Assignment 2 English 320 - Writing in an Electronic World Spring 2002

Documentation Due March 19
Analysis Due March 26
Open Form Essay Due April 9

Note: You will certainly be asked to exchange drafts for the analysis and open-form essay as we move along. In addition, you'll share one of the conversations you participate in with the class, hopefully enriching our understanding of web-based discourse. Productive participation in these exchanges and reviews will be folded into your grade. The entire assignment is worth 30 percent of your grade. Each of the above (documentation, analysis, open-form essay) is worth ten percent.

Pedagogical goals
1. To give you a chance to experience and experiment with writing in the web-based forms available to you, with particular emphasis on interactive forms. You have written eloquently about the choices available. Now go out and experiment.
2. To move away from the analysis of structure and into the analysis of conversation--with emphasis on ANALYSIS.
3. To study and practice open-form writing and to distinguish it from both closed-form and "and then" writing.

Steps
1. Participate in three different types of public forums. The first should be a forum of your choice, something you're comfortable with even if it doesn't exactly match our definitions of "public discourse." Examples: book club; z-car talk. The second should be a clearly "political/public good" type of forum, again of your choice. I urge topics related to Afghanistan, terrorism, Muslim women's status, arms sales to Pakistan, ethics of bombing, prisoners of war, how we finance the war, or Bush's metaphors, but you can make your case to me for another sort of conversation so long it qualifies as "common good" discourse. The third would be my choice, and I'm going to locate sites where participants are internationally mixed. I'll ask you to "stretch" yourself in at least one forum-choosing something you're not quite comfortable in, and you'll want to do this so that you have something exciting to write about for your essay.

2. Document your participation. This entails studying and copying the "conversations" you are about to enter before you do so and after. In other words, copy and print not only your own statements but also those coming before you and those you generate with your own writing. Remember that this is experimental and that there are a lot of variables beyond our control. Ideally you'll jump into or generate a conversation that includes 5 to 7 of your own postings. Because you cannnot really control responses, you should probably try your luck in several places simultaneously, picking the best of the lot for analysis. Get to work early on this one.

3.Anaylze the conversations you're participating in, including the effects that you have on that conversation. You may with to begin with a "research journal" that simply documents informally what's going on with your experiments. Then you would convert this running commentary into an analysis, probably using some of the closed-form techniques.We'll be developing categories of analysis in class. This is NOT a formal essay but it IS analysis. We'll work on distinguishing between the "journal" and the "analysis" in class. Length: 4 pages.

4. After studying open form prose (see handouts), write a four-page open form essay. We'll swap papers before the final due date.