have our hypotheses easily testable simply by asking ~120 TTU students their opinions, or asking them to report their actions, with a simple survey.  
Be sure there is no plagiarism in your writing; be sure all citations lead to reference; and be sure that you introduce a summary by identifying it as a summary (According to this article....). All violators will be caught by the dog (grrrrr) and/or identified in class.  

7. You have received your first drafts back and have responded to the comments. You may be nervous about grammatical errors, in which case, feel free to hand it back in. When you have a draft that you are truly comfortable with, upload it onto the blog. Call it Proposal and put your initials somewhere on it, either in the title, or at the end of it as we do. Be sure to upload a word file as you are shown in class. Format it so that it doesn't have too much blank space or poor after-paragraph spacing. Put titles in bold. Link the references if it's not done already, or, ask if you need help.

Uploading the Proposal: Be sure you have your word file ready on a word document. Online, click on the orange B (on a blog) or go to www.blogger.com. Google will assume you are using your google ID, so click on Sign in on a different account. Your login address is esl5301leverett@gmail.com. Your password you will receive in class. Use that, and click the orange New Post button. Now go back to your word document, select all, copy, and put it on the blog. If you want to see it before you publish it, click save and publish later. But don't just leave it there; if it's not posted, you haven't finished the assignment. It should be on the blog by WED. Oct. 15 (due Tues. at midnight).

It is important that you have both your best paper copy Proposal handed in to me (which will go in a Dropbox folder as part of your grade), and your best online copy here on the blog where everyone can see it. Your midterm grade is basically how well you have done on this proposal (and the summaries) (40%), and whether you have kept up with the assignments of the class (10%).  You will receive a grade sheet that will report this in the next two weeks. Your final paper will account for the last 50%, but obviously, you won't know that until the end of the term.

8. Write a speech to a fundraising organization that has lots of money to fund projects like ours (this is imaginary, of course). They want to know what benefits can come from investing in this kind of research. For our purposes you don't have to admit that our statistics are weak, i.e. based on only ~120 people. Pretend that it's a valid study, statistically legitimate, and able to determine lots of useful things about social media. Tell this educated audience what value can come from studying social media. One page, double spaced, is enough, but be persuasive. It is due SUN. night at midnight. Finish your proposal (see #7) first. 

9. Check the tentative survey (top of this blog). Does it catch everything you wanted? Does it say it in the way that you need to figure out what you want? How could it be restated? What is missing? Do you feel we could go about it in a different way? If so, what way? Please read it and tell me what you think by TUE. 

10. Folk Tale. The writing of a good story is not formal academic writing, but it's good for us nonetheless. Folk Tales are often told to children; often they teach children something. Often animals talk in them, or people have magic powers or are unusually clever. All of these make them very entertaining. In your culture you probably have dozens that you can think of right away; some, like the Hare and the Tortoise, are almost universal. Please do not copy one or translate it directly. You may read online versions of your story before you write, but tell the story yourself; make it completely for you. Someday baby Ray Kemal will appreciate the fact that you wrote this story for him! 

11. Survey agreement (subject to change). In your hand you should have 15 surveys, all the same, all one sheet two sided. There is also an online (survey monkey) version, or will be soon. The first 10 are required: you must find 10 American (Texas Tech) students, 5 male and 5 female. These 10 may be graduates or undergraduates, but they must be students. If someone fills it out and it turns out that they are not a student, or they are international, put it in the other pile and get more. With your last 5, you may get anyone, but we are trying to keep it balanced (1/2 female, 1/2 male). You may fill out one yourself, for example. You can ask neighbors, wife, etc.

We are not giving advice about how to fill out the survey. It generally doesn't say whether to check one or check many, so they have to decide that for themselves. If they leave something blank, don't pressure them, but if they forget to fill out the back (this happens), remind them. If they get angry, apologize and back down. If they begin talking about a topic like hashtags, listen carefully and keep track. Do they have strong opinions? If so, we want to know.  If they ask for details about the class, tell them what you know. Tell them that all the results will be online (here) but that they aren't especially significant statistically. 

In order to get credit for getting ten surveys filled out, make sure your initials are on the bottom of each survey. This may be difficult on the survey monkey survey, so we may need to tabulate how many of our friends actually use survey monkey. Survey monkey results will ideally be thrown in with the rest and treated equally.  

12. Tell to the best of your ability the story of how you collected the surveys. This should include whether people filled them out willingly or not, whether they made any comments, and whether any conversations started about the nature of social media. There was some dissatisfaction about the form of the survey (unclarity of don't know/don't use, for example); if you can, document that. I found that though I was sure I'd gotten 5 male & 5 female American students, several of them hadn't checked "male" or "female" or "from USA". Document that kind of problem as well! It doesn't have to be long, or specific about the exact building where you were; words like "in my department" are good enough. It should not be more than a page, double spaced. 

13. Write the Methods section. First, it starts out with a general description of TTU - where it's located, how big it is, where it gets its students, etc. The critical question for most readers is how representative it is of all American students, or of all young people. It is not necessary to argue that it is, only to give most of the relevant facts that would help them decide. Second, tell about our agreement; who did we agree to talk to? Did we have any restrictions on who we asked? And finally, write about the survey itself: what it asked, what it allowed them to do, etc. The fact that the demographic info was crammed on the top line was certainly relevant. A blank copy of the survey should be included in your final report, so call it Appendix I and refer to it; show the reader what we used. Don't forget to mention the online survey, which brought us about fifteen of our responses, and was remarkably similar to the paper version. 

14. Write the Discussion Section (due TH Nov. 13). Start with the hypotheses: did the results come out as expected or not? Why or why not? Try to consider alternative explanations for the data. What is important about the study? What, to you, stood out the most about what happened? You are free to discuss anything, and you are also free to go back to the lit review/hypotheses section and make a statement like "We were curious about _____" - since some of what we found, you weren't specifically looking for. Finally, discuss the weaknesses of the study. This is intended to make it appear that if you were given appropriate support, you could do a much better study. You are aware that our sample was too small and wasn't representative, so, you'll do better next time!

15. Conclusion and abstract; put it all together. First draft Research paper due TH Nov. 20. (This is so I can get it back to you by the break).  The conclusion is fairly obvious, and doesn't have to be long, but should say anything that you consider to be a conclusion of the study. Abstracts are a single paragraph, and are meant to be separated from the paper itself, and describe the paper as quickly and concisely as possible. The research paper should be twelve full pages double-spaced; title page, abstract, bibliography, and appendices do not count. Charts and graphs do not count, either in the text or in appendices (they may be either place).  

16. Research paper requirements: Twelve pages, not counting title page, abstract, appendix, charts, or bibliography.  Double-space, any standard 12-pt. font, standard margins; paragraphs indented, no space-after-paragraph (these don't upload well). Charts can be in color, but many of us can't print in color, so they should be clear regardless, and labelled properly (we don't grade charts, but they do matter. 

When in doubt, consult APA handbook or APA regulations as posted on the web. I am not picky about exact APA regulations, but if you follow them, this can only help you. References, for example, should be in hanging indent. Everything should be in the same font. Fanciness, i.e. decoration on the title page, or decorated font, is frowned upon in academia, so we will do the same. 

Your paper should print out well on standard paper; we will put it in a Dropbox file marked "First Draft" or some such thing so you can get as much advice as possible. If you submit it by e-mail by midnight TH Nov. 20 you are best assured of getting it back on TUE before we all go home for the break. You want it back by TUE, though. Careless or poorly uploaded papers (as you might see on the last class blog) are usually the result of lateness.