Leonardo da Vinci,
Studies of Embryos, c.
1510-1513.
Workshops are integral to student success in the course. Many class periods are devoted to four kinds of workshops: field work, technology, segment, and assessment.
Field Work Workshops
Working with a variety of online and print resources, these workshops are devoted to brainstorming, planning, organizing, and executing interviews and field observations. We also work with the tools (digital recorders, video and still cameras) students will use during their field work. Here is the kind of conversation we will have in these workshops:
Technology Workshops
Experience and confidence with new media production technologies is a crucial. Given how this course treats (science) writing as articulation, it should come as no surprise that such technologies are not here treated as neutral means of conveyance. The medium, as Marshall McLuhan once famously argued, is the message. And as that most famous of Billikens, Walter Ong S.J., argued, the technologizing of the word works to restructure consciousness. Here is the kind of conversation we will have in these workshops:
Segment Workshops
These workshops afford students the opportunity to work on their segments under the watchful, critical and instructional eye of both the instructor and classmates.
Assessment Workshops
Part of the work of the course entails crafting a rubric with which to assess successful new media science writing. These workshops are devoted to developing and applying this rubric to student-produced segments.
