Course Blog by Paolina | ASTU 100A Class Blog G04 (2015-2016)

Hello and “Guten Tag” my dear readers,

welcome to the ASTU 100 Course Page.

Here you can find the links to all the blogs of my dear course fellows, information about our literature course, the Global Citizen‘ stream and the general course blog.

My name is Paolina and I have the honor to write one of the first class blogs for you.

Let me give you a quick review of what we have done the first few weeks of this semester:

Parallel to the book “Academic Writing: an Introduction” by Janet Giltrow, Richard Gooding, Daniel Burgoyne and Marlene Sawatsky we read the article “The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning” by Farhat Shahzad .

While “Academic Writing: an Introduction“ is supposed to prepare us students for the big, new world of academic writing, the article is dealing with the topic of remembering and learning.

Based on a study about how Canadian students remember the War of Terror, Shahzad wants to raise awareness for the fact that interpretative communities play a big part in how we remember and learn about events and how they influence “the consumption and negotiation of knowledge inside and outside the classrooms” (Shahzad, Abstract), with the intention of helping teachers to improve their teaching strategies though the knowledge they gained though the article, but also making the reader of the article reflecting their own experiences and situations critically.

Reading though the blogs, I was wondering about the connection between the book and the article.

Olivea picked the topic of citation, mentioned in “Academic Writing: an Introduction”.

Through her personal experience described in her blog and following critical reflection on the meaning of citation, it gets clear that citation is “a way of creating a discussion around her argument” (Olivea) though “orchestrating voices“, as it’s called in the book (Academic Writing: an Introduction).

If you continue through the blogposts, Therese talks about

“…what happens if your communities have the same worldview?“ and

“How do we get pass their ideas?“

exemplifying these questions through her own personal childhood experiences in a religious family.

“My point is that the ideas forced on us or given to us by our communities aren’t always correct.“ (Therese)

For me personally, this is a very strong statement, which takes a lot of courage.

Acknowledging, that the social norms and world views you are given by your environment or “interpretative community“ are most of the time biased and not rational, is not an easy process.

But here I found the connection to Oliveas Blog and “Academic Writing: an Introduction“ .

Therese continues her thought and ends her blog with the conclusion that one has to seek information and knowledge and educate himself/herself in order to widen their horizon.

She and Olivea basically talk about creating a discussion (through critical thinking in different life situations or citation in an academic article), looking at different points of view and not being satisfied by one simple answer.

One shouldn’t be afraid of what they don’t know… yet.

Through a broader knowledge and exploring different points of view the bigger picture becomes much clearer.

(And by the way Therese also builds a connection to another part of the CAP stream: Sociology! So read her blog!)

But there are so many different aspects of interpretative communities, right?

It is a very complex topic, for example regarding the question of degree of authority (check out Sandras Blog!) of the communities and can interpretative communities change through for example a change of location.

Baris demonstrates this with his own experience of moving to Canada‚ away from his „old“ into a „new“ and unknown interpretative community.

Or, going back to the role of teachers as an interpretative community, Grace brings up the question, if the government “should shoulder more responsibility“ (Grace) because of it’s big influence on the media and the flow of information.

Which brings me to Melissas Blog. It continues the thought of mass media manipulation though not only the government or companies but though individuals taking advantage of the simple access to, for example websites like wikipedia.

It is a frequently used website, on which a lot of people rely (I wouldn’t recommend that…) and which isn’t really strict about protecting and controlling the content of their websites…

So the media is a great resource of knowledge, as Melissa says, because we are able to learn about events all over the globe without leaving the house, but it also has to be constantly questioned and enjoyed with caution.

But can we measure the influence of an interpretative community?

Mel, referring to Shahzad and the collected data, comes to the conclusion:

The stronger the emotional connection to the community the bigger the influence .

“one’s obviously going to be more convinced with the opinion of a close friend than someone they just met off tinder.“ (Mel)

So we are back to family/friends as a interpretative community, which closes the circle and brings this Class Blog almost to its end.

Almost.

I want to end it with one blog, written by Joseph, with which I could personally really relate with because that topic kind of haunted me, too, over the last weeks.

It deals with the general but really though question:

“Why learn?“ (Joseph)

and is a great reminder, that often the journey is the destination (I won’t tell you anymore, read it!).

I hoped you got a basic overview of what we are doing in our ASTU100 class and enjoyed the first blog of my life. Have a nice day. : )

See you soon!

Paolina

Sources:

Magda:http://blogs.ubc.ca/magda2370/

Olivea:http://blogs.ubc.ca/oliveabellastu/

Sandra: http://blogs.ubc.ca/notquitethereyet/

Baris: http://blogs.ubc.ca/astu100barisuzel/

Grace: http://blogs.ubc.ca/gracelong/