9.25 more analysis and thinking about your research projec ts

More Analysis.  You are making great progress on developing the basic moves and terminology you will use in writing analytic research for writing studies!   Good work.  The first part of today's class was about reviewing the moves for categorizing and coding the data in the shaggy dog stories - and then applying the language we developed in a systematic way to "proove" our conclusions about what makes shaggy dog jokes funny. That part went pretty well. While length (associated with strong development) seemed to be an important factor (we ranked development as most important), it was clear that audience connection to the punchline, development and surprise (our 3 categories) was probably the most important.  An audience will NOT think a joke is funny if it doesn't get the punchline, understand the development, or care about the material.  So in some sense - we can't come up with a theory for what makes shaggy dog stories funny that gets too specific.  Rather = it has to stick to certain kinds of moves or features (as the class list of categories did).  

Literacy narratives. We spent the next part of class looking at a "post" for Blog 6 - the analysis of one or  more literacy narrative (sorry).. We began by identifying what the Blog post required the writer to do, then you analyzed the post for whether and how it met the requests  made by the prompt. You wrote/talked about the strengths and weaknesses of the post.   You did a great job on this.  I copied our lists from the board into this post (see below).

Strengths

identifies categories/themes

categories themes are in the data and fit together

includes interpretations (like assigning emotions to particular actions)

very detailed

makes interconnections (with parenthetical labels) among different parts of the story

identifies the overall story arc

accounts for the breadth of the data (labels many things - even irrelevant things)

the questions at the end connect to multiple issues

identifies themes that connect patterns

patterns identify relationships in data that are not obvious

named elements in the overall patterns

Work on

organization

questions should frame the presentation

needs  to be a more writerly text

too stream of consciousness

too few clues for readers

needs more explanation of patterns + connections between data & patterns

give the reader more clear ground for where they are ( numbering of pages)

use color coding                                                     

identify codes that fit into particular categories

So good job on this.  You asked if you could go back and re-do/add to your last blog - and the answer is of course.  I will be looking at blogs after Thursday - and have feedback for you before the end of the weekend.  You can re-write & re-post; add to the original; add comments about what you would do differently in a different colored font, or just leave it.  I will give points for the revised version.  Also - if there are parts of analytic process that you are still not understanding - write some questions - and I will give you answers as part of your blog feedback.

Ideas for your research projects.  Our class has been approved by the Kean University IRB - so you can more forward with your research projects after we go over how to recruit subjects, gather informed consent, ensure an ethical project design, and debrief subjects.  As I was listening to your ides for what you might work on I was thinking about what kind of field research you might participate in - and ways to design your projects so that they are writing studies projects (have a focus on language).  There were some great ideas - and I am looking forward to reading your blog posts where you work through some writing to develop a research question.

Overiview of form for research essays:  Very brief presentation of sample form for a research paper.  We used Robin Martin's essay as a model for the form of a research paper.  Introduction (statement/justification of focus, brief review of connection to other research, brief statement of what the present essay does differently/adds to schollarship); review of literature; description of the present study (context, subject, methods), presentation of data, discussion of findings, conclusions.  This is a general form - and like our theory of what makes jokes funny it applies in a general way.  In face - just as for any other piece of writing - the audience and purpose for your essay will determine the form.  At the same time - like with the theory of what makes jokes funny - there are certain moves you need to make (and pretty much those are the moves we listed in class) - what those moves are and the precise placement of them will depend on the audience +purpose.

Narrowing your focus: The very end of class was spent going over the worksheet for developing a research plan (posted to the right).  Right now - you have a broad focus or a general idea of what you might study.  The first three steps on the worksheet are designed to help you come up with a project that is both deep enough to allow for the kind of analysis and thinking required by this assignment, and well defined enough and "do-able" enough that you can do a decent job on your focus in approximately 7 pages.  

Some final thoughts: The research project for this class may be different from the research papers you have written for many classes => because you are going to use analytic process to discover or create new knowledge and ideas.  This project is not a report, or even an interpretation.  It is an analysis that considers data in combinations, or from perspectives that are fundamentally different from other studies.  A successful project will be created through a process that draws on collaboration, close analysis of data and reflection as ways to re-imagine your material.   

For next class:

re-read: Rhetoric of Teacher Comments on Student Writing  Robin Martin

Bring an essay with teacher comments (preferably the essay will be electronic and the comments will be in MS word's commenting function).  If you have several essays that you think show different commenting styles - please bring more than one.  If you have an assignment sheet for the essay - bring that too.

Blog 7: Post (or edit and post if you choose) the writing you did in class to think about ideas you might be interested in for your research project.  This list should go wide - rather than present a single idea.  This is your fall-back space and a place to look for connections.  It should include ideas/areas of focus that are INTERESTING to you.  This writing will give me a way to have input - to suggest possibilities and readings that connect to material you are curious about.  

Blog 8: Work through the first 3 sections of the worksheet on developing a research plan. You will be focus on finding your research question.  You don't need to write to every prompt.  Post what you come up with.  

We are early enough in the process that if you discover that the idea you develop in Blog 8 won't pan out - you can go back to the big, messy, everything but the kitchen sink list of ideas for Blog 7 and look for something else.  The point is to do some invested writing here and see where it takes you.  

What we will do in class next week:

We will begin by looking at your blog posts, signing you up for conferences on your projects, and talking about the next step for setting up a research plan.

For the second half of class we will look at Martin's essay to 1) discuss & critique its content; and  2) assess its possibilities for as a project for this class.. We will use the essays you bring to class as a data set for designing a study on student response to teacher comments. 

9.18 Shaggy dog stories and literacy narratives

NIH training:  I still need links from some of you.  As soon as I have access the certificates, I will forward our class list to the Kean IRB.

Comments on your blogs.  I started class with a quick overview of some of what I am seeing on your blogs in terms of analysis.  You are doing a good job of naming the different parts of the analytic process. Keep working on including lists of the particular codes and categories  - along with examples from the data of the actions, interactions, actors and settings that you used those codes and categories to name.  The point of doing analysis through this process (and the point for writing it up) is to allow your classmates and me to SEE your analytic process (how you made your decisions about what belongs in which category - and why a particular theory might make sense). Also, keep working on writing up reasoning (how you build your hypotheses) by identifying your codes and categories and then explaining the relationships between and within those codes and categories.  This allows you to talk about HOW you came to your conclusions.  Your analysis is your evidence of the logic you used to solve the problem, and of your assumptions about what behaviors/actions, etc fit into which categories. 

When asked what was hard about analytic process- several of you pointed out that coming up with hypotheses and theories was hard.  Hypotheses are answers to questions about relationships in your data (what are the connections between age and emotions?  what kinds of questions got the most detailed stories?  what kind of information was contributed by off-topic talk? etc).  To develop hypotheses - ask about relationships between categories and/or codes. Theories are big over-arching explanations for what is going on with ALL your data.  Sometimes you can only come up with a "local" theory - a theory that explains one particular set of relationships throughout the data. Other times you can come up with more general - global theories that seem to account for everything (like the explanation of the pattern in the logic problem from the first day).

Analysis of Shaggy dog stories.
During the next part of class we worked with the shaggy dog stories (Data set 3 linked on the right). We started out with a review of the first two stories on the handout.   You identified the following list of characteristics of shaggy dog stories (names for what they do/are)

• they are jokes
• conclude with a play on words => mangling of a quote
• listeners have to know the quote to "get" it
• punchline is a spoonerism  = switch of first letters of key nouns or names in the quote
• punchline is at the end (placement)
• switched words from the quote are introduced early in the story and used throughout
• presented as a story with a beginning middle ending
• punchline quote sums up or explains what the story means/is about/shows
• the resolution to the story's action is unsatisfactory (the "bad" force triumphs)
• the story includes characters & setting and other story elements - often with excessive (ridiculous) development
• the development involves using the mangled words from the punchline

We then ranked the stories in terms of how funny we thought the stories were. 5 = funniest, 1 = not especially funny (I also added the rankings from the other class).  Your rankings are listed first and they are presented in a format listing the # of  5s/4s/3s/2s/1s - in that order.

# of votes for Funniest = 5 /4/3 /2 /1 = not funny
nate       1/1/3/1/-     
             1/4/4/4/1

friars      1/3/1/1/-  
            1/1/6/2/4

panda    2/-/1/2/-
            7/4/-/1/2

Friday   -/-/-/2/4
            5/3/-/2/4

chess    1/-/1/2/2
             -/2/4/5/3/

A quick looks shows that our class thought the panda story was the funniest - but the other class thought the Friday story was the funniest.  What is more - our class thought the Friday story was the UN-funniest.  So it seems one observation is that different people/groups think different stories are funny - and one question to ask of this data might be what factors contribute to making a joke seem funny.

 We then talked in general about what we thought made one story  funnier than another.  You then worked in groups to identify features of the stories that made the stories "funny" (or not).  Some  categories for these features (along with some of the codes in those categories) from your notes include:

• length = the longer the story the more likely it was to be funny. Features that made that story longer that contributed strongly to it being more funny were character development, development of an eloaborate, ridiculous rationalization of an absurd situation - often with an element of violence that is introduced suddenly.  You also noted that the development was most effective if it connected to the interests of the reader
• word play: the effectiveness of the word play at the end related to how it connected to the reader, to how long and elaborate it was, and to whether or not the reader was familiar with it
• ironic contrast; you noted that contrast between what the reader imagined or expected - and what happened in the story also made the story funny.  For example - that the panda was a thug - instead of cute and fuzzy - was a surprize and funny.
• surprise = things that were not expected or ridiculous
• connections to the audience: in terms of the setting, characters, plotline, etc and especially associations to the punchline.  You noticed that the panda joke made the most complete connection to the punchline for the widest audience by giving the audience all the information it needed to understand it (the audience does not have to already know the quote that the punchline is a corruption of).  We also noticed that the panda story was set in NY and that might have helped make that story funny to us.
• confict: funny stories all seemed to include conflict.

There are many more details to develop here. Hopefully you will develop them in Blog 5 (see below). 

Literacy narratives
I began by talking at length about what literacy narratives are and how they are used by writing studies teachers and researchers.  To sum up - a literacy narrative is an autobiographical, reflective story about the storytellers experiences learning to read and write.  It is autobiographical because it is authored by the person who looks back over his or her life; and it is reflective because in addition to telling stories about reading and writing, the author thinks about or reflects on what the stories mean - what factors contributed to making those particular stories important; why s/he told his or her stories in the particular way s/he told them, and how the experiences related in his or her affected his or her relatinship to literacies (among other things). 

I emphasized that literacy narratives include important information not just because they tell teachers and scholars about writers relationships to reading and writing.  While understanding how people learn and use reading and writing is important, the study of literacy narratives is important also because literacy narratives provide evidence of who we are and how we think about who we are. In a very real sense - the stories we tell about who we are = ARE who we our.  How we think of ourselves, talk about our selves and how others perceive us = our very identities - are made of stories we tell about who we are.  The structures for reading and writing are in some ways the building blogs for how we tell stories.  Because of this - our relationship to reading and writing ( and how we use the structures they provide us) influence how we are able to think about and represent ourselves.  

Writing instructors often assign literacy narratives like the essays at the link for Data set 3 to provide students with the opportunity to explore their relationships to reading and writing - and to think about how that relationship has shaped the stories they tell about who they are.  For example, in class I pointed out that where I grew up there was a unspoken understanding in my family that "school came first" and that reading and writing were important because they were "my future."  This belief is central to what is generally known as The Literacy Myth - a part of the American Dream story about success.  And while I was held to that standard - at the same time - there were other unspoken beliefs that conflicted with that story about success.  I wasn't really expected to do so well at school that I would grow up and get a job that took me away from my home community - so in that sense school and "success" didn't really come first.  When I DID move away from home to take a job - there was considerable confusion for all of us.  Writing about and reflecting on stories, beliefs and values associated with literacy and so on can help individuals understand the conflicting feelings they have about school, writing, and success.  

After this rather long introduction - we looked at the assignment sheet for the sample literacy narratives in Data Set 2, and the literacy narrative I handed out in class.  (Those of you who were absent can pick up the handout in my mailbox by the English Department), and I set up the analysis you are expected to post for Blog 6.

For next class:
Update Blog 4.  In light of class discussion - add/point out the kinds of writing you would need to add to develop your analysis.DO NOT re-do the post.  Rather, ADD some more writing at the end to state how you could strengthen and deepen the analysis you have posted.

Post Blog 5.  In class, we looked at 5 shaggy dog stories, ranked which were funniest, and began an analysis to identify which features make shaggy dog stories funny.  Our analysis from class suggested which features seem funny in general, and the ranking (posted above) gives an indication of what your CLASSMATES think is funny. For Blog 5, use the class ranking and our analysis of  funny features of  shaggy dog stories as a basis for predicting how our class(es) will rank the shaggy dog stories at this link.

Your analysis should identify features of the stories at the link that are similar to features of stories our work in class suggested as "preferred" by your classmates.  In this analysis, your line of reasoning is at least as important as your conclusion.

Blog 6: Set up an analysis of one or more of the sample literacy narratives: two are posted at Data Set 2 - one handed out in class.  In your analysis, begin by posing one or several questions that you might be interested in thinking about with respect to these three pieces of writing.  Then code the narratives by.identifying/naming features within the essay(s) that are relevant to your questions.  Continue coding and noticing patterns until you can't think of any more codes (conditions, actors, actions, interactions, or outcomes) related to your questions. When you have lots of codes, categories and hypotheses - see if you can come up with a theory that accounts for large chunks of what you see happening.

Example.  If you are interested in what kinds of experiences cause individuals to like reading and writing you might begin by coding for: positive and negative stories, experiences, phrases/words, etc.  You would also code for experiences connected to family, school, friends, social organizations etc and then you would begin to notice patterns between the two sets of codes (are family experiences positive and school experiences negative = etc).  As you code you would develop more ideas about what to notice - and you will develop new questions to pose additional hypotheses.    that you will focus on; describe how you will analyze them (names + categories) and indicate the kinds of conclusions you might come to.

Read: Rhetoric of Teacher Comments on Student Writing  by Robin Martin

In class next week:
We will start by going over  blog posts 5 & 6 to make sure you are well on your way in terms of doing analysis and developing analytic writing.  
We will then spend some time summing up the kinds of research methods you have worked on so far (interviewing, oral history, language analysis, textual analysis, literacy narrative studies) - and talking about your ideas for projects.  
We will then talk about Martin's essay as a way to look at how research essays are "built" - and to take a look at one way writing studies researchers use quantitative methods.

 

9.11 Interviews, oral history & using analysis

Interviews. We started class by talking about interviewing by thinking about the different kinds of interviews (genres) that are out there in our culture. You identified job interviews, news interviews, political and celebrity interviews, man-on-the street interviews, oral history interviews, and research interviews. Each of these different interviews have a characteristic audience, purpose and form, and they set up questions for different "subjects."= the individuals who are interviewed.

Oral history. Jaylecia brought up oral history in terms of its role in redefining the stories we use to "create" or tell the story of what history is. Oral histories generally focus on a particular life within a particular historical period or as related to a significant historical event; they may also present a life review that only incidentally connects to larger cultural happenings. Oral histories are often collected through interviews and recorded through audio or video recordings. The term "oral history" is also used to refer to the written, analytic essays that discuss the interview materials collected from oral history subjects.

Overall structure for an interview. Next we talked about how to plan the conversation for an oral history interview. I suggested that you think about the interview in parts. The first part serves as an orientation where you and the subject get to know (and hopefully feel comfortable with) eachother. This talk should provide background information the subject will need to understand how to answer your questions (your goals for the interview - if you have any, information about you) - and it should go through some of the easy to answer, demographic and background kinds of questions so the subject can get warmed up.  It should also preview or introduce the kinds of questions you will be asking, so the subject has some time for his/her stories to "gather" in the back of his/her mind. During the middle of your interview, you should cycle through questions (often in roughly chronological order) about the experiences at the center of your research. Ask open questions (questions that can't be answered with yes or no, and that don't put the subject on the spot). "Tell me about. . ." or "What was it like when . . ." or "Describe . . ." or "Tell me a story about . . ." are good lead-ins. Remember interviews are conversations - so follow up and add to your opening questions. As you come the the last part of the interview, begin some reflecting and pulling together. Make connections, ask for feelings and reflections. 

911 interviews. After a short time where you developed a list of questions (an interview protocol), and after a talk about how to take notes on your interview, you worked in pairs to conduct oral history interviews about experiences on 911. One of you was the interviewer, one of you was the subject - and BOTH of you took notes. I stopped you several times and prompted you to catch up with your note taking. You tried to take note of what was said by both the subject and the interviewer, the timing and sequence of the unfolding information, how the speakers interacted, and descriptions of "what happened" as the interview progressed. You were instructed to write down as much as you could as you were talking, and you were given several spaces of time during and after the interview to add your "head notes" (what you remembered) to your notes. 

All of these notes taken together should be posted on your blog. IN ADDITION - Blog 3 should include (at the end, or added to the main post in a different color font) any other stories, observations, "quotes" conversations that you remembered as you thought back on the interview. 

Reflecting on 911 interviews.  In talk after the interviews were completed, Dee/Arlene observed that she thought there might be connections between how old individuals were, the way they got information about the event, and how they remembered the experience.  Antoinette/Brian reported reflected on how Antoinette considered not sharing - but then did - her feelings of anger and blame. Most of you had some conversations surrounding to/associated with those feelings. Christine/Jaylecia mentioned being "changed", Joe/Tempie/Stephane noted how different groups felt about the event (Tempie reported the "celebrating" at her school and observed her reaction to that). We also noted that the richness of your interviews - particularly the details of your stories - were difficult to capture in your notes.  Feel free to ADD TO your in-class notes with what you remember of the stories that were told when you post your data.

Analyzing interview data.  We began by reviewing the steps in the interview process.

1. Coding: identify/name the features of your data.  For our interview data, some of the "features" or classifications you might note include:

• questions + answers.  Identifying talk as either a question or answer can help answer questions about who is directing the interview (authority), the participants' investment or engagement with the process (hypothesis = if subjects ask more questions they are more engaged?), what kinds of information can be communicated through questions versus statements = and so on.  
• speaker's distance or emotional connection to what s/he is saying.  noting/naming connection or the speaker's relationship to what s/he is saying can help answer questions about what is important in an interview
• changes in attitude, perspective, or emotion
• statements of "fact" and statements where the speaker interprets/responsd to fact
• stories + parts of stories (introduction, presentation of problem, resolution of the problem, conclusion)
• resolution (or lack of resolution) to stories: stories might have positive or negative or unresolved endings.  
• the storyteller's language choices (are there any repeated phrases or words that signal characteristic feelings or ideas?)

I realize the notes we took will not have sufficient detail to provide solid data for most of these classifications - but that is OK.  This gives you a simplified, first opportunity to look at data and figure out how to name  what you see.

2.  Classifying:  place the different examples of questions and answers (or some other name/code) into groups.  Look for similarities and differences in your codes (as we looked for similarities and differences in the different kinds of interviews at the beginning of class).

3.  Identifying patterns.  As we talked through Brian's data, we identified a small pattern in how he represented Antoinette's stories about her reaction to the first information she received about 911. We noted the sequence.  Teacher told her, she didn't believe it, she looked it up and believed it, she applied what happened to her self/her own situation (became worried).  This is a basic story form.  We do not really have enough stories from Antionette to see if that is a usual pattern for telling stories (1. presentation of information, 2. her evaluation of the information, 3. generalization/reflection on what the information) but that is one possible pattern we might look for.

4. Developing hypotheses about what the patterns mean or how they fit together.  A hypotheses is a "guess" about what a pattern means or how it relates to other patterns.  You might look at several of the data sets posted on your classmates' blogs to see if a pattern you find in one data set is the same or different in another data set. Dee's idea about the age of individuals during 911 affecting their experiences is a hypothesis.  Coding stories by individuals who are different ages and comparing the elements and patterns in those stories might allow you to state HOW age affected those experiences.

5. Testing the hypotheses. Continuing #4,   after you had some hypotheses about how age shaped indiviudals' experiences of 911 = you would test them by looking at more data (more of your classmates notes) to see if your hypotheses "fit"

6.  Creating a "theoretical story" that explains or accounts for the features of the interview you are interested in.   After you find some hypotheses that fit - put several together to see if you can develop an explanation.  Continuing Dee's hypothesis about age and experience - you might have a theory about how adults protected children because children were more vulnerable to the "scary" elements of the event.  The data might show that children who were "protected" remembered less, or it might show that children who were protected became suspicious (and more afraid).  Or you might develop a theory based on the idea that very young children simply can't understand some events because they don't have enough experience - so they don't "remember" 911 because the couldn't take it in. . . or . . .  whatever the data show.  Your theory will be focused on one particular idea or question about 911, what people remember, how they feel about the vent, whether the memories are "resolved or unresolved" - or anything else that you see in the data and that interests you.   

Sample data with some beginning coding (example from class)

What follows is a very limited example of one way to start marking up the data posted on your classmates' blogs.   You can not do this in 5 minutes.  Good coding, categorizing and theorizing comes out of spending lots of time looking at and thinking about your data.  Have fun with this.  You will be amazed at what you can discover.

(Thanks Brian and Antoinette for the sample data, for the orignial data, see Brian's blog.  This is a marked up section of one story from Brian's data.)

Questions:     Where were you during 9/11

Answer:  In a kindergarten class sets scene and one of the teachers came in and informed her about one of the planes flew into the tower change in attitude response to fact and she did not believe her until she looked up online and on the TVchange of attitude and then she started to panic about another planes coming and hitting one of the schools and she thought about her children and the principle told them to keep on going in the classroomFACTand parents started to pick up their children FACTand some of them were involved with 911 FACTand they could not get in contact with family members along with some fellow teachers and the principle allowed them to leave but they were instructed to attempt to keep the day as regular as possibleFACT but she did not have half of the kids in the classroom

What to do for next class.

Post Blog 3:  Post your notes to your 911 interview.  Post the original notes you took in class.  Then - in a different color font or in an added section - add any additional stories, impressions, descriptions to fill out your data.

Post Blog 4: Set up an analysis of for Data Set 1 (your classmates' notes on the 911 interviews posted on their blogs).  Use the review of analysis presented in this post to help you dentify the features/themes within the interview that you will focus on.  Your blog post should include:

 a list of codes (names) for the important features you see in the data

categories for your codes

some patterns you notice among the codes and categories

some hypotheses to account for the patterns

a theory about what your data "show" 

Read: Sample literacy narratives 1, 2 & 3.  

What we dill do during next class.

We will begin by talking about your posts for Blog 4.  We will talk about your "findings" and you should be prepared to point out the places where you got stuck or that were unclear or hard => so I can focus the class on giving you support for those parts of analysis.

After discussing Data set 1 (the 911 interviews) we will work on analyzing the Literacy narratives and the shaggy dog stories - I haven't decided which order we will take on these projects yet.  It will depend on what I see on your blogs over the next week.

Have a good weekend.  Thanks for the great class.

9.4 Introductions, Syllabus, NIH training, Blogs . . . and Analysis

Today's class got us off to a good start -I was pleased to meet each of you and am looking forward to learning more about you and your interests in writing research.

Introductions:  The class began with introductions and getting to know each other. As I pointed out - it is usual at Kean to be "familiar" with a few faces - but in this class we are going to get to know one another - and to work together.  Your classmates and I are your team.  We are going to discover new ideas and information about writing studies research - together - this term.

Syllabus and course communications: I introduced you to this blog.  The syllabus and calendar are posted to the right.  As many of you noticed I didn't update all the links (oh well - so much for me producing perfect documents).  Obviously, if you are here you have the right link for the course blog, but just in case you want to write it down it is  http://eng3029section03.blogspot.com/.  We talked about how you will earn your grades.  We will be developing assignment sheets together, and you as you work on analyzing the data sets + developing your short analysis project you will get feedback and chances to revise your work. Hopefully each revision will help you better understand how to do research - and allow you to earn the grade you want.  If at any time you have questions, send me an email ENG3029@gmail.com - or stop by my office CAS 324 (it is best to set up a time with me to make sure I will be there - email works best). 

NIH Training:  The NIH training assignment sheet is posted to the right.  Because you will be doing field research for this class - you will be working with other people - or research subjects.  And because people have rights, researchers have responsibilities toward their subjects. As described on the assignment sheet - all researchers associated with government agencies (and this is a state school, so you are) much take NIH training.  You must email the certificate you receive for completing training to me by September 18.  I suggest that you get started - that way we can deal with whatever difficulties you encounter in Sept 11, and you will then have another week to finish. 

Blogs:  You successfully created your blogs during class, sent me your addresses (a list of the links to your blogs is posted to the right under Class Blogs), and got started on the first blog post.  As requested = title your posts blogs by the numbers listed on the calendar (Blog 1, Blog 2, etc) => that way I will know what prompt you are working on.  You may add a more meaningful or entertaining title after the number. For example: Blog 1: My ideas about writing studies research (not very creative but you get the idea).  Your blog does not need to be "correct" or "right" = it is a place to TRY OUT IDEAS.  Have fun with it. 

Analysis: During the last section of class you worked on solving a logic problem.  You were asked to figure out what symbol would occur in a blanks space within a grid of symbols.  You worked in groups and you did an amazing job.  I was impressed by how well you worked together, by the wide range of analytic moves that you already know, and by the number of "theories" you came up with.  As I said in class - this exercise was not so much about solving the problem - as about becoming conscious of HOW you (already) do analysis - and learning to do it more intentionally and with more focused direction.

What we learned from the class exercise.


This is a list of some of the many "moves" (ways of thinking about, classifying, or explaining) you made as you worked on the problem.

• named the symbols (square, diamond, club, heart. . .)
• noticed the layout of the drawing (6x6 grid)
• noticed/named the colors
• noticed the orientation (some hearts & clubs were both upside down & right side up; you also decided on the orientation of the grid as a whole - with the directions at the bottom)
• counted how many of each symbols were on the grid
• tried out different groupings for the symbols (3x3 grids like a sudoku, columns, rows, as a "design" made by the black figures if you move from one to the next from left to right. . .)
• looked for doubles by symbol
• looked for patterns by color, by shape, and by orientation

As we thought about the different kinds of moves you made - we came up with the following "classification" of the different kinds of moves you made - and the general order in which you made them.

1. Identified and named the elements of what you are analyzing- where "elements" are the features that define or present what you are analyzing.  For this logic problem you identified named the different symbols, the layout of the grid (columns, rows, etc), color.  You identified and named elements by looking at what was there - and attaching labels or names to what you saw.  In writing studies analysis - this move is often called "coding" = where you develop names or "codes" for what you see in a particular situation.

2. Categorized or grouped together elements on the basis of similar features.  For this move you noticed what all the hearts, or all the diamonds were doing, and you described those features with a name or category.  Counting and classifying the kinds of locations and orientations for each symbol is categorizing.  It makes larger groupings and descriptions for what happens to individual named elements - or what those elements do.  This is the beginning of posing a "pattern" = your next step.

3.  Look for patterns. At the looking for patterns stage, you looked hard at the data and noticed repetitions, sequences, symmetry, etc.  Looking for patterns requires you to make a connection between a structure you know and recognize - and some structure within the problem you are looking at.  So in some sense you are looking for something you already know - but within a new situation or context.

4. Pose a hypothesis.  After you found a small or large pattern, you pose a larger, more general explanation for how that pattern can explain the whole problem or situation.  This step is about figuring out how the little pattern you saw in one part of the problem would look if it were applied to the whole problem in a general way - and making a statement to describe what that large patter would look like.

5. Testing the hypothesis.  After making a general statement of the "story" or "explanation" suggested by the small pattern that you noticed  - you then checked to see if this story or explanation "fit" or "worked" within the whole problem (all of your data, where data is the information you have about the problem). A strong hypotheses, or the "answer" to your problem, will fit and work with ALL of the data.

6. Cycling through the process.  Most of the time, our first hypothesis only explain parts of the data or small pieces of the problem. This means we need to go back to the beginning and make sure we have noticed/named the central elements of the problem, and that we have put them in useful - rather than irrelevant or misleading - categories. We also have to decide whether the patterns we connected to are "working".  If they aren't we need to come up with additional patterns - new patterns we haven't tried before - and organize them into another hypothesis (each group did this several times).

Where researchers get stuck:  Your experience with this problem was similar to researchers in that you got stuck in the same places that most thinkers/researchers get stuck.  Identifying and applying MANY possible patters (and letting go of the first couple that you found) is often the hardest part.

For next class:

1. Get started on the NIH training (email me the certificate of completion by Sept 18)
2. Keep looking through the course readings => identify topics that interest you
3. Blog 1: From class discussion and course readings, what kind of research does it look like people do in English and writing studies?  What kind of research are you interested in doing?: 
4. Blog 2:  1) in your own words => define analysis.  What is it?  How does it work?  Describe how you would use analysis to study one of the areas of interest you mentioned in your first blog. 

Blogs will be due by the beginning of class 9/11 - and I will give you some feedback on how you are doing with your posts, probably by 9/14..  If you are having trouble with the technology - let me know and I can walk you through it.

We will be pretty much on schedule with the calendar for next week, which means we will get started on oral history and interviewing - and you will get a chance to apply what you learned about analysis to the data we will create in class.

Thanks for your good work tonight, and I am looking for reading your blogs!

9.4 About the Course Blog

This is the course blog for ENG 3029 Section 3.  We will use this blog to keep a record of what we do in class, as a hub for communications with me and other class members, and to keep all the important course documents in one place.

Documenting what we do in class: After each class I will write up a summary of what we talked about, what you turned in, and what you are expected to do for next class.  Although I have created a class calendar - sometimes we might not do exactly what is on the list.  This blog will update the calendar and give the real story on what we accomplished and where we are going next.  You should be sure to check these updates every day.  By using the link list to the right titled Blog Archive, you will be able to check back on earlier class discussions.  I will title Blog Archive posts both by the date, and a title describing the post's content.

A hub for course communications:  You can see a link list to the right named "Course Blogs."  So far, my blog is the only link on that list.  By next week, each of you will have created your own blog.  You will send me the link in an email posted from your kean email, the account you will use for this course.  The list of course blogs will allow you to read and review writing, comments on class discussions, and questions posted by everyone in class.  If you do not want your blog to be searchable (visible to search engines), when you set up your blog set the privacy functions so that your blog is visible only to individuals who have the link.

You do not need to be tech savvy to take this course.  If you are uncertain about how to create your blog - or if you have trouble using it - stop by my office and I can talk you through it.  This is meant to be a resource for you, and if it is not working about that way let me know so we can fix it.

Course documents:  To the right you will also see several sets of link lists with links to readings, course documents, data sets, and etc.  We will be creating and accumulating these documents as we go through the course.  By posting them here - you will have access to all the assignment sheets, rubrics for assignment evaluation, and other course information - all in one place.

If you have questions - ask me in class, or email me at ENG3029@gmail.com.