WHEN: Finals week: Please sign up for an appointment on the appointments page (Scroll through to the week of Dec. 12-16). If none of the slots marked HST269 work for you, you can take one marked differently but only as a last resort. If none of the available times work for you, email me. No check-in appointments available on Dec. 17, 18 or 19: Finals week ends on Dec. 16!
WHERE: Ettinger 300A (my office)
WHAT: A 20 min conversation. During the final check-in conversation you make a convincing case for the grade you want me to add to the gradebook in Workday. (See the basic description in the syllabus of this system). We should both agree that the grade is a fair reflection of your work this semester.
To make your case, use evidence from your portfolio and participation in the learning commons:
- Your blog posts
- Your participation in class and the wider learning commons
- Your reflections
- Your Show and Tell projects
Be concrete and specific, and be ready to answer the question: “Can you give me a specific example of that?” E.g. “I learned that a good project not only uses multiple sources, but also brings these in conversation with each other, and that I need to analyze the information so I am not just doing a collage of what is already out there, but adding a new element and be critical of the information that’s out there.” –> “Can you give me a specific example of that?” –>”When I worked on my project about the Xiongnu, I saw a lot of online articles claiming they were the Huns. But then I learned that there is actually a big academic debate about this, and that scholars have a much more nuanced view. I used two different articles from a peer reviewed journal to rewrite that section, and now my post is not just parroting information but shows how scholarship proceeds more carefully around the issue of ethnicity in the distant past.”
For determining your grade, check back to the course goals and the grades description (you can add + and – for nuance in your letter grade). Make me an offer I can’t resist.
Make some notes and bring these to our conversation. Don’t rely on your memory, it may fail in the heat of the moment!