Knowledge Management Weekend College Syllabus

• Readings:
  • How to Think – Chapter Two, Attractions and Chapter Three, Repulsions
  • Savini, “Looking for Trouble: Finding Your Way into a Writing Assignment”
  • Read 1 of the following and write this week's Reading Reflection on it:
    • Anderson, “How’s That ‘Abundance” Thing Working out for You?” - TD, CO
    • Van Schneider, “Power of Not Knowing” - LB, JH, DM
    • Parrish, “How Filter Bubbles Distort Reality” - MH, CM, JWS
• Reading Reflection #2 - type this and email it to me before 6:30 on Friday night; also print out a copy to bring to class for our discussion.
• List of Potential Sources for your research paper. Minimum of 5, in APA format (practice makes perfect...) Again, email to me before 6:30 on Friday, but be able to access a copy for Saturday (either in print or electronic format).

AKA "HURRICANE WEEK"

“Friday” activities:

1. Working through a research question
   1. Record yourself (video on your phone is fine) giving an “ELEVATOR PITCH” about your topic. Should be 1-2 minutes, and address the following issues:
      1. Summary of your topic in 1-2 sentences
      2. Why it matters (to you and your greater audience)
      3. A few of the sources that have informed your thinking on this topic
   2. Upload your “elevator pitch” as a file in the Blackboard discussion board, which is now live. Then watch 2 of your classmate’s pitches, and give them feedback on the discussion board (in Blackboard). Feedback should address the following issues at a minimum:
      1. Does this question represent an argument? Is it seeking a descriptive or prescriptive answer? If the question will result in a ‘report’ rather than a persuasively argued claim that reasonable people could disagree with, it needs to be more focused on an argument.
      2. Level of complexity – does the question need to be simplified, or is it too simplistic? How would you recommend doing that?
      3. Clarity/specificity of the question – what needs to be defined? What can be made clearer? What would help you understand the question better?
      4. Focus – Does the question have enough focus that it can be answered in 8-10 pages? How would you consider narrowing or broadening it?

Make sure the feedback is spread around – once a posting has two responses, consider it ‘closed’ and move on to give feedback to another one.

“Saturday” activities:

1. Critical Thinking Exercise
   1. Choose one of the following items and do some ‘digging’ – find an in-depth, current article on the topic. (My apologies that they are all focused on health or education/psychology.)
      1. Learning Styles
      2. 10,000 Steps/day fitness “baseline”
      3. Myers-Briggs Personality Test
      4. Iron content of Spinach
      5. Brian Wansink’s work on Mindless Eating
      6. 8 glasses of water/day “baseline”

By “current”, I mean published within the past three years. Popular or scholarly is fine as long as you can justify its authority, and it has enough depth to help get you started.

b. Summarize the “story” of this topic for us in a few paragraphs: what did the original research claim? What did the original authors use as the basis for their research? How was it published/publicized? When did it begin to be reexamined? What fallout came of it?

c. Find at least three scholarly sources that you can use to critically evaluate the claims and evidence given in the original article you found. These must be peer-reviewed journal articles or book chapters from reputable sources. These can agree/disagree or add to the understanding of the underlying research around your topic.

d. Find at least three popular sources that show the ‘path’ your idea took in the popular realm. Ideally, one would be ‘contemporary’ with the publication of the original research, one would be a ‘mid-point’ assessment of the idea, and one would discuss the current state (do not use your original article for this).

e. Write a comprehensive bibliography with your source and the sources you found or used in your investigation, in proper APA format.

Email the write-up and bibliography to me.

2.) Anderson/Van Schneider/Parrish articles. I know you wrote reading reflections on these articles, but I’d like you to think a little bit more about them as artifacts of a genre (think about our TED exercise last week):

1. In one sentence, what is the author’s argument?
2. Where was this published, and who was the audience?
3. What struck you about these articles? What did it add to the ‘conversation’ that we are having now?
4. How did the author use sources? What were the key phrases that introduced paraphrases/quotations?

Email this to me as well –one ‘page’ should be plenty for this.

• How to Think – read Chapter Four, The Money of Fools
• Discussion questions (one per chapter) for Chapters 2 (Attractions) and 3 (Repulsions) as well as Chapter 4 (Money of Fools)
• Read (and write a reading reflection on) “Why Americans are changing their relationship with Facebook” (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/05/americans-are-changing-their-relationship-with-facebook/).
  1. Dig a little more deeply into two or three of the sources linked in that article, and look at the full dataset (linked at the end of the article). Include in your reflection your thoughts on the article and the underlying research. Do they represent their own findings well?
  2. Now, find a news article that reports on this particular Pew study. What do you think of their representation of the Pew findings? Include a citation for the news article in your reflection.
  3. Finally, do a little looking into the Pew Research Center. Who funds them? When were they started? What is their purpose? What is the scope of their research? What other study might be of use to your own research paper?
• Annotated Bibliography – rubric attached. You’ll notice I am going to set the due date for this to be Sunday night (September 23^rd) in order to give us time in class to discuss the rubric and make sure it is clear. (Also, remember you can revise and resubmit.) But I would recommend you have it 95% done by Friday so you can just polish it up after we talk about the rubric.