Assignment 5: Community Building

Thanks to Marissa’s suggestion in class last night, I’ve decided to give you some incentive to read your classmates’ postings and provide some feedback to them on their stories thus far. So, for assignment 5, you will need to read and respond to at least four different pass one or pass two stories posted on the student blogs. You should post comments that help these individuals to better prepare their stories for passes three and four. While you can be (and should be) kind and you may even be blown away by the amazing narrative expression of a particular student, it is likely much more helpful to them if you are somewhat critical and look at the piece with an eye for suggestion and improvement rather than just praising their efforts. Feel free to let them know you enjoyed the piece, though, and remember that everyone has worked extremely hard on their stories so please be diplomatic and respectful with any comments or ideas you post. Also, please be mindful of the number of responses each story has; if there is a story with five comments and others don’t have any, please post to the stories with fewer comments so that everyone has the potential opportunity to receive feedback from their peers.

To simplify grading, you should also copy and paste each of your comments into a Word file and upload that file to WebCT by the due date. Please indicate next to each comment whose blog the comment was posted to. So, the document you upload to WebCT should contain a listing of all of your comments as well as annotations showing where each of these comments was posted.

You may also find it helpful to read the story proposal for any selected blog so that you have an idea as to the original purpose and target audience the author is aiming for.

Example of an acceptable comment (this is not based on anyone’s story, but shows what I am looking for in terms of depth/analysis): “This was a great read and I appreciate you sharing it. I liked the way that Bob the milkman seemed to be villainous but actually turned out to be the hero in the end. I have a couple ideas you might think about for your later passes. First, how might you better show the relationship between Bob and Mary? Also, I wonder if the picture of the milk truck was more distracting than helpful to the narrative? Good luck on your future passes!”

Example of a poor comment: “This was a nice story and I enjoyed reading it. Your characters were realistic and I liked the plot. The pictures were also pretty. Good stuff.”

In other words, I’d like to see concrete, specific, and authentic reactions to the stories and detailed advice for revision. Of course you are not expected to follow all advice or implement every suggested change, but you should at least carefully consider all ideas and implement those you feel will improve the quality of your work.

Four comments is the minimum you need for full credit. Feel free to comment as many times as you like, though, and also feel free to reply to any comments posted to your own blog. The more interaction and participation we can create for this assignment, the better your final stories are likely to be!

Rubric (out of ten points):
__ / 8: Four helpful, substantial postings are made to student blogs
__ / 2: Correct process is followed to upload posting summary to WebCT

This assignment is due to WebCT by Sunday, July 8, by 11:55PM.