Notes

 A semester-long "learning/engaging" project allows you to adopt or adapt the critical thinking themes and activities from each session into an area of your choice provided that it connects the life sciences to their social context. The area should be one about which you are interested in engaging others in learning and critical thinking. Engagement might range from teaching, to activism, to personal/professional development. It also means you are engaged--the area should also be one you want to learn more about. A sequence of 12 assignments is required--initial description (draft due session 3), installments (350-600 words) in which you adopt or adapt the themes and activities from sessions 3-10 (initial drafts due sessions 4-11), presentation (in session 12), complete draft report (due session 1 2 ), and final (1500-2500 words) report (due one week after session 13).  Initial description: Building on what you arrive at after the in-class workshop of session 2 and comments from the instructor, compose a paragraph (or two) that conveys a) the area of biology in its social context in which you are interested in engaging others in learning and critical thinking, audience (i.e., who you envisage those "others" to be), and the kind of learning and critical thinking you have in mind; b) your background and context in so far as it illuminates why **you** are interested in what you described under a); c) any key references or other sources that you might build on; and d) challenges you foresee or areas you would like guidance on. Installments, in which you adopt or adapt the critical thinking themes and activities from each session 3-10 (350-600 words; drafts due sessions 4-11; revisions due a week after comments from the instructor are posted ):  Presentation, 10 minutes (to be confirmed) for presentation and discussion. Quickly set the scene -- reminding listeners of your area of biology in society and the audience that you are trying to engage in critical thinking and learning -- then convey the way your thinking evolved over the semester, including any stumbling blocks, and, in order to prime discussion and feedback, express where you need to develop your thinking further about how to engage your audience in critical thinking and learning.  Report: A synthesis of the installments highlighting the exercises, activities, themes you use to engage your audience in critical thinking and learning, but note: > 1. Some of the themes and activities from the sessions may seem more important than others when it comes to adapting or adopting them into the area in which you are interested in engaging others in learning and critical thinking. So spread out your installments, take a fresh look at them as a set. Feel free to rearrange and highlight selected installments if that helps your overall approach to engaging others in learning and critical thinking come across most forcefully. > 2. Your audience is still the audience for your installments. However, if your ideas about who to engage and how change over the course of the semester, feel free to include footnotes or a side narrative of the development of your thinking. > 3. Even if you got an OK/RNR for an installment, there may still be more thinking you can do in response from comments from me. Take a fresh look at my comments and feel encouraged to revise before inserting any installment into the report. > 4. Preparing your session 12 presentation and the feedback you get will help you to see how the installments fit together into a single report on "engaging others in learning and critical thinking" about the life sciences in their social context. > 5. For the report to be counted as final, you must have revised in response to comments from instructor and peers on a complete draft. (The draft must get to the end to count as complete, even if some sections along the way are only sketches.) Additional investigation and thinking may be entailed.sss > 6. As for installments, use author-date in-text citations and include an alphabetized bibliography of all references cited. Also: There are two audiences you are writing your report to: 1) each installment has material directed at engaging your defined audience (e.g., middle school science students) in learning and critical thinking; and 2) each installment probably has some text that explains your choices about how to do this. In any case, the report should include such explanatory text. You should not think of the audience for this text as the instructor but as people interested in the life sciences and society and/or in fostering learning and critical thinking, but people who do not know what we read and did in the course. If you write as if the instructor is the reader you run the risk of assuming the readers can fill in where you leave gaps because they know the course and what you were working on.   B. In order to get oriented to the various course materials and mechanics, complete the "syllabus quiz" and submit week 2 by email to the instructor. C. Building learning community C1. Prepared participation and attendance at class meetings (=13 items) > Prepared participation in class sessions is expected. One item fulfilled for each class you participate in (except not if you are unprepared). Participation includes being punctual, not taking cell phone calls, not checking email etc., and, for online students, arranging reliable internet connection and head set. > If you miss a session being prepared for the //next// one includes listening to the mini-lecture (available on Recordings) and add post to the blog about the interactive activity if there was one. To make up for a missed session, listen to the audio recordings of the session (excluding the mini-lecture for the next session) by the Saturday after it, undertake any activity that the in-class students were led through, and post to the blog your reflections related to four separate points spread across the class meeting (excluding the mini-lecture for the next session).  C2. Contributions to the revision of the chapters [previously called "cases"] introduced in sessions 2-11 or to an annotated collection of new readings and other resources (due start of sessions 3-12; 6 times = 6 items) > Post these as replies to the instructor's blog post for contributions to the appropriate session, not as separate posts. > The hope is that the revised chapters and the bibliography will form part of a text to be published. Fashion your contributions so that the chapter works better from a student's point of view, is brought up to date, and includes precis of readings. (The instructor will let you know if you need to flesh out the contributions.) (See [|examples] by the instructor.)  D. Weekly check-in on how you adopted/adapted themes (sessions 3-11) (=9 items) > In 1-2 minutes describe how you interwove the themes and activities of the previous session into your project (as you will have described in more detail in your written installment).  E. Office hours with the instructor on your project and other assignments, by sessions 6 and 10 (=2 items) > for discussion of comments on assignments (see Dialogue around written work), ideas for course project, and the course as a whole. They are important to ensure timely resolution of misunderstandings and to get a recharge if you get behind. Appointments missed without notifying instructor in advance count as a participation item not fulfilled.  F. Peer commentary on other students' installments, initial description & draft report (6 times, by session after posting, sessions 4-13; 6 items) > To indicate that you will be commenting on a draft, insert your name in the comment box following the posted draft installment, then edit the box to add your comments within 5 days. (Don't comment on a draft if someone else already is, unless there are no others to comment on. Try to find a draft from someone you have not commented on before.) > When you decide what approaches to commenting you ask for as a writer or what approaches you use as a commentator, keep Elbow and Belanoff's (2000) [|variety of responses] in mind. (Elbow 1981, chapters 3 and 13 on sharing and feedback is relevant here as well.) After all, although some commentors fill the margins with specific suggestions for clarification and changes, the response of students to the suggestions often goes no further than touching up—the desired re-thinking and revising of ideas and writing rarely happen. It seems a better use of an commentor’s time to capture where the writer was taking you and make a few suggestions that might clarify and extend the impact on readers of what was written. As writers, we all value comments that show us that we have been listened to and our voice, however tentative, has been heard. (examples of commentary on draft reports in another course; peer commentary on 645/545 installments is new in 2014)  G. Assignment Checklist Filled-in during semester and submitted to instructor on paper or by email at time of final submissions (1 item).  H. Process review (posted to blog) -- Identify 4-6 examples that capture the process of development of your work and thinking about fostering “critical thinking about the diverse influences shaping the life sciences.” Journaling, freewriting, drafts, etc. may be included, that is, not simply your best products. Explain your choices in a 250-500 word cover note and through annotations for each item. (Examples of past students' process reviews are linked to the Readings.)  I. Narrative course evaluation completed via http://bit.ly/CCTEvals and code submitted to cct@umb.edu (before time of final submissions)
 * The course revolves around weekly written assignments as well as participation items, which include active participation during class based on preparation between classes, peer commentary on draft installments, and more. The basic description of what is expected is given below; additional guidance on how to think about the specific assignments can be drawn from the material in the Chapters.
 * It is expected that you will spend at least 6.5 hours per session outside class time reading, researching, and writing. You should view each assignment and each session in relation to the unfolding of learning during the course. (That is, do not expect the syllabus and online links to allow you to cut to the chase about what to do at the last minute for the next class.) The course works by building from topic to the next so not being prepared or late submissions detract significantly from the learning possible in class sessions.
 * Use an assignment checklist (copied from Checklist) to keep track of due dates and throughout the semester record assignments and participation items submitted/fulfilled. Do not expect emails, class-time or meetings with the instructor to be taken up reminding you. (See policy for requesting an Incomplete.)
 * You can ask for extensions on two assignments or participation items, moving the due date as far back as the last session. Also, to accommodate the contingencies of your lives, 20% of the assignments and participation items can be skipped altogether without penalty. (No explanation is needed for extensions or skipped work. Simply record these on your assignment checklist and keep up with other assignments and participation items.)
 * The written assignments are commented on, but not graded. Not grading keeps the focus on [|Dialogue around written work], which provides guidance on Revision and Resubmission tailored to each student's specific interests and needs. You are expected to read comments carefully, consult with the peer commenter or instructor if you don't understand a comment they made, __revise thoughtfully in response to the comments, and resubmit until you receive an OK/RNR__ (=OK, revision and resubmission not requested).
 * You should aim for OK/RNR on at least 9 of the 12 written assignments as well as fulfilling 32 of 40 participation items. If you reach this target—and the goal is to work with everyone to achieve that—you get at least a B+ and a rubric is used to determine B+, A- or A. The instructor gets the final say on assessment using the rubric, but students are ask ed to supply their own self-assessment. If you do not reach the automatic B+ level, 5.5 points are given for each OK/RNR assignment, 3 points are given for other drafts submitted //on time//, and .75 points for each participation item, up to a maximum of 80. (See [|Rationale for the Assessment system].)
 * Overall points are converted to letter grades as follows: The minimum grade for A is 95 points, for A- is 87.5, for B+ is 80, for B is 72.5; for B- is 65; for C+ is 57.5; and for C is 50 points.
 * //For CCT graduate students only//: The process review or the final report should be suitable for inclusion in the required Reflective Practitioner's Portfolio because the project is on a topic that has evolved during the course of the semester as you integrate the perspectives from each session and look ahead to future research and engagement on a topic that involves science and its relation to social context.
 * A. Written assignments (2/3 of grade)**
 * Post drafts to the blog and later add the revision above it in the same post with updated time of publishing (not as a reply to the post or as a new post ).
 * Begin with the words "DRAFT," "REVISION", "REVISION2" (etc.) (if needed), a 1-3 sentence summary, then the "more" marker.
 * Feel free to upload any assignment to google drive as a pdf or on your personal blog, then, after the summary, provide a link to that instead of the more marker.
 * (Change for next offering of course) Each submission should have this sequence: Title, Your name, Date, Session the installment relates to, "DRAFT," "REVISION", or "REVISION2," a 1-3 sentence summary, the text (with in-text author-date citations for every reference used), and bibliography of references in full ( at the end, alphabetized by last name of author). Save as pdf then upload to a blog post with that title, the summary and the link to the pdf.  Specify the category for the session the installment relates to.  When you post a revision (including an updated date), use the same post, inserting the revision above the draft or previous revision and separated by a "More" tag.  Also, change the date to the present time so the post moves to the top of the stream of posts. ||
 * Drafts can be made password-protected if you want only the instructor and (by arrangement) a peer reviewer to see them.
 * Examples of past students' installments are linked to the Readings, but each project and student is different. It is primarily through comments on your draft submissions that you see how to make the process expand your thinking about the specific project you choose (see Dialogue around written work). Recommended steps—Write down for yourself the critical thinking themes of the session (as emerge from the preparatory reading(s), the class activity, and any additional reading you do). Think about an aspect or extension of your project for which the critical thinking themes would be relevant. Expect to have to undertake some further reading and research into articles available online through the UMB library.
 * E.g., To adapt PBL to your area, if your audience were other teachers involved in a program to heighten students' awareness of addiction in the brain, you might imagine a retreat where you had 90 minutes to get the teachers aware of the wider social context around efforts to emphasize the effects on the brain. You would design a rapid PBL that opened up exploration of changing economic considerations as they have led to growing abuse of prescription medicine, successes and failures of efforts in other areas to alter behaviors, new addictions after baryatric surgery, etc. In short, your installment would be the PBL and accompanying explanation of how you would run the PBL.
 * E.g., To use theme (of session 3) about interpreting ideas of nature as ideas about favored social order, if your project were about conservation biology (a.k.a. protecting biodiversity), you might search for writing that speaks of how loss of biodiversity threatens the "balance of nature." What kind of balance is that (fragile? long-standing?...) and what does this balance say about how industries should be organized and regulated? In your search you may come across writing about biophilia, about people's need to spend time in undisturbed wilderness, and so on. You might then look for analogies with the Romanticism of 200 years ago when people wrote of similar needs at exactly the same time as humans were, through industries and mining, ramping up their interventions in non-human nature (and in relations among humans). After some exploration, you might start to see how for your intended audience you could foster learning and critical thinking using the theme that ideas of nature as ideas tell us about the writer's/artist's favored social order.
 * Participation and contribution to the class process (1/3 of grade)**