COVID LOCKDOWN, March 13 2020: Post lockdown, our NatSci 387 TA, Subhalakshmi Gooptu, researched and found a source titled Archiving Covid 19, a set of slides by Dr. Ananya Chakravarti (March 21, 2020), describing “Witnessing History” through personal experience and social observation. We were shifting very quickly to remote learning, and felt this was a relevant focus that allowed our students to process and write about the huge changes happening to them during the Covid 19 social distancing and lockdown. Our three Junior Year Writing courses were particularly adaptable to this situation, so we revamped curriculum that was previously organized around the collaborative persuasive research essay. The first half of each week became about journaling and peer response online, with Zoom lessons supporting the second half, in which we were able to keep most of the collaborative groups students had chosen pre-lockdown, and expand upon pre-lockdown lessons on:

• Voice & description: Using concrete and figurative language, story, hooks, and editing for a specific audience and purpose
• Evaluating & citing sources: Referencing, practicing signal phrases and in-text citations, objective summary and subjective evaluation
• The concepts of Ethos/Pathos/Logos, Argumentation, quotation, paraphrase, awareness of fallacies, and how to support student’s own professional credibility.
• A place for implications

This course has been, both before and after lockdown, about helping students notice what they already do with their writing, and about making that process more conscious and purposeful. We also discussed empiricism and the difficulty of both articulating our own ideas/experiences and being conscientious, thorough, objective observers –yet still keeping our imaginations flexible and acknowledging the wider implications of our experiences and observations.

 Because if we don’t, who will?

IRLs “WITNESSING HISTORY,” ISSUE #4, Spring 2020 focusses on collaborative video projects NatSci 387 students’ created using their weekly journaling (including Personal Experiences and Social Observations). Videos included a cited transcript. Sources were drawn from student’s social observations during lockdown and gave the class a chance to expand beyond the library databases and evaluate and cite online and social media sources that were directly addressing the pandemic – many of which required close scrutiny. While I would like to include all of the marvelous journal entries that came from our “Witnessing History” exercises – and may someday – we do have a few video presentations here that student groups felt comfortable sharing.

The prompts from our 6 weeks of journaling are below (weekly lessons are not included):

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:

Given the class decision to “Witness History Through Journaling” for the rest of our semester, please carefully read the slideshow: Archiving Corvid 19: A Guide. Write in your private response journal first, then post 2-3 paragraphs you’ve edited to share with the class, about your personal pandemic experience so far. Keep the language of your peer responses supportive and kind. See if you can use “Sayback, Pointing, Questions” to encourage more concrete details without stepping on people’s personal writing. Save more evaluative peer review for our second class discussion on Evaluating & Citing sources.

• Week 1, Prompt:  Write from your Personal Experiences during this Covid 19 pandemic. We’ll start folding in Social Observations and citations next week. But for now, it is fine and expected to write about your OWN experience.

SOCIAL OBSERVATIONS:

Continue with your “Witnessing History” journal. Deepen some of your personal experiences with the social observations I see many of you already exploring. This might include commentary on an online article about Covid 19, observing or talking with neighbors (in person – from a safe distance!) or classmates, family, an online community or collection site like Instagram, Reddit, Facebook or others. When you edit your Journal Entry, add an attributive phrase and parenthetical citation around the source and a reference below your post in APA, so your readers can find the source where you did. If it’s a conversation that’s not repeatable, cite it as “Personal Communication” (see the Owl At Purdue). Refer to the Media Bias chart below to see how some online journals are evaluated:

MEDIA BIAS CHART 5.1 Static Version. (n.d.). ad fontes media. Retrieved from: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/?v=402f03a963ba

• Week 2, Prompt: What tools or support did you use when news around the world began pouring in? Did you turn to people or technology or both? What are some forums where you learned (or are learning) about Covid-19? News channels? Online articles? Social media? Provide an example (or more) and write about how the source influenced you and the thoughts you had about it or the actions you took based on it. What do you think of that source’s credibility now? If you believe that you don’t have access to enough information, write about why you think that is? And how are you holding up as you and everyone around you goes through tremendous changes?

• Week 3, Prompt: What do you feel is most important to communicate about your personal situation or social observations at this point in time, several weeks into the lockdown, with information changing fast?

• Week 4, Prompt: Argue something! Building from last week’s Zoom lesson on “Analyzing Argument” make a “Claim of Fact or Definition,” a claim of “Cause & Effect,” a claim about “Value,” a “Claim about Solution or Policy,” anywhere in this week’s Journal entry about anything that strikes your interest. Try as many of these claims as possible. Support your claims as best you can from your sources and/or experience.

• Week 5, Final Journal Prompt: What more do you want someone in the future to know about your experience during this pandemic and your observations of what’s happening in the world?

• Week 6, FINAL VIDEO PROJECT “WITNESSING HISTORY” + Transcript:

Not a lot of guidelines folks! We’re leaving this project open for you to be creative

• Time: approximately 2 minutes for each person in your group
• You can use a panel-format, an interview-format, a planned discussion or debate, select readings from your journaling followed by discussion, or try to persuade your audience about something. Be creative!
• The only firm requirements are that everyone in your group participates and that you contextualize, evaluate and cite just a few key sources – including yourselves! Who are you? What are your credentials and situation? Names and majors are the absolute minimum for this requirement. Titles should also be used as your first hook. Add these to the subject field of your final post to attract peer reviewers. Print titles over your transcript (like the podcasts did), with all participants names & majors. Follow your transcript with a brief reference list.

One take-away we got from this shift in curriculum, was that student engagement was increased by their motivation to write about and discuss this incredible pandemic event, and their synthesis and transitions between personal experience and sourced quotes and paraphrases in their journaling was some of the best we’ve seen in their writing. Not all of that came across in the videos, which was not a form we taught in this class, but did give us a platform for what would otherwise have been oral reports, and allowed students to practice close collaboration and share ideas from their journaling. Almost all our students expressed appreciation for the shift in curriculum and said that it made the course feel relevant. They appreciated the opportunity to process and discuss with others what was happening to them during lockdown. Many said that given the stresses on them during the pandemic, they liked the opportunity to write their journals and do lessons on their own time, but also appreciated the synchronous Zoom classes that kept them on schedule, and relieved some of the isolation many were experiencing.