So, because it is the first week of discussion groups, we’re going to approach this a bit differently than we normally will. As is explained on the page for Discussion Groups and Participation Notebooks, typically your groups will meet to talk about the readings, as well as workshop various assignments. While some of that will be happening this first week, this will also be a chance for you to get familiar with the process and to start to get to know each other. I’m taking into account that it might take a bit more time to get the groups coordinated this first session as well.
Here are the tasks for this first week group discussion, which should take you somewhere around an hour.
- Introduce yourselves and get to know one another. Your ultimate goal for this session will be to find 3 things you all have in common and 1 thing that is unique to each of you. Keep in mind, the things you have in common should not be “We’re all students at UCSB” or “We’re all taking rhetoric” (that’s pretty low-hanging fruit). Instead, really try to find out what you have in common, and don’t forget about figuring out what is unique to each of you in the group. (My apologies if you’ve done this specific icebreaker activity with me before…)
- Be sure to have someone write down what you come up with. (You can include this at the top of your Dialectical Journal.)
- Come up with a group name. While I can just call each group by number, it would be better (and more relatable) if each group came up with a short group name.
For this part of the group session, I’m asking that you generate some ideas for the first major assignment in the class. Do the following:
- Read over the prompt for the Concept Paper.
- In your own words, re-write the prompt: what is it asking you to do? If you needed to explain it to a friend who was taking the class but who didn’t have access to the prompt, what would you say?
- Share and compare your re-writes of the prompt. (Everyone should read aloud what you came up with here.)
- Talk about it. Make sure you’re all on the same page, work through any confusion, help one another. Basically, this is your chance to make sure that you understand what the assignment is asking of you.
- Have someone in the group send me any questions that you still have. (I will answer these in an email and/or add them to the FAQ page.)
- Discuss (and write down) any ideas you have for the Concept Paper. Get feedback to refine those ideas, get a sense of what kind of story you could tell, and help others do the same.
This is the part of the group discussions that will happen every week. As I explain here, this is a chance for you to have a productive conversation about the material for the week. Ask questions about things that you are confused about, point out things you find interesting, talk about your experiences with the concepts… basically, have a conversation about any or all of the content for that week and help one another grasp the concepts in the readings.
Typically, you’ll be doing the Dialectical Journals with your group and two other groups. In other words, in every week after this, there will be 12-15 people participating in the journal with one another. (I will assign which groups are working together once I have all the groups settled.) However, I want to give you a chance to practice and get familiar with the process, so for this first week, you’ll be doing a Dialectical Journal with just your group.
In terms of the what needs to happen during your actual group meeting, each of you should make one quote/paraphrase (in the left column) and response/contribution (in the right column) to the journal and one comment on someone else’s contribution (in the margins). You can then continue contributing to the Dialectical Journal throughout the rest of the week (on your own time), ultimately having your 4 contributions completed by 11:59pm on Sunday.
The first week’s participation notebook is a pretty standard example of how they’ll go for the rest of the quarter. In your individual Google Drive folder (which you’ll need to make in the shared drive once I invite you to it), you should make a new document. (You can call it whatever you like, although I’d suggest “Week One Participation” or something like that.)
In that document, you should
- answer the usual questions for the participation notebook (“What was your most meaningful moment of participation in your small group this week? Why?” and “What questions or concerns do you have that you didn’t get to share?”)
- include the notes you made in item #2 of this agenda (that is, the prompt you rewrote in your own words and any ideas you have about the first assignment).
Hopefully this explanation helps this first week be a relatively painless one!
