So I'm a little busy today, trying to work on a paper and prep for a job interview I have tomorrow. This is particularly difficult because the paper isn't due for almost a month, which goes completely against my normal method of motivating myself through recognition of a fast-approaching deadline. However, April will be a killer in terms of grading and exams, so I'm trying to finish as many of my more flexible assignments as possible now. We'll see how it turns out!
In the interests of being at least a little exciting today, I decided to give you a brief peek into what the topic I'm currently working on is. For my quantitative research class, we basically have to do the background research for and design a study. If it turns out to be interesting, we might even conduct it later on. So far, I've gotten good feedback on mine.
Which, I'm sure, means you're all wondering what this amazing project of mine could be. Well, I'm afraid I can't write too much about it here for now, especially if I'm actually going to run the study. Wouldn't want any of my more enterprising students (who make up the research pool we often use for exploratory studies) to discover my hypotheses and end up giving me skewed results.
What I can say is that it deals with (surprise!) video games, and more specifically their influence on public opinion. Check out some of the material here to see some of what I'm working with. We'll see how it goes! If I don't end up taking it to the study stage, I'll probably give another update soon, but if I do, it'll be awhile before I manage to run all the data and can report back with my conclusions.
Showing posts with label academics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label academics. Show all posts
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Movable Type-- Quality Undergrad Media Studies
I am in graduate school. By definition, this makes me kind of (really) a nerd about my field of study. Possibly one of the most nerdy things I've done, and also one of the best, was joining together with a few of my awesome fellow Media Studies majors as an undergrad to found Movable Type, an undergraduate media studies journal for the University of Virginia.
The reason I bring it up today is because the journal didn't close down when the original staff graduated in May. In fact, it's still going strong, and the second edition is in the process of being released now. As an online journal, new editions of Movable Type are released a few papers at a time, to keep postings more current. Even better, all the content is archived and searchable, as well as sorted by keyword.
If you've ever been interested in exactly what media studies majors and scholars write about, Movable Type can give you more than enough insight. One of my papers on gender and video games, a topic I covered briefly in an earlier post, is up on Movable Type, as well as some of the best work I've read by my fellow undergraduates. If you're interested in hackers, crafts, Glee, Harry Potter fandom, political campaigns or more, I'd encourage you to check it out, read some material and leave your comments. It's great to get feedback on work, especially if you're planning to go anywhere with it.
Because the articles and the journal can be a little heavy at times, however, I'll also leave you with "A Media Studies Love Story", a video created by one of the original Movable Type staffers, demonstrating not only her own nerdiness and love for media studies, but a bit of insight into what it is.
In case the video looks familiar, it was inspired by the follow advertisement, "Parisian Love", released by Google for the 2010 Superbowl. Enjoy!
The reason I bring it up today is because the journal didn't close down when the original staff graduated in May. In fact, it's still going strong, and the second edition is in the process of being released now. As an online journal, new editions of Movable Type are released a few papers at a time, to keep postings more current. Even better, all the content is archived and searchable, as well as sorted by keyword.
If you've ever been interested in exactly what media studies majors and scholars write about, Movable Type can give you more than enough insight. One of my papers on gender and video games, a topic I covered briefly in an earlier post, is up on Movable Type, as well as some of the best work I've read by my fellow undergraduates. If you're interested in hackers, crafts, Glee, Harry Potter fandom, political campaigns or more, I'd encourage you to check it out, read some material and leave your comments. It's great to get feedback on work, especially if you're planning to go anywhere with it.
Because the articles and the journal can be a little heavy at times, however, I'll also leave you with "A Media Studies Love Story", a video created by one of the original Movable Type staffers, demonstrating not only her own nerdiness and love for media studies, but a bit of insight into what it is.
In case the video looks familiar, it was inspired by the follow advertisement, "Parisian Love", released by Google for the 2010 Superbowl. Enjoy!
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Writing A Paper that Will Be Graded
I am currently grading final papers for a class and was reminded of all the small things that make being a teacher or grader just a little bit more difficult than it has to be. Here's some advice on things you can do to make life easier for the people that determine how you do in school. Might want to pay attention.
(Note: These suggestions do not all come from the papers I'm grading now, so don't think my current class is terrible. They come from combined experiences as a grader, editor, teacher, and Model UN Committee Director.)
1. When submitting papers electronically (either on a classroom website or through email), don't just label your paper "Final Paper" or "Class Name". We're getting dozens of papers, and it's really hard for us to keep them straight if they're all called the same thing. It's not difficult to change the name of your file when we download it, but it starts to add up when you have to change 30, 60, 100 different file names. So try something like "Last Name_Final Paper". I know I at least use a roster sorted by last name to make sure I have received and graded all papers. Therefore, if your file name starts with your last name, you will make me very happy, because that's how I store them all anyways.
As a side note, a late shout out to some members of my video game class. It you changed the way you named your files because you noticed that I always added your last name to the label, you are awesome. You really don't know how much easier that made my life.
2. I know a lot of you have newer computers, so you don't even think of this, but if you're working in Word, it's really helpful if you take the extra second to make sure your file saves as a .doc rather than a .docx file. Not all of us have the newest version of Microsoft Word, because we have older computers and are too poor to justify updating something that works perfectly well, but .docx files don't open in the older version. This requires us to do one of two things-- email you for a new copy of your paper or do a complex work around using something like Google Docs to convert the file through a series of (again) somewhat time consuming steps. When we just want to start working our way through grading the stack of 600 pages your class just sent us, we don't want to have to do this.
3. Even if we haven't seen it, we can tell you what was on the rubric your professor gave you for your paper. You know how? Because the majority of you will go through each element that the rubric listed, in order, to make sure you don't miss anything. We know you think you're doing the right thing here, but when your paper and everyone else's reads like a to-do list, it's hard for us to make it through a whole class's worth without wanting to die. I want to give you a good grade. Really, I do, as much as you might think otherwise. You can make it easier for me to do this by including transitions between paragraphs and words like "therefore", "as a result", "on the other hand" or "in addition". All of these help us see that you've managed to connect the ideas of the class both in your head and in your essay, and a lot of times, that more than makes up for forgetting one small thing that was on the rubric.
4. Expand on your ideas. I should never see a paragraph that takes up only three lines. This tells me that you don't remember what the purpose of a paragraph is (to present and explain an idea) or you just completely neglected to provide any evidence for what you think and why. This is also really easy to fix. Before submitting your paper, look at it in print preview format. From this view, all paragraphs should be roughly the same size. If one is too short, see if you can just drop it into another one or expand on it. If one is way too long, try to split it into two ideas. This makes your readability much higher and my life much easier.
5. Please, please, please at least pretend that you proofread your paper and have some grasp of basic grammatical rules. Know the difference between "their", "they're" and "there" and use them properly. Same thing with "affect" and "effect", "less" and "fewer", "you're" and "your", and "its" and "it's". Even if you capitalize things incorrectly, do it consistently. You should not have a word starting with a lowercase letter in one sentence, an uppercase in the next, and another lowercase in the third. That being said, proper nouns are always capitalized. Same thing with commas-- you can choose whether or not to use the serial comma, because both are grammatically acceptable, but make sure you use them consistently. One list shouldn't have a comma before the conjunction if the next list does not. Check your spelling and grammar-- those tools exist for a reason.
6. Use a normal font, font size, and standard margins, especially if you're submitting electronically in Word format. We know these tricks. You're not fooling anyone. Frankly, it's a little offensive that you think we're dumb enough not to notice that you changed all your punctuations to size 16 font, and I'll admit I'm much more likely to grade you harder when you try it.
(Note: These suggestions do not all come from the papers I'm grading now, so don't think my current class is terrible. They come from combined experiences as a grader, editor, teacher, and Model UN Committee Director.)
1. When submitting papers electronically (either on a classroom website or through email), don't just label your paper "Final Paper" or "Class Name". We're getting dozens of papers, and it's really hard for us to keep them straight if they're all called the same thing. It's not difficult to change the name of your file when we download it, but it starts to add up when you have to change 30, 60, 100 different file names. So try something like "Last Name_Final Paper". I know I at least use a roster sorted by last name to make sure I have received and graded all papers. Therefore, if your file name starts with your last name, you will make me very happy, because that's how I store them all anyways.
As a side note, a late shout out to some members of my video game class. It you changed the way you named your files because you noticed that I always added your last name to the label, you are awesome. You really don't know how much easier that made my life.
2. I know a lot of you have newer computers, so you don't even think of this, but if you're working in Word, it's really helpful if you take the extra second to make sure your file saves as a .doc rather than a .docx file. Not all of us have the newest version of Microsoft Word, because we have older computers and are too poor to justify updating something that works perfectly well, but .docx files don't open in the older version. This requires us to do one of two things-- email you for a new copy of your paper or do a complex work around using something like Google Docs to convert the file through a series of (again) somewhat time consuming steps. When we just want to start working our way through grading the stack of 600 pages your class just sent us, we don't want to have to do this.
3. Even if we haven't seen it, we can tell you what was on the rubric your professor gave you for your paper. You know how? Because the majority of you will go through each element that the rubric listed, in order, to make sure you don't miss anything. We know you think you're doing the right thing here, but when your paper and everyone else's reads like a to-do list, it's hard for us to make it through a whole class's worth without wanting to die. I want to give you a good grade. Really, I do, as much as you might think otherwise. You can make it easier for me to do this by including transitions between paragraphs and words like "therefore", "as a result", "on the other hand" or "in addition". All of these help us see that you've managed to connect the ideas of the class both in your head and in your essay, and a lot of times, that more than makes up for forgetting one small thing that was on the rubric.
4. Expand on your ideas. I should never see a paragraph that takes up only three lines. This tells me that you don't remember what the purpose of a paragraph is (to present and explain an idea) or you just completely neglected to provide any evidence for what you think and why. This is also really easy to fix. Before submitting your paper, look at it in print preview format. From this view, all paragraphs should be roughly the same size. If one is too short, see if you can just drop it into another one or expand on it. If one is way too long, try to split it into two ideas. This makes your readability much higher and my life much easier.
5. Please, please, please at least pretend that you proofread your paper and have some grasp of basic grammatical rules. Know the difference between "their", "they're" and "there" and use them properly. Same thing with "affect" and "effect", "less" and "fewer", "you're" and "your", and "its" and "it's". Even if you capitalize things incorrectly, do it consistently. You should not have a word starting with a lowercase letter in one sentence, an uppercase in the next, and another lowercase in the third. That being said, proper nouns are always capitalized. Same thing with commas-- you can choose whether or not to use the serial comma, because both are grammatically acceptable, but make sure you use them consistently. One list shouldn't have a comma before the conjunction if the next list does not. Check your spelling and grammar-- those tools exist for a reason.
6. Use a normal font, font size, and standard margins, especially if you're submitting electronically in Word format. We know these tricks. You're not fooling anyone. Frankly, it's a little offensive that you think we're dumb enough not to notice that you changed all your punctuations to size 16 font, and I'll admit I'm much more likely to grade you harder when you try it.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Literature and Proofreading
My very first semester at UVA, I took a class on Shakespeare. I can picture the immediate reaction of most people as they read that sentence. Usually something along the lines of “Why would you subject yourself to that?” Well, I happen to like Shakespeare, although I get why most people don’t. It’s kind of like reading in another language and takes a certain kind of brain shift to do easily.
However, I’m not writing this to defend Shakespeare—he can do that well enough on his own. The reason I bring this class up is because I have no notes from it, which seems like it could mean I didn’t learn anything. On the contrary, this was a great class where I learned a lot. It just didn’t involve lectures, but rather consisted of some really great class discussions, the kind that I was too involved in to write down.
I also really loved the professor, Hoyt Duggan, who unfortunately retired at the end of that semester before I could recommend him to other people. He had an amusing habit of reciting things in proper Middle English pronunciation in class and confusing the heck out of all his students.
He also gave us the few notes I do have left from this class, which offer great, but slightly sarcastic, advice on grammar and on what I’m going to cover today—writing a literary essay. I have abbreviated these slightly, but Prof. Duggan’s instructions on how to write a literary essay are such:
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Ludology
I believe I've mentioned this a few times, but in case I haven't, I am going to grad school for Media Studies or Communication Studies, as my program calls it. I am interested how media affects people and also what it says about individuals, society and culture. More specifically, I want to look into how the Internet and video games fit in with or challenge traditional concepts of community.
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