Class participation (10%)
I expect active participation from all students enrolled in the course. This means participating in the small group discussions and doing the weekly quick writing. This course will require experimentation with new digital environments and a willingness to try, and perhaps sometimes struggle, with new modes of working and studying. Participation can be boosted in excess of 10% through rich engagement in the Chat
Blog writing 35%
There will be 4 short writing assignments in the research blog (they are graded on a 10 point scale, but make up 35% of your total grade). The format for this will be a blog, a key form of 21st-century public writing. Unless noted, a typical blog will be about 750 words plus visuals. They will be either reflective pieces on a conceptual issue that has arisen in class or a lab report-style write-up and critique about a project or experiment carried out. The main point here is to learn to communicate ideas in an open forum and to develop a voice for public, web-based, media-rich writing. Students who are proficient in other blogging platforms or sustainable web development may opt for those.
Two assignments 30% (15% each)
These two assignments will be open ended, web-based applications of the work that we have done in the rest of the course.
Final assignment 20%
This final assignment is an exercise in which you will create a storymap from a portion of an old traveller to Arabia. It will be done in groups of two students. It will consist of two parts: the storymap itself as well as a recorded "making of" video
Self-care 5%
I found a great idea on Twitter. It's called the self-care portion of your grade. Since it is a tough time and we need to stay centered, I would like you to keep me updated with what you are doing to take care of your self and of those that you care about. We will do this in the form of a log kept in a Doc shared between each student and the instructor only. Examples of self-care : went out for a walk, prayed, turned off my notifications for an hour, called a friend or relative, meditated, ate a particularly healthy meal, worked out, read a book for fun, etc. (This idea comes from May al-Dabbagh in the Social Science Division).