CCE

Length, depth, breadth: the virtues of book-length texts

On his eponymous blog Bill Degenero describes the advantages of using whole texts rather than readers in FYC (and other undergraduate) classes, seeing a deeper level of engagement in his students that results in/is the product of fruitful discussion and more thoughtful writing (but don't trust my summary--read his post for yourself!). Book orders are due soon at my CC, so it's a timely post that raises some important questions.

For a variety of reasons (economic as well as pedagogic) I've pretty much thrown away the idea of using FYC readers. I'm drawn to the idea of giving my students a deeper exposure to subjects than they get from the sources they typically find for "research assignments" (whatever form they take).  I've tried to do this with theme-based classes, using both related readings and, usually, a book-length text as well, but student reaction was ambivalent, mostly due to boredom/exhaustion with the theme I selected (I've tried food, technology, and education). Bill's post makes me wonder about the possibility of using, rather than one theme, several book-length texts to give some variety of subject matter, which was, if I remember correctly, John Lovas's approach. (Of course, the issue arises of how much to expect freshman students to read...)

Possible nonfiction texts. Bill's students have been reading Paul Loeb's book The Soul of a Citizen. I've used John McPhee's Oranges, Bill McKibben's Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, and Steven Johnson's Ghost Map. Other possibilities I've considered: Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded, though these may be too long. Any other suggestions, or suggestions for selection criteria??

The nonargumentative research paper

After six years of struggling with the research paper requirement for Comp 1 (conventional topics, paragraphs patchworked to incoherence), I'm trying a new approach, inspired by the format of Harper's Annotation section. (Here's an example that's freely available--there are many with more accessible subject matter, but you can see the basic layout: an image or visual artifact of some sort surrounded by discrete text boxes, aka paragraphs, filled with researched info.)

The traditional argumentative research paper (esp. as a first research assignment), I'm hypothesizing, is much too complex, so I'm separating out argument from research in a developmental sequence that goes something like this (a work in progress this semester still):

• I had students first write a personal essay (btw, if you haven't seen it already, check out Clancy's list of reasons for giving for such an assignment) and then an ethnography.
• Essay 3 is an argument based on personal experience and observation (arguing against the conventional view of an object, activity, abstraction), focusing on clear statement of thesis and cookie-cutterish development pattern of series of reasons each developed into paragraph.
• The Annotation assignment (I encouraged students to select images that tied to their personal interests) will focus on formulating research questions, finding sources, and integrating info into coherent paragraphs (without having to sustain at the same time the thread of an argument). Paragraph coherence seems to vanish with the argumentative research paper, so I'm hoping the emphasis on paragraphing with these discrete sub-topics will help.
• For the last essay I plan to give pairs of articles that present opposing views (so that I have control of topics, to avoid the too-familiar) and ask students to do a text-wrestling synthesis, with a somewhat scaled down amt. of research to try to reconcile contradictions of fact.

Question(s): What nonargumentative research projects have you used, and how do you think they support students' cognitive development?