IIa. QUICK PERSONAL RESPONSES TO THE READINGS
Overview
You will create four informal responses (Quick Personal Responses). Each response will concern at least three of the resources assigned for the unit. Note: YOUR TEXTBOOK IS ONE RESOURCE, not three. That is, this assignment requires you to discuss the textbook and one or more other course resources, e.g., film, podcast, or video. Posts that are not built around three resources will receive a grade of zero. Cite each resource in the text, at the appropriate location, in this way: “(textbook)” [Do not provide the entire name of the textbook—simply use the word textbook], “(First four words of name of film),” or “(First four words of name of other resource).” Again, QPRs that do not reference three different resources and do not cite these resources at the appropriate locations in the text will receive a grade of zero.
General Expectations
Appropriate Format. Do not upload a post in a format that has to be downloaded in order to be accessed, as this is onerous for your readers and can cause problems if softwares are not compatible. Given that the Internet and D2L do crash, and given that D2L has been known to swallow submissions whole, never to release them from its inkless depths, you
are required to write in a word processing software and to save your post as an electronic file before copying and pasting the text (not the file itself) into the appropriate discussion forum and thread.
Posts that are permanently lost as a result of technical difficulties that is, posts that you have been written but not saved outside of D2L—cannot be graded (obviously) and thus will earn a zero. Once you have completed your post and saved it in a location outside of D2L, then copy, paste, and upload the text to the appropriate discussion thread. Attach your Self– Assessment to the same thread so that your peer reviewer can check it. Use only Microsoft Word or PDF format to save your Self–Assessment.
Specific Expectations
Each Quick Personal Response will be at least 250 words long. You will create a post describing your personal responses to the resources you have selected. The first sentence of your post will be a thesis statement/overview of what follows in the post. This sentence must pertain to each of the three required paragraphs and should stand alone in its own paragraph. Do not create a thesis that simply lists the main ideas of the three paragraphs that follow—rather, find a thread that ties these paragraphs together. This is a challenge of the assignment, and will be checking carefully to ensure that you make the effort to create a true thesis for your QPRs.
Title. A headline based on your thesis sentence that is likely to be gripping or at least very interesting to your peers.
Content. You will discuss three questions, each in its own substantive paragraph:
What did I find most surprising about this unit, and why?
What aspect of the unit struck me as most meaningful, and why?
What aspect of the unit was hardest for me to think about, and why?
