The following were the course
learning objectives:
Summarize, analyze, question, and evaluate
written and visual texts
Argue and support a position
Recognize audience and disciplinary
expectations
Identify and use the stages of the writing
process
Identify characteristics of effective
sentence and paragraph-level prose
Apply proper citation practices
Discuss how to transfer and apply your
writing knowledge to other writing occasions
What have
you learned in this course? Choose 2-4 of
our course learning objectives, describing each objective and referring
specifically to particular passages from your coursework that demonstrate your
progress towards and/or struggles with that objective. Indicate why you have
chosen those objectives as the most important for you. Cut and paste specific
portions of your coursework, and use them as evidence for your argument. In
this way, by having an introduction, argument, evidence, and conclusion, your
“portfolio cover letter” will both discuss and demonstrate how effectively you
have achieved the goals of the course. Length: ~500-750 words.
The common struggles for any academic writer is summarizing, analyzing, questioning, and evaluating written and visual
texts. What a challenge it is! Every text or a visual image has so many
meanings as there are people. During this course I have had an excellent chance
to work more closely with this problematic. One on hand, composing the essays
for assignment demanded working with several texts on my own. Secondly, since
the course has peer-to-peer review as its main evaluation and learning tool, it
has given me, as a writer, a possibility to experiment and see how my texts are
summarized, analyzed, questioned and evaluated by outside readers.
Critical feminist writing is a field that meets a wall of indifference by
some audiences, at the same time it is an emerging area of interests for many.
How to be able to write in an open way and invite people to critically examine their
assumptions and agendas hidden from most of the members of our society? That has
been a big question mark during this course.
To give some examples of my writing I would like to point out two possible
passages.
Firstly, I would like to invite you to read an excerpt of my case study
about who are the experts in education. Among others I quote Ivan Illich known
for his critical writing about US school systems already back in seventies.
As a possible future
innovation Ivan Illich is inviting people to think about “learning webs”. According to him the
good educational systems will: “provide
access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want
to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and,
finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the
opportunity to make their challenge known.” (2012:75)While being part of MOOC, some people have perhaps experienced that Illich
has a point here. Even though there are minor drawbacks and some try their best
to control and institutionalize, the realm of educational practices is
shifting. People are taking more responsibility of their personal learning as
well as teaching others. It is indeed happening online with the help of the
learning webs.
The second passage is taking my readers to a Nordic conference about early
education where the only speakers are male at the same time when audience, Norwegian
kindergarten teachers, is female with only few exceptions. I present a picture
of a professor talking about himself and his work.
“This picture presents us with a sentimental
stage of expertise in educational research. As I am the one who took the
picture just a few days ago, I know that the audience mainly consisted
of women. It is a typical picture of educational conferences held in
Europe. An old man talking about his work, talking about something that has
been done a long time ago and having a lot of women carefully listening and
making notes. This is a picture of expertise in the field of education, where
most of the people occupied with the work are women but the know-how still
belongs to men. I would argue that the expert in my area of study often looks
like an old white Western male presenting himself, having only very little to
do with the actual field of the research. The gap between educational theory
and practice is therefore profound.”
In both of these sections I not only analyze, question and evaluate, but I
also give arguments in support of my
positions. The course outline has fitted into multiple approaches and enabled
everyone to work in their own realms coming together as a global writing
community and support each other in our personal growth. Even so, it has been a
great challenge to incorporate my writing style and interests, the demands of
the course curricula and my timetable. To do that I have sometimes made
compromises but not really that many. Thank you!
