Everyone will be expected to complete the following REQUIREMENTS:
- Reading assignments. We can only have interesting and exciting discussions if you do ALL of the reading in advance.
- (15%)—Class attendance and participation.
- (15%)—As noted on the GENERAL INFORMATION page, every student will be required to post to our Sakai course website each week, unless they are presenting. Half of the non-presenting students in the class will be asked to submit at least two questions you thought of while doing the readings (including the reading assigned by the discussion leaders and the readings assigned by the professor). These questions must be submitted three days (72 hours) prior to each class. The other half of the non-presenting students in class will be asked to respond to two of their peers' posted questions; these responses must be submitted at least two days (48 hours) prior to each class. Among the purposes of these questions and responses is to help the students who will be leading the discussion that week to prepare for that task. The quality of these questions and responses will be evaluated by the discussion leaders for their ability to spark discussion as well as for the extent to which they offer evidence that ALL of the readings were actually completed.
- (30%)—Two turns as a discussion leader. Being a discussion leader will include finding—and assigning—one article on your assigned topic (15 pages maximum, total). This article must be approved by me, and can be a review chapter from an edited book or an empirical article from a research journal. Either way, plan to have an electronic copy of your paper (in PDF file-format) to me by 2:45 pm one week before your presentation. In addition, be prepared to tell your classmates on that day what they will need to know as they read the material to be discussed the following week. Your grade on this section will be jointly determined as a function of the quality of both your presentation and your chosen article. As a discussion leader, you will be responsible for leading the class through ALL of the articles to be discussed on your assigned day; but rest assured, you can count on your professor to be there to provide background information and help on the articles *I* have chosen for that day.
- Students will also pursue a single project all semester that further considers one of the topics covered in this course. The choice of topic will be left to each student, although I am certainly available to help anyone develop their topic! There will be three separately graded assignments associated with the project, as follows:
- (10%)—a bot-generated paper and annotated bibliography that will be used, ultimately, to help with the production of your final, original, human-written paper. The annotated bibliography will expand on the bot-generated paper in a way that makes it clear that you understand the weaknesses of the bot-generated paper and that you have obtained some expertise on your topic that goes beyond a bot’s capabilities. More information on this assignment will be forthcoming in class, but please take note that the bot-generated paper and annotated bibliography will be due on Tuesday, March 7.
- (20%)—A final, original, human-written paper. THIS PAPER WILL BE DUE ON THE LAST DAY OF CLASS (Tuesday, May 2).
- (10%)—Finally, I will ask everyone to prepare a research poster to be presented on one of the final two days of class; this poster will provide you with an opportunity to share with the rest of the class information that you discovered while doing research for your final paper.
PLEASE NOTE: I will consider any collection of 4 or more consecutive, unquoted words taken from another source to be plagiarism. Any paper containing any plagiarized content will receive an automatic grade of F. When in doubt, please ask me!