All but the final paper(s)

Hey everybody:

Before I forget:
By now you should have received an email from the "system" requesting your evaluation of the course and the instructor.  Please complete the evaluation.  (I am told that it is still the old questionnaire with a gazillion questions and that from next term it will be the short one.  So, bear with the length one last time.)
I want to re-assure you that I will not get the results of your evaluations until into the next term.  So, your feedback--favorable or otherwise--will not have any effect on your grades in any which way. 

I have updated the grades page not only with the the scores so far, but also in terms of your standing as of now with only the final paper pending.  Of course, students taking the class for graduate credit need to submit the research paper in addition to the final paper.  If past trends are repeated in this class, then almost always the final papers from students will be of much better quality than the previous ones, which means that the final course grade will go up a tad for most of you.  So, give the final paper your best shot.

After I am done with this note, I will send out individual emails with feedback on your Essay 2.  As you will notice from the grades page, the overall trend was one of better essays compared to the first one.  I ran into very few papers with problems with the mechanics of writing.  Thanks for paying attention to my feedback.  Content-wise, except for a couple of essays where the authors did not stay focused on the specific question I had asked, most of the rest made sure you addressed the question.

There are a few students from whom I haven't heard anything regarding the final paper.  This means that I will not be able to give you feedback in time for you to develop your arguments and get appropriate reference materials.  We still have time to get this done.  Let me know if there is anything particular that is preventing you from completing the task.

Otherwise, it is back to the grind, I suppose.  Stay focused on the tasks that remain in this class and the other classes that you might be in this term.  A few more days, and then you get a break; so, try your best to avoid distractions over the next few days.

Finally, thanks to that one student who did provide me with feedback on the Majora Carter TED talk video.  Here is an excerpt from that student's email:

[The] reality of urban poverty is one of the unfortunate tangible effects of our individualistic culture. The system justiifies the existence of urban poverty. But she, in her radiating passion, remains humbled- blaming no one- not even the structural policies that have stacked the cards against her. Her stark resistance is a forgiving tale of her environmental conditions and that places her near the top of my list of role models.

The final paper, and more

If my final (?) YouTube clip for this course does not come across in this email, well, you know where to go and get it :-)

BTW, did anybody watch that video of the talk by Majora Carter about urban renewal in the Bronx?  If you did, any thoughts on that?  Am I merely talking to myself, as I do in my regular classes, too? :-)

And, above all, are you keeping up with the work needed for you to put together the final paper?
A friendly reminder:

• Before noon on November 24th, email the instructor the following as a word-proccessed document:
• The proposed title for the paper
• The thesis statement
• The list of references

Meanwhile, I am reviewing/grading your essays.  More on this later.

The home stretch, and more

There are two videos that I have embedded here.  If they do not come across, then head to the notes blog for the posting with the title "The home stretch, and more"
The first video is my YouTube clip.  I had to edit out the first minute-plus because .... after recording, I found while reviewing that there was no sound .... aaaah!  I was talking about Thanksgiving, towards the end of which apparently the bluetooth device started working.  Oh well .... Most of the video clip is about the final task, and a recap of what we have accomplished thus far.

The second video is from Ted.com, and is a talk by Majora Carter, about urban renewal in the Bronx.  I have this video for multiple reasons: it might provide you with some more perspectives on the topics we will look at for the rest of the term, and, of course, the final task I have for you.  If we were in a regular class, I might show this video and then invite comments and rejoinders.  So, please watch it and, of course, let us know if you have any comments ....

My plan includes doing another video clip in the next couple of days to discuss some of the specific ideas/concepts in the readings--I am hoping that by then you would have scanned through them and, therefore, will be able to follow along.  So, until then ....

FYI .... on "virtual classrooms"

This is not about urban geography per se--though there are implications one might infer!
But, this might be of interest to you because, well, here we are in a "virtual" classroom, and we can certainly expect more, and not less, online teaching and learning in the future.
As this NY Times report observes:

Champions of digital learning want to turn teaching into yet another form of content. Allow anyone anywhere to take whatever course they want, whenever, over any medium, they say. Make universities compete on quality, price and convenience. Let students combine credits from various courses into a degree by taking an exit exam. Let them live in Paris, take classes from M.I.T. and transfer them to a German university for a diploma.

If only it can happen easily :-)  A typical reason why this is not happening, given the level of technology we already have:

Education, re-imagined as a consumer product, will become about giving the young what they want now, not what they need or might later want, critics say. They worry that universities will cede their role in civilizing us and passing down the heritage of the past, and will become glorified vocational schools.
Education’s goal, the novelist Mark Slouka wrote in Harper’s Magazine, should be “to teach people, not tasks; to participate in the complex and infinitely worthwhile labor of forming citizens, men and women capable of furthering what’s best about us and forestalling what’s worst. It is only secondarily — one might say incidentally — about producing workers.”

I have always believed that my online classes are strictly about education in that grander sense of it being something way above and beyond "producing workers."  So are my "regular" classes.  If anybody took a look at, say, the syllabus for this course, the work that I ask you to do in order to demonstrate your understanding of the ideas, the kind of feedback I give you, I cannot imagine them even remotely thinking that this undermines the grand idea of what education is all about. 

Now, I don't want to give any impression that my work is under criticism--far from that.  It is just that I always prefer using my personal examples; this way I do not then unintentionally insult/hurt others. 

As always, I welcome your thoughts on this.  I have been logging a whole bunch of ideas related to online teaching and learning, and am always looking to fine-tune my understanding.  (Of course, I do not want you to take you away from completing Essay 2, your work for other classes, and the final exam stuff I emailed you earlier!)

BTW, watch out for an email requesting you to complete an online evaluation of this course and the instructor.  While the university conducts such evaluations only during one term (Winter, I think), I almost always ask for evaluations every term: students deserve that opportunity, and I always want to know if there are patterns in student responses to the evaluation questions so that I can continue to improve the course and enhance student learning.  And, I will not get the results of the evaluation until early next term--so, there need not be any worry that evaluations might influence your grade for the course.

The final paper

In presenting the question for Essay2, I remarked about the peculiarities of the fall term calendar that circumscribe the pedagogical options.  More so when the course is online.

So, as we head into Week 8, you are probably wondering what we are going to be doing now.  Well, mystery solved :-)

The final paper will be in the context of the reading materials that I have listed for the next three weeks. 

But, there are a few steps that I want you to systematically follow in order to put together that 2,500-word essay.

Step 1:

• Read the materials that I have listed for the next three weeks.  Jot down what comes across as important ideas in each of those.
  
• Re-read the materials that I have listed for the next three weeks.  When you do, I bet you will find a few ideas that you missed the first time around.
• By now, you have in your notes a whole bunch of interesting notes that you want to discuss.  Which is where Step 2 comes in. 
• Note: DO NOT skip out on any of the readings--these are all related.  By skipping some, you might unnecessarily put yourself at a disadvantage when it comes to the final paper.
  

Step 2:

• As you reflect on the materials you have read, and the notes you made, identify the theme that you want to explore in detail through a final paper
• Write out that thesis statement in about 75 to 125 words.
  
• Locate at least four authoritative references that will be of help to you in arguing your thesis
• These ought to be references not listed in the course syllabus
  
• Before noon on November 24th, email the instructor the following as a word-proccessed document:
• The proposed title for the paper
• The thesis statement
• The list of references

Step 3:

• Enjoy Thanksgiving
• Be thankful that Sriram will not bug you for too long after!
• Discuss your thesis statement (the paper idea) with family and friends after the meal.  
• I am not kidding here
• The topic will be of interest to them, and you might gain clarity through such conversations.
• Before noon on November 29th, email the instructor an outline of your paper as a word-processed document

Step 4:

• Pay attention to the instructor's feedback
  
• Develop the first draft of the paper by December 2nd
• Set that aside for a day and work on the papers and exams for your other classes
• Now, edit/re-write the final paper
• Email the final paper to the instructor some time after noon on December 4th and before 8:00 am on December 7th

Step 5:

• Enjoy the winter break, and come back re-energized for the winter term.

As simple as this :-)

More on the question for Essay 2

A follow-up the question I sent you earlier today.

This week we are scheduled to look at Chapter 8 of the text.  Depending on the edition you are using, the chapter might be titled "Slicing the urban pie" or "Foundations of urban social landscapes."  Most of the question can be answered by reflecting on the various ideas presented in this chapter.  With either edition, as you read the chapters you might even quickly recognize the phrases I have used in the question--some are even verbatim.

So, what is this chapter about?  About how where people live in a city can be clustered into social groups and analyzed in many ways.  What do you mean by "social groups", you ask?  That is a fair question.  And the answer is, well, whatever you want.  I mean it.  It can be social groups of rich and poor.  Or black and white. Or Chinatown and Little Italy. Or Skid Row. Or ..... you see what I mean?  It turns out that there are significant geographic patterns in such social groupings across urban spaces.  It is not without reason that the zipcode "90210" triggers very specific demographic images, right?

Geographers, sociologists, economists, well, everybody but rocket scientists seem to have had something to say about this issue.  And, as if such multiple perspectives were not enough, now we see that there is another layer of globalization to worry about.  Well, the text does a good job of presenting all these interpretations.  And it is absolutely information- and idea-rich, which will require you to read the chapter more than once.  So, read that more than once.

Then, do not start responding to the question I have for you.  Yet.
Because you need to spend some time thinking through all that new stuff.  And you will find that everything we have discussed over the last six weeks neatly blend into this discussion as well.  And, to some extent, the chapter for next week and the two readings there also fit in really well.  So, think about all these.

But, do not start writing your response yet. 
Because, you need to figure out in your mind the thesis statement that best answers the question.  You know, the bottom line.

As you start sketching out your essay, you will remember that you need to locate at least one additional reference material.  This should be easy by now--because you have your thesis statement.

Let me know if I might clarify further.  Or if there is any particular concept in the book that requires explanations.  I shall gladly jump in.

Question for Essay 2

One feedback that I get from students in the online classes--pretty much every term--is that the Discussion Questions are the ones they liked the most.  As much as I too like how wonderfully educational those discussion opportunities are, well, we can't have too much of a good thing :-) 

Ok, seriously, the fall term calendar restricts us a lot.  As a student, I felt that the fall term ought to end with Thanksgiving itself--the week-plus after the event always felt like a drag.  Now that I am a faculty, this calendar issue does not affect me much, but I sense similar sentiments in students, fall term after fall term.  So, in order to make sure that students stay encouraged enough to demonstrate their understanding of the materials, I cut down on DQs the online classes ..... Let me know if you have other ideas .....

So, Essay 2.

One idea we have clearly established from the first week itself: urban geography is about change.  The changes come in many different flavors--including telecommunications that we looked at last week.  (Later, I will post my comments on your responses to the final DQ, which was on telecommunications.)
We have also established the link between economics and cities.

The question then pops up: does the slicing up of this delicious urban economic pie result in any systematic patterns of social groups across the urban space?
Turns out that there are many different interpretations to this and, as you may have come to understand by now, academic explanations rarely converge on a bottom line, and confuse the life out of everybody--students in particular :-)

Your task for Essay 2 is to respond to the following prompt:

Could it be the case that if we do observe patterns of social groups across urban spaces, well, it is not anything new; that is how humans have always lived?  Could it be that we see now is nothing but a cumulative effect of processes--past and ongoing--and these effects are no different than they were in the past?

All the resources that are listed for weeks five through eight of the term will help you think through this, and will help you articulate your thesis.
In addition, you need to get at least one other authoritative reference to support your arguments.  This reference can be an article in a "scholarly journal", or a publication from a think-tank, or an analytical report in a newspaper, .... the bottom-line is that the source should be credible and considered authoritative enough.

As you write the essay, and definitely after you finish it, compare it with the rubric that I will use to evaluate your essays.  This way, you can then amend your essay if appropriate. And keep in my mind my feedback on your first essays and the general feedback to the class also. 

And when you are all done, email your essay as an attachment tome--not to the class.

The deadline?  As stated in the contract for this class, your first essay is due before 8:00 am on November 17th.

It does not mean that you cannot ask me questions.  feel free to check with me as you progress along with the essay--my job is not to "test" you but to help you understand the issues and to also assist you in articulating that understanding you have gained.