Take-home exercise to do between sessions 4 and 5

This exercise, in addition to helping you get into the swing of the course, continues research that began when Peter Taylor was a member of the Fall 1999 CIT Faculty seminar on "Becoming a Teacher-Researcher" (see http://www.faculty.umb.edu/pjt/citreport.html). The research relates to the question: By what means can the group function as a support and coaching structure to get most students to finish their reports by the end of the semester?

Exercise, part 1. Review Course objectives in II. Information to get started, the Assessment system in III. Contract, "ongoing development of the course" under "Notes on participation and contribution to the class process" on the Notes wikipage, and, most importantly, Dialogue Around Written Work.

Part 2. Guided freewriting: In a freewriting exercise, you should not take your pen off the paper. Keep writing even if you find yourself stating over and over again, "I don't know what to say." What you write won't be seen by anyone else, so don't go back to tidy up sentences, grammar, spelling. You will probably diverge from the topic, at least for a time while you acknowledge other preoccupations. That's OK—it's one of the purposes of the exercise. However, if you keep writing for ten minutes, you should expose some thoughts about the topic that had been below the surface of your attention—that's another of the aims of the exercise. Reference: Elbow, P. 1981. Writing with power. New York: Oxford U. P.

Continue for 7 minutes where this sentence leads off:

"The idea of the class functioning as a support & coaching structure to get most students to finish our reports by the end of the semester brings up the following thoughts/ feelings/ experiences..."

continue on the back

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Part 3. On a separate sheet to be submitted by session 5 write down about five statements, questions, or reservations about the class functioning as a support & coaching structure to get most students to finish our reports by the end of the semester.