Sunday, February 26, 2012

What You Think


For starters, this week, I feel I should point out that few of you took to heart Chris Foster's challenge from last week:

"My challenge to you for this week (if you haven’t already done so) is to come up with an outline of what topics you expect your paper to cover and in what level of detail."

More generally, the majority of those who posted did a nice job of posting links to recent reading relevant to their topic.  These links are an important window for your professors and your classmates.

They are not, however, particularly helpful as to the contents of your own thoughts about what you have been reading and researching.

A pattern discernible in class has been that, when queried in person, each of you has interesting and crucial comments to make about the reasoning and worries behind your chosen topic.

On the blogs, I'm still sensing that the majority of you may be posting for the sake of having made a post.

We want to know what you think about what you are reading, about what its relevance is to your chosen thesis, about where each source might fit in as either support or counterargument, and so foth.

Before you graduate, you will have to make this thinking about your sources and their arguments clear in the course and context of your capstone thesis and during its defense before your advisers.

We can help you clarify and direct the work of your thought now, early in the game, as part of this class, if you help us know, not just what you are reading, but what you are thinking about what you are reading.

Think about it.

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