I must have been a sophomore in high school at the time, circa 1986-1987. The song that you hear in the background was just Da Bomb as far as I was concerned. Life simply got put on pause when this song played. Yes, this is corny now but, hey, it was the 1980s and I was living in Ohio! I think about this song every semester when it's time to talk about grades. "Why You Treat Me So Baaaaad? Why You Do Me The Way You Dooooo?" It seems like this is how most students feel so I'm going to ask you to just take it on faith, for now at least, that I am not out to use grading to treat you bad.
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You are going to be asked to do some heavy lifting in this class— reading deeply, charting closely your thoughts, writing freely, talking openly! So be ready! This is NOT a difficult class, but it will require seriousness and commitment to doing the work. I am doing the best that I can in my teaching to make that work worthwhile.
Assessment in this class is based on an overall 100-point spread for all projects in the course. Each project in this course weighs in and gets counted towards the overall 100 points. You will receive details for each project, especially since much of your work could generate multiple public audiences in digital spaces. For some of you, the point-spreads may feel very new and different. 18-21 year old young adults today are often described in terms of the web 2.0 technologies that have saturated their childhood and early adulthood. However, there might be a better way to historicize young people in this age range: the group who has witnessed and been subjected to the most rubrics, norming standards, high-stakes tests, etc than any other group of K-12 students in the history of education in the United States. In this COLLEGE class, we will not be replicating the kinds of assessment strategies that you experienced in K-12 standardization regimes. Be prepared to comment on and think critically about the point-spread that you are given for each project. These point-spreads are designed rhetorically: to give you a more persuasive digital presence. Think of writing and designing in this class as giving you more than just an “A” at the end of the course. Understand yourself as establishing a digital/critical ethos.