Week 4: Proposal
4.0 Proposal
Objective(s): to identify a specific project relevant to students’ interests and the course’s scope; to develop communities of care through attentive and respectful feedback.
Orientation
The focus of Week 4 is writing the project proposal. Depending on your classroom, proposals may be written as a project group or individually. Often, students submit their proposals directly to instructors, instead the CDF curriculum adds an intermediary step by asking students to first submit and present their proposals within their project groups (or across project groups if it’s a group project). By elongating the proposal into an interactive process, we shift emphasis from product-oriented results toward affective and processual outcomes, such as vulnerability, trust, listening, revision, identifying and communicating needs, and consent. Further, the position of instructor feedback follows students’ and its value is distributed and less hierarchical.
Activities
Premise
Proposals are playful spaces for students to explore subjects in relationship to a theme; it marks the beginning of the project process and itself is subject to change (i.e., is its own process).
Preparation
While I’ve included a sample proposal for your iteration, general guidelines often include the following elements:
- Subject-matter (i.e., what is your project about?)
- Question (i.e., what do you want to learn?)
- Prior Knowledge (i.e., what do you know so far?)
- Process/Method (i.e., how will you complete this project?);
- Hypothesis (i.e., what do you think your research will show?).
Lastly, students identify one area of targeted feedback desired from their project group members that will help them specify the scope of their project.
Protocol
Once completed, students share proposals with the project groups; members respond to each proposal in writing (completed before the start of the following class) and verbally during class time.
Premise
Conventional peer reviews often provide feedback based upon an external and general heuristic, like a state standard or a departmental rubric. We deploy peer reviews as an exercise in consent-building; that is, we invite writers to decide if feedback would be helpful to their process and, if so, to specify the type of feedback they receive. Rather than centralize power in the position of the reviewer as apart from the writer or their writing process, we situate the reviewer as a collaborator with the writer, whose role is to provide an outside perspective on targeted areas of feedback desired by the writer.
Purpose
The purpose of this exercise is for students to respond to each other’s writing, according to the writer’s terms.
Preparation
Project group members read each proposal twice, then respond to each writer’s targeted feedback in writing. Written responses are circulated among project groups ahead of class time.
Protocol
During class, groups workshop each writer’s proposal for a portion of the following class session. During this time, the writer listens to group members discuss their work and they may ask for more feedback at the end of the session (if desired). At the end of their reviews, writers identify 2-3 next steps that will be reflected in Proposal 2.
Premise
Proposals are temporary, which is another way of saying, responsive, iterative, and situational. Proposal 2 will be different from Proposal 1, if only that it is more specific. It marks the first formal feedback instructors provide students and establishes the groundwork for their interactions moving forward. Here, the feedback cue is scope: is the project manageable? Specific? Apt to course content? By centering questions of scope (instead of “good” or “bad”), instructors obviate their roles as judges of student work to their coaches, applying their expert knowledge and experience situationally (and not generally) to help students achieve their project’s goals.
Purpose
Students revise their proposals based upon project group feedback and then submit for review by instructors/GSIs.
Preparation
Instructors review each proposal.
Protocol
Students review feedback and share one actionable item with their project groups.