Megan Little's Instructor Page

In class, Monday and Wednesday, we will be having class presentations. Monday will be all first names A through Kaidon. Wednesday will be Kelsey through Stephanie. Here's the assignment.

In a five minute presentation, share some data with the class (this can be transcribed interview, a vignette from a field observation, or a combination of the two). Have a printed copy of this data that you can project on the screen during your presentation. After sharing your data, conduct some analysis and interpretation of it for the class. How does it prove your (working) main claim? (As some students suggested in class, this could also be a working draft of your paper--you can either present your ideas, or go ahead and read a portion of your work--totally up to you.)

Each presentation will be followed by two student questions that seek to complicate, improve, challenge, or enrich your work. Students will receive points for their presentation and the quality of their questions (10 points total for both)

To make sure we have time for everyone, I will cut presentations short (if necessary) at 5 minutes, 1 minute for Q&A. This is your time to get feedback from the class--take advantage of it!

Click here to see a working draft (about half-done) of the sample paper for your formal paper 3. Notice the sample paper includes comments on key moves, as well as writing skills I'll be grading for (main claim, quoting, structure and transitions, qualification and complexity).

Today in class, we'll go over this sample paper and talk about a process you can use to use to start building your own:

1. Posit a possible main claim, or question that will guide your analysis (in the sample paper, I'm still working this out, so I use questions for now). Remember that this can change.

2. Look at your data sources (FP7 and FP8, or additional data), and decide what to discuss to answer your main question. You likely have FAR more than you can actually use in 5-7 pages!

3. Decide what will be "background" and what will be "foreground": by foreground, I mean what will be closely analyzed in detail, versus what will get a lighter paraphrase. Another way to say this is: what will you be just describing? how will your description of what happened or what somebody said inform your analysis and interpretation? This is a key academic writing skill for ANY kind of paper. (There needs to be just enough, but not too much--a balance that is different for different kinds of papers.)

4. Find an opening vignette or quote, an "epicenter," and get to work!

Based on your research project topics, I've put everyone in "study groups." This is your chance to work with other researchers who have a similar theme or share a similar methodological approach. I'm hoping that you can share ideas and give each other productive feedback in class. The groups are:

Group 1 LGBT topics: Kaidon, Elyse, Ann Marie
Group 2 Impression management: Barrett, Clint, Kyle
Group 3 Group linguistic behaviors and ethnicity: Grant, Mei, Jonathon, An
Group 4 Greeks!: Kelsey, Khrystn, Joanne
Group 5 Identity and social roles in the workplace: Garrick, Lili, LaToya
Group 6 Challenges being young and/or a student: Lauren, Stephanie, Phllip, Samia

Today, you'll work with group members to get some help revising your FP7. People posted great data. Some people ventured into some analysis and interpretation. But I want MORE. This worksheet and our group work should help you get started. Talk out how you might fill out this form with your group members, ask them questions, get their feedback. The last 20 minutes of class will be your writing time.

Your main job right now, as you collect data, is (1) listen and explore what your participants have to say, (2) select interesting moments and (3), start narrowing down to what might be your main theme (NOT your main argument about that theme). You might already know what this theme is, as it may be exactly the same thing you proposed. Or, you might be able to complicate, narrow, or refocus what you talked about in your unit 2 proposal, based on what you learned in your research.

The whole point of Forum Postings 7 and 8 is to give you time to play around with the data you are collecting. I ask you to pick a small chunk, look at it closely, reflect on it, try out an interpretation. I also ask you to start thinking about what you might paraphrase versus what you might quote in detail. Try this: listen to the whole interview. Don't transcribe or stop or worry. Make mental notes of what seems interesting. Next, listen to those interesting moments again, transcribe a few, paraphrase a few. Then go write FP 7 and/or 8.

During this process, you might start seeing an important theme or concept (or several of them). This can be something that is recurring in your data, or a "that's weird" moment, or even a clear answer to your research question. Or, it can be totally new concept or surprise that you didn't anticipate beforehand (which is also fine).

As I said in class, I don't want you to have an argument yet. I also don't want people writing their formal paper yet. Play with ideas, throw out interpretations, but also, don't worry too much. Now is the time to LISTEN, play, and begin narrowing down.

Today in class, I want to go around the room and learn about your experiences with your study thus far. I'd love to hear stories about little things that happened, problems, surprises, frustrations, whatever. It's a time when we can give each other advice about our projects.

In class today, we'll conduct the second interview for our class study on student moms. This time, we're interviewing a graduate student who very graciously agreed to visit our class. We'll talk about how it went, and then go through some of the examples of "good" and "bad" studies in our assigned reading for today.

Next, I'll direct your attention to the write-up for FP7 for our first class interview. We'll talk about what you should try to accomplish in this forum posting, and I'll wish you luck as you venture out to conduct your own interviews and participant observation sessions over the next few days!

If there's time, I'll also talk a little about the grading criteria for formal paper 3, which are essentially a culmination of all the traits of good academic discourse we've been talking about over the semester. In the forum postings over the rest of the semester, you have the opportunity to actively practice (and get my feedback on) these skills.

Today, we'll chat about class reflections on units 1 and 2. Then we'll move quickly into the art of interviewing. We begin by learning from someone considered a "master," Studs Terkel. You all should be familiar with his ideas about interviewing (your assigned reading), and in class, we'll listen to some oral histories he collected on the Great Depression (compiled in honor of his life, on This American Life, here). As we listen to both the stories, and his questions, we'll try to learn from the strategies he used. I'll want you to keep these in mind as you prepare to conduct interviews for your own projects.

Today, you'll hand in your project proposals and conduct some anonymous evaluation of unit 2. Then, we'll talk briefly about what you can expect in unit 3.

Then we start unit 3! We'll briefly talk about some institutional review board (IRB) considerations (from the online training on the IRB website). Next, we'll conduct a sample interview with one of the research participants for our sample class study of student mothers.

If you are having a hard time finding a quote in one of our example studies ("Devil's Playground," Foley, Mead, Behar, Shostak, Haley, Hurston, or Clark) to work into your proposal because of a lack of connection in terms of topic, you can fulfill the requirement by demonstrating a parallel in method or goal.

For example, will you be using a life history because you want to learn about the “felt” experiences of a group, or highly subjective, personal accounts? Look to passages we read in class where an author presents their justification for the method (Shostak). Will you be contending with your own experience as both “insider and outsider” as you collect information and interact with people? If so, quote someone else who has done this to nice effect (Hurston or Behar). Or, you could even refer to someplace you think this is done poorly as an example (Behar?) Or, if you’re looking to another group or event to learn more about yourself, you’re doing something similar to Shostak and Mead. If you're primarily interested with triangulating a ritual, you're pals with Foley, and so on...