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Consolidation Unit Studio

Work to have done: Post a preview (at least one new commit) toward your consolidation unit project, based on your task list from last time.

Plan for the day:

  1. Plan for final class
  2. Reminder about consolidation/integration unit goals & guiding questions for final reflection
  3. Studio (45-60 min)
  4. HW: Carry On! + Tech Survey Redux

Plan for final class (in two days!!)

My first agenda item for the day is to talk about our next class, because it’s our last real class meeting!

One order of business to expect: I plan to set aside some in-class time for surveys. If you’ve already done them by then, you can use that as studio time.

But beyond that, I always like to have a chance to celebrate together and share the awesomeness you’ve all been able to achieve. So I’d like to invite everyone to share one thing, for 2-3 minutes each. That said, I also know time is short, and some people may prefer to have more focused work-time.

Let’s take a quick straw poll in the google doc: write down the letter corresponding to what you would prefer to do:

  • W - work time (studio)
  • A - share the awesomeness

Instant bar graph!

Reminders and Guiding Questions

The final unit's goals
  1. to integrate and consolidate the skills you've practiced across the semester
  2. to assess your own skills as a digital media composer, to find ways you in particular might best contribute to a collaborative digital project (perhaps in the future)

You don't have to incorporate all the modes into your final project; you just have to decide what you want more practice in. And then you have to put the practice in.

The final portfolio

The final portfolio itself will consist of a single post on the issue queue (thread now live!), containing:

  • a prose reflection of at least 800-1200 words (1200-1800 recommended), reflecting on the course and framing the portfolio’s contents in terms of your learning and goals;
  • representative thumbnails, hyperlinked to final rendered versions of your four unit projects, i.e. Audio Narrative (.mp3), Visual Argument (.png or .jpg), Website (live url or index.html), and Consolidation (ymmv);
  • links to your repositories for each of those pieces; and
  • a thumbnail image of at least one specific prior draft, allowing you to talk about your revision skills. I feel like it might help to link this thumbnail to a specific commit in the revision history, but it's probably not essential.

As with previous reflections, I encourage you to include these screenshots and thumbnails wherever they make the most sense, rather than feeling like they need to be segregated from the rest of your thoughts.

The final reflection

The reflection will have two parts, or aspects, though I encourage you to mix them or move back and forth:

  1. The first is an articulation of your learning in the class, focused more on transferable skills than individual tools.
  2. The second part is an incorporation of the specific projects in your portfolio, calling attention to features of these multimodal texts that you hope will illustrate, clarify, or provide evidence for your claims in the first part.
The two parts should work together, binding the abstract to the concrete and vice versa.

The questions below are meant to help you develop your thoughts toward that first aspect, in part through consideration of the second. While you need not answer these questions separately, or in strict order, I do hope you will endeavor to answer them all.

Reminder of guiding questions for the end-of-term reflection

  1. What advice or ideas have been most helpful to your thinking about composing, about digital environments or tools, about mediation? In other words, what do you most want to remember for future digital composition?

    These may come from comments on your own projects, discussions of your classmates' work, office hour or class-time conversations, or assigned readings.

  2. When you look back at the unit goals and overall course outcomes, where do you feel you’ve been most successful? The most challenged? If something’s held you back, how might you get around that barrier? (Or would you change the goal for yourself?)

    Note that this is another way of asking a common end-of-term question: what do you see as the strengths of the work you've done for this course, and what are the areas in which you feel you’ve most improved?

    Make specific references to projects or revisions.

  3. What, if anything, surprised you during the course? Now that you’ve seen how it all pans out, are there any suggestions you’d make for a revision in the course structure or assignments? (I update my syllabi every time, so your feedback is truly welcome!)

  4. Moving forward, what are your plans for continuing to develop your digital media skills? Will you continue working on any of these projects, in other classes or outside class?

NB: If at any point you’re tempted to say "all of it" (or “none,” though I hope that’s not true), that’s a fine start, but then prioritize: name something specific and concrete, even if it's just one example, so it's written somewhere you’ll be able to find it later.

Studio

This is where I expect we’ll spend the bulk of today’s synchronous time. As usual, please…

  1. Write your goals in the google doc
  2. Save five minutes at the end to leave an exit note to report on progress and re-set goals for moving forward.
Don't forget to save periodically as you go:
  • as an html / css / js file
  • as a git commit, saying what you've just achieved
  • as a screenshot

And please do call me over! Otherwise, I’ll be circulating.

p.s. If it helps you to look at examples, you can find last year’s final reflections by going to our issue queue and changing the 2023 to 2022.

For next time

  • Please take the Tech Comfort Survey Redux, which revisits the survey from way back in the beginning of the semester. How have your comfort levels changed?
    • I’ve added a new question, which is important for providing examples: do you give me permission to share your projects for future teaching?
    • There’s an optional free response space at the end; if you’re willing to let me share some but not all your projects, please let me know.
  • Set yourself some deadlines: what are you trying to finish by Thursday (our last class)?
    • Will you continue beyond that for Sunday, knowing the final portfolio is due soon thereafter (on Tuesday, 4/25 at 3:50pm)?
  • Document your progress as you go! Screenshot, save, commit (or otherwise log changes), push.
  • Pending the results of the straw poll above, choose something that sticks with you from the course to share with the rest of the class: perhaps something you made and are proud of, perhaps something made or said by someone else that stuck with you – to share briefly with the rest of the class.