Walden, Spring 2014 Assignment One

Discourse Observation Analysis Assignment One (English 1102) Spring 2014 After having explored figured worlds, artifacts, actors, and discourse communities within The Office, now it is time for you to investigate you own selected figured world. This first assignment is the beginning portion of our extended, semester long inquiry project. Remember to choose your selected community of interest very carefully, as you will continue studying it throughout the course of the term. Drawing from the vocabulary and concepts you learned from Bartlett and Hollands Theorizing the Space for Literacy Practices, choose a figured world/community of practice to observe. Once you have identified your particular community, select three different time periods in which to observe your chosen figured world. These time periods should reflect a range of different groups of people, activities, traffic etc. through the location. Example/Reason: If you decide to observe a coffee shop, in an early morning observation, you may see business personnel on their way to work, late morning/afternoon perhaps students studying, and evening an after dinner crowd visiting for some sort of scheduled entertainment. The purpose, like we made note of in The Office, is to have a wide range of observations that show how various communities of practice cycle in and out of the figured world. Prior to the observations, write up a 250-word summary of the rules and conventions for appropriate behavior in the selected site. This summary should include explicit details; for example, if you observe a coffee shop, quiet talking is appropriate depending on the time of the day, personal laptop use in acceptable, and people may conduct business and/or study sessions in this space. You may find that the rules of behavior sometimes shift as you observe the site at different points, but the purpose is to define the basic rules of acceptable behavior. 12 pt, Times New Roman Font, Single-Spaced, Saved and Uploaded in a Microsoft Word Document During the observation, use our class activities we completed in our analysis of The Office and the Example Observation Notes to inform how you take detailed notes on the site. You may choose to review specific homework response questions so that you can include this work as a part of your observation. Take detailed, explicit notes that can be easily understood by other readers in the classmyself included. This may mean you use short hand notes to record your observations, with the understanding that you will go back and clarify these notes later. Again, use the Example Observation Notes as a guide. Record the timing of events that transpire throughout the observations; refer to the Example Observation Notes for a model. As you observe, pay particular attention to the following elements, which we have discussed at length in class: o Literacy practices: What literacy practices are happening? How do these contribute to the successfulness of the discourse in the community you are observing? o Artifacts: What sorts of artifacts (physical objects, emotions, and ideas) are important to the operation of the figured world you are observing? Why are these artifacts important, and how do they contribute to the cultural significance of the community? o Actors: What roles do the participants play in the figured world and how do they relate to specific artifacts? Conduct at least one interview with an actor in the community you are observing. This interview can be recorded as a part of your observation notes; it does not need to be a completely separate document. Prior to the interview, you need to develop your questions and clear them with me. There will be a link provided on Moodle for this very purpose, which will be assigned as part of your homework.

Walden, Spring 2014 Assignment One

Reflection: Describe your strengths and weaknesses giving explicit textual examples. Describe what comments were helpful/not helpful from your peer responders and explain how you incorporated the feedback or why you chose not use some of the feedback. Again, give explicit textual examples cited from the actual feedback. Explain what aspect of the paper you want me to pay particular attention to and why. 500 Words, 12pt, Times New Roman Font, single-spaced. DUE DATES:

Workshop Draft Posted to Moodle Prior to Class: Tuesday, 2/4. Workshop Days in Class: Tuesday, 2/4 & Thursday, 2/6. Peer Feedback Posted to Moodle Prior to 11PM: Saturday, 2/8. Revised Copy with Reflection Posted to Moodle Prior to 11PM: Saturday, 2/15.