Week 3: Project Overview
3.0 Project Overview[1]
Objective(s): introduce the creative discovery project, review schedule of deliverables, and discuss and revise labor contracts.
Orientation
Often, the first week of a course centers on administrative documents, such as syllabus, course descriptions, grading scales, project overviews, etc. While these are indeed important, they are widely available to students ahead of time (e.g., on course websites), though they develop community bureaucratically and hierarchically (as a top-down approach from instructor to students). However, we wait until week three to introduce projects for several reasons. First, waiting to introduce administrative details creates space for alternative, non-hierarchal ways of community formation (featured in weeks 1-2). Secondly, it allows students to play with course ideas and get to know each other without the instrumentalizing pressure of a culminating project as pretext for those interactions; further, it prioritizes collaboration and community before coursework (and often, competition that it entails). Third, most add-drop deadlines occur around week 3 and so waiting precludes extra administrative work (for instructors) and community adjustments (among project groups). Fourth, we seek to cultivate a co-constructive learning environment that is highly responsive to constituents, which occurs after getting to know students, their needs, prior knowledge, etc.
The way we introduce projects moves from playful experiments to explication and a schedule of deliverables. In other words, we introduce students to the course project on the first day of class, through informal and playful exercises that generate interest outside of expected behaviors. The point in our indirect approach to introducing the project is to develop communities of learning through play, playfulness, and experimentation and not performance, achievement, and competition. During Week 3, we do not introduce the project formally until the last day of class (or end of class if a seminar). The first two activities approach the project through low-stakes exercises that appeal to students’ interests, experiences, and knowledge. By beginning with what students know and find interesting, students will gain more confidence to try riskier maneuvers and knowledge beyond their experience, training, and cultural background.
Activities
Premise
Regardless of genre, projects represent qualitative and/or quantitative data to an audience. Representation is a form of storytelling, and so, data-based stories are central to projects. Students know how to tell stories; they may not know the genre requirements desired by your course or discipline. This exercise invites students to playful encounter theme-based narratives without fear of judgment.
Purpose
The purpose is two-fold: it generates a reading list based upon student interests that also allows instructors to assess their prior knowledge and familiarity with the field.
Preparation
Like the Show-and-Tell exercise from prior weeks, Compelling Stories asks the class to crowdsource relevant narratives that intersect with the course theme. As a low-stakes exercise, students share their narratives in a central folder.
Protocol
Upon uploading their narratives, students may select 2-3 to analyze in their groups. Again, the objective is not to teach analysis, but to observe how students interpret a story. Once the analysis is completed, groups will share it with the class with the instructor(s) and students observing trends and patterns in content and analytical methodologies.
Premise
Abundance is preferable to scarcity, but the effect of the choice can lead to scarcity if students are not given time and guidance to identify relevant project topics.
Purpose
The purpose of this exercise is for students to generate a list of potential stories, topics, and/or research interests that resonate with the course theme and are relevant to their interests; these lists are meant to help students brainstorm for their creative discovery project.
Preparation
In this exercise, students are invited to generate a list of 10-15 topics that align with the course theme and their interests. Each topic is explained in bulleted format and then reviewed individually in class.
Protocol
After reviewing the list, students will narrow their lists down to 5-7 topics. The goal is to move from general to specific. Here, students verbalize each topic among their writing groups. After class, students select a top 3 by identifying stakeholders, stakes, and impacts for each.
Premise
Rather than simply overwhelming students by introducing an unfamiliar and daunting intellectual task, we give students opportunities to play with ideas, practice foundational skills, and surface assumptions in a low-stakes environment so that the course project will feel relevant, interesting, and challenging but manageable.
Purpose
The purpose is to introduce students to the project at the end of the week, after completing the aforementioned exercises. Students will have an understanding of the project, schedule of deliverables, and role of the project group in the process.
Protocol
The hope is students will be familiar with the project and process before introducing its jargon and overwhelming them with a schedule of deliverables. To this end, it may be most helpful to draw direct connections between prior exercises and project outcomes. If using rubrics to review final projects, share those with students during Week 3. By disclosing at the beginning of the semester, their function changes from summative to formative feedback.
- in medias res is a narrative technique that plunges readers into the middle of a story; it denotes an organizational tactic whereby a story begins midway through the rising action. Applying this technique to CDF pedagogy, the idea is to plunge students in the middle of its anti-racism and creative processes without naming them as such. And, after a period of playful practice, situate what has already been done in terms of what CDF asks of students. In other words, it exposes students to the requisite prior knowledge. ↵