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Consolidation Unit Studio

Work to have achieved
Texts to have read
  • Optionally, read back through the lesson plans – especially the advice blocks from studio days.
  • Optionally, read back through your studio goals and exit notes in the shared google doc.

Plan for the day:

  1. About those final reflections
  2. Studio (45-50 min)
  3. Plan for final class
  4. HW: Carry On! + Tech Survey Redux

About those final reflections

The final reflection can be written informally, like the others. The goal is less a restatement of what you’ve already written than an opportunity to think synthetically, across units and into the future. The reflection will have two main components, or really aspects, which you can move back and forth between:

  1. An articulation of your learning in the class, focused more on transferable skills than individual tools.

  2. 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 the claims you make about your learning.

These two aspects 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.

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.

What questions, comments, or concerns do you have about this now?

Studio

This is where I expect we’ll spend the bulk of the day. As usual, please…

  1. Write your goals in the google doc
  2. Save 5-10 minutes at the end to leave an exit note to report on progress and re-set goals for moving forward. I’ll also want to talk about how the last class will work.
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 final reflection examples, you can find last year’s by going to our issue queue and changing the 2025 to 2023.

Plan for final class (in five days!!)

My final 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!

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 Monday (our last class)?
    • Will you continue beyond that, knowing the final portfolio is due soon thereafter (on Monday, 4/28 at noon)?
  • 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.