Topics

• Intervention Project
• Research team responsibilities and schedules
• Research website construction

Learning Objectives

At the end of this lesson students will be able to:

• Organize a collaborative research team schedule that includes detailing individual responsibilities with deadlines
• Collaboratively design and construct a website for presenting research and conclusions for an online conference.

Lesson Description

This lesson involves preparatory work for the final research and presentation assignment.

Assignments

Assignment 4:1 / Please see due dates on the Course Schedule

Students are required to read two student blog and post a significant and relevant observation or question in the comment box and respond to at least one comment on your blog.

Assignment 4: 3/ Please see due dates on the Course Schedule

Design and construct the website for your conference presentation. Link your website to the Instructor’s blog and Facebook.

Required Readings

• Instructor’s Blog
• Barton, Matt and Klint, Karl. “A Student Guide to Collaborative Writing Technologies,” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Vol. 2. Writing Space.org. April 04/ 2013. Web. http://wac.colostate.edu/books/writingspaces2/barton-and-klint–a-students-guide.pdf Fee, Margery ed. “50^th Anniversary Interventions.” Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 204 (2010) Print.
  • Read the Editorial (6 – 8)
  • Read all of the “interventions” (103 – 162).

“Get the Most From Word Press.com.” Learn Word Press. Web. April 04/2013. http://learn.wordpress.com/

Collaboration & Construction

The concept for a student online conference consisting of “Intervention Dialogues” comes from a reading of the spring 2010 issue of the journal, Canadian Literature. The journal alerted me to the idea of “marking the past while thinking forward to the challenges in the field in the future” (Moss, 103). Reading the many thought-provoking suggestions for intervention strategies for the future of Canadian literature, combined with a reading of Edward Chamberlin’s call to action to “find common ground,” led to the idea of asking students to research possible interventions in context with our course material. There are a number of intervention strategies presented in the journal that touch directly on the issues this course has covered. For example, Carrie Dawson calls for a “socially engaged environmentally conscious tradition of Canadian literary criticism” that begins by asking, “How does your garden grow” (112). Susie O’Brien’s concern for the intersections between “postcolonial and environmental cultural studies” calls for a strategy that would open up “lines of communication between Canadianists of different stripes.” O’Brien’s comments on “environmental racism” are particularly thought provoking in context with “colonialism and environmental destruction” (119 -120). Sophie McCall also devises a strategy that involves creating some common ground; she advocates for “a diasporic –Indigenous- sovereignist critical approach” to address Metis writing, which she says, “paradoxically enacts national (i.e., the Metis nation) and diasporic (i.e., Metis-sage) identifications” (121). Rita Wong’s concern for “decolonizing and re-indigenizing” calls for “paying attention to language,” and this she says must include “also the languages and cultures of the land” (115). Wong also talks about the necessity of “unlearning and relearning,” – a discussion introduced in Unit 1:2. These are just a small sampling of the thought-provoking interventions in the journal that directly concern themselves with topics covered in this course which would be fascinating to explore further. The journal provides excellent bibliographic sources to pursue.

Notice I use the adjective “thought-provoking” three times in the paragraph above; this is an effort to assist you in understanding your research task. While lesson 4:2 will examine how to approach your research in more detail, for now your task is inspired by your reading of the journal interventions. You will be inspired to make connections between the course content and one of the interventions and formulate a research plan for investigating the possibility, or the historical necessity, or the practical mechanics for activating the strategy — there are a number of possible approaches to take.

The purpose of creating an online conference for our end-of-term project is two-fold; 1) this is an opportunity to further develop your digital literacy skills and sophisticated online collaboration skills, putting theory into practice, and 2) the development of the content for the online conference provides a opportunity for bringing our subject: “the intersections of story and literature,” into the present, while thinking about the future. So here is an opportunity to imagine and envision that future grounded in what you have learned, or “unlearned,” about the past. With this lesson we begin the process of developing digital literacy and online collaboration skills.

How to Get Started

Collaboration

Begin with reading “A Student Guide to Collaborative Writing Technologies.” This article provides a wonderful descriptive narrative that helps immensely in figuring out how to begin collaborating — and it describes online programs that will facilitate your collaboration: Twitter, RRS feeds, Google Reader, Google Docs, Zotero, Doodle, and of course, Facebook. Some students will be familiar with all of these applications for online collaboration; some will be baffled and perhaps a wee bit terrified. This is an unfortunate consequence of academic lag when it comes to digital literacy. Nonetheless, learning how to work within these online spaces is NOT difficult, and as “A Student Guide” suggests, online collaboration often includes pedagogical work: teaching and learning digital skills together is part of the project – and a very good reason to work in research teams. Every online platform for collaboration has tutorials and most have video tutorials as well. Following instructions is all that is required to get started with online collaboration spaces, and practice is all that is needed to become proficient and sophisticated online collaborators.

Construction & Design

The next step is to construct your website using the tutorial posted in the reading list to get started. Next you will need to create a design for the website which is appropriate to your research plan. Here is a list of pages you will want to create:

1. Home [main] page that welcomes your visitors, summarizes our course & conference goals, and introduces your research project. Be sure to conclude with a clear statement describing your proposed intervention strategy
2. About page that introduces your research team and your special areas of interest
3. Dialogue Summary page * see conference instructions and Lesson 4:3 for more details
4. Annotated Bibliography Blog where you will annotate and hyper-link your sources on a continuous basis starting now. The comment box on this blog page will be used for dialogue. *See conference instructions and below for more details.

** Please ensure that your settings are adjusted to support automatic dating when you post – on each and every page you create.

You may well decide to include one or two additional pages, but these four are the required ones. You should begin by drafting the look of your pages before you create them – this will save you many hours on the computer experimenting — a good technique for this is called wireframes, which are line drawings of each page.

Navigation

Once you have determined the architectural elements of your website you need to consider how your readers are going to navigate around the site. As is the case with any form of communication, your first consideration is your audience. In general, experienced web-readers move quickly making remarkably fast judgment calls about relevance and interest levels. This means you want to create a simple navigation system. One technique is to limit the depth of your site: whenever possible keep all content three clicks away from the home page. To facilitate speed, make navigational menus the most prominent element of the page; maintain consistency in the style of menu so they are easily spotted as your reader moves from page to page, and of course, ensure that every page has a navigational menu. Because your audience consists of your fellow classmates, you can assume a high level of familiarity with your content when considering titles or icons for your navigational links. Finally, limit the number of navigational options to 6 or 7 at the very most. If necessary, combine pages using headings and subheadings and keep sections brief.

There are many online sources that include instructions and tips for website designs that you can easily find if you get stuck. Here is a list of the most basic and important tips to begin with that I have borrowed from a number of those sites:

• Be consistent: format all graphic elements, fonts, sizes, and colors consistently. For instance, the main navigation menu should be in the same place on all pages.
• Keep site links to a minimum; think about your reader’s flow – all dialogue stays in the same comment box of a single page. Do not make me jump around clicking pages.
• Annotated Bibliography is listed alphabetically and formatted correctly according to MLA standards.
• Use simple typography: There should be no more than 2 different fonts on your website.
• Use readable, web-safe fonts such as Verdana or Helvetica, 12 or 14 point sizes, and use italics or bold sparingly and consistently.
• Limit use of color: Choose a white or neutral background, a black or charcoal font color and a limited (1-2) accent colors for your menus and links.
• Design it like a billboard, not a newspaper: Empty (negative) space is your friend. Make sure each page is 25-50% blank.
• Write short paragraphs and use bullet-points to break up content and make for a more aesthetically pleasing page.
• Limit details such as lines, graphics, and frames. They tend to clutter the page.

For now, this is sufficient. Once you have linked your website into the Instructor’s blog and FaceBook, you will receive feedback and advice.