With the exception of the revised website design and the final Persuasion project, students will be expected to provide brief written critiques of their classmates’ work prior to discussing that work in class. Here is how the system works:
★ Fair
★★ Good
★★★ Excellent
Students’ involvement in the critique process— both online and in class— is an important component of the participation grade.
- Critiques take place in the course’s weekly discussion sections. Students in each section will have the URLs for all their classmates’ websites.
- On the date that an assignment is due, students must upload the work to their website so that it can be viewed by their instructor and classmates.
- Once students have posted their work, they will review and critique the work of their peers online. The purpose of this process is to draw input from the whole class to identify interesting responses to the assignment. Because the goal is to find successful work, we will use a rating system borrowed not from the performing arts but from the world of fine dining. In this system (used by many restaurant critics, including those at the Boston Globe), all stars are good. Specifically--
★ Fair
★★ Good
★★★ Excellent
- The instructor or TA will distribute a link to an online survey for each assignment. Each time they fill out these surveys, students must award stars to at least three submissions from their classmates (sorry, students may not rate their own work). For each entry they rate, students must also write a brief explanation of what makes the work effective. They should also comment on any aspects that are less successful. The instructor will use response from the class to select examples for further examination and discussion in class.
Students’ involvement in the critique process— both online and in class— is an important component of the participation grade.