👩🏾‍🏫 15. Argumentative Synthesis

Are You Where You Should Be?

This is Module 15: Final Feedback, which should be completed between 5/3 - 5/9. If you haven’t completed everything in Module 14, go back and finish all outstanding tasks now. Don’t forget to click on and review each resource in this guide.

Goals and Checklist

• Revise your interpretations of primary research data (interviews)
• Revise your translations of primary research data into the academic register (interviews)
• Revisit coding protocols as/if needed, based on peer feedback
• Revise prior portions of the essay as needed

To help with various access needs, including task identification and separation and advance notice, I’ll include an abbreviated list of tasks at the top of each weekly module. You can check these items off, but your input won’t be saved after you close this window. You remain responsible for checking the Calendar and ensuring that you’re completing everything in a timely fashion.

Important!

(To be posted by Monday) Don’t forget to review your Draft 5 (Unit 3 Draft 2) scores along with the updated General Feedback page!

🛑 Stop: Read!

Reread the full guidelines for the Qualitative Research Project, then reread the Unit 3 guidelines. Remember, each unit should respond specifically to the unit guidelines and generally to the full assignment guidelines.

Cross-Checking Coded Transcripts with First Drafts

The focus of this workshop is

At this stage of drafting, you should consider how the writer moved from their coded interview transcripts to academic drafts. Before starting to review your peers’ drafts, skim the interview transcripts they shared earlier in your #team channel. Make note of all their second cycle codes, so you can mentally compare the original set of themes with the three themes they chose to incorporate into their Discussion sections.

Important!

Your higher-order concerns (HOCs), i.e. top-level concerns, are global revision issues. Local revision and proofreading are lower-order concerns (LOCs), i.e. the very last thing you’ll do this semester.

Remember, if your research hypotheses, sources, approach, or structure need revision, then grammar and mechanics don’t matter — you’re just going to end up rewriting that sentence anyway.

It’s also important to remember that the spirit of inquiry is the heart of the academic enterprise. Abrams (2022) reminds us that “revision isn’t just about polishing — it’s about seeing your piece from a new angle, with ‘fresh eyes.’” It’s easy to get so close to a draft we’ve recently written that we lose sight of how to improve it. It might even feel like we’ve done everything there is to do for the draft. We have to learn to see our own work from a different perspective to improve it.

Don’t Worry If Your Peers Are Late!

You aren’t responsible for reading any papers that weren’t posted to #team by Sunday, but if you post your draft late, you’re still responsible for reviewing the other essays by Friday. Missing peer review does count as missed work, and impacts your final course grade, so make sure to complete peer review by the deadline. I note when students post drafts and who actively participates in peer review and who doesn’t.

Process Reflection

When you post your draft to #team, you’ll post a brief process reflection (~200-300 words) along with it. In this reflection post, you’ll explain your process of working on this draft by answering some or all of the following:

• What were your thought processes in developing your ideas and doing your research?
• What do you wish you’d had more time to work on?
• What do you want to do between this draft and the next, regarding both what you want to do personally and what the assignment guidelines ask you to do?

Be Honest!

Don’t just tell me what you think I want to hear! Your task isn’t to try to please me or impress me, but to help me help you refine your process of writing this project as well as refine your intentions for yourself as a developing writer. The more honest you are in your process reflections, the easier your revision decisions will get over time!

You can identify the assignment parameters you think you met and why, referencing the modules and instructions as evidence, and which you think you need to keep striving towards. If you want to, you can also note any regrets or difficulties you faced, any burdens or college or life that crept into your work, your attitude towards the assignment, and so on.

Workshop Instructions

This week, you’ll asynchronously workshop each other’s drafts in your #team channel. In addition to the suggestions from Straub’s essay we read back in Unit 1, below are some structured instructions for conducting peer review. Your workshop will be guided by the Feedback Survey below, which is a set of questions you should answer for each of your teammates’ papers.

Here are the general instructions:

1. Out of respect for your team members, please post your drafts (plus process reflection) to your #team channel by Tuesday so your peers have time to read and review before the end of the week. (If you post a Google Doc link make sure you’ve enabled sharing permissions.)

2. Using the questions and Abrams’ flowchart pictured earlier in this module, chat briefly about how you approach workshops, what good feedback is, and what the culture and workflow of your workshop session is going to be.

3. Don’t talk about your essays! First, read without commenting. You can read and make marginalia, underline/highlight what you think the claim is, make notes about what you think the writer’s aims are, etc.

4. Answer all the questions in the Feedback Survey below for each of your teammates’ drafts, and post your answers as a reply to your teammate in your #team channel. This process must be complete by Fri 11:59PM.

5. After receiving feedback, read what your teammates wrote, and discuss any questions you have together as a group. You may want to ask questions about what their comments mean, how they suggest enacting those comments, collaboratively write your way towards enacting those comments, and so on.

Feedback Survey: Unit 3 Draft 1

🛑 Feedback Survey and General Feedback

The Feedback Survey questions are below and should be used in your #team workshops. I’ll interact with you during the week, much like I do with our usual Q&A posts. The General Feedback page will be updated after the workshop week, after I’ve had a chance to review everyone’s drafts on Classes and feedback-related questions in #team.

Answer the below questions for each of your teammates’ drafts. Post your responses to your #team channel as a reply to each teammate (or tag them in your post with @username). Keep Staub’s framework in mind as you answer them!

Important!

No substantive revisions = No credit (Nc). If your revision doesn’t implement feedback given in weekly discussions, workshops, and on the general feedback in a substantive manner, then you’re likely to receive an Nc score.

1. Has the writer included 3 themes that apply to all 3 interviews?
2. Does the writer clearly identify and describe the three themes they derived from their second cycle codes and integrated into the draft? If so, how specifically worded and described are these themes?
3. Has the writer written a specific, distinct, concise summary for each of these interviews — approximately 2 sentences long, specific enough that the interviews don’t all “sound the same” or blur together, but those that help readers understand the overall gist of the interview, including major themes and connotations that surfaced in it?
4. After skimming your teammates’ interview transcripts in #team (if the writer posted theirs), do these themes feel as though they are the themes that best exemplify the interview responses themselves, carefully selected by the writer, or does it feel more like someone quickly choosing themes just because they appear to “go together” or “go with” the research hypotheses? What words, phrases, and other textual evidence indicate this?
5. Does the writer quote exemplary phrases from interviewees’ responses that illustrate how they came up with this theme during their coding process, and why this theme is significant?
6. Does the writer engage with the specific language that the interviewees use?
7. Does the writer use the information they provide in their interview summaries and analysis of specific quoted language to keep elaborating on, exploring, and complicating their findings from the literature review (instead of just using them to agree with their research hypotheses)?
8. Does the writer spend an equal amount of space or time to each theme? If not, is it clear why the theme(s) they spend more time on are more important than the other ones?
9. Does the writer spend an equal amount of space or time to each interview? If not, is it clear why the interview(s) they spend more time on are more important than the other ones?
10. Does the writer use transition sentences (the 1st and last sentence of each paragraph) to reflect a clear and essential connection to the claim and to the paragraph that follows?

Assignment-Related Questions

1. When you compare the draft with the Unit 3 guidelines, what major criteria are absent or need improvement? Tell the writer how they might take care of that.
2. What 2-3 items from the feedback survey questions above feel like top priority items for the writer’s paper?
3. Is it clear that the interview responses reflect the writer’s research hypotheses and secondary research (lit review)? If not, tell the writer what you still need to know to understand that connection.

While I can’t require sync chats with me to go over feedback with you, I highly recommend them if you’re able to manage a 10-20 min coffee chat!

Happy drafting and reviewing!

Exit Writing

🥳 Congratulations on getting through this chapter! Don’t forget to check the Calendar for the week’s assignments, including your process reflection and #team posts as well as any other assigned writing. Make sure to look ahead to future weeks as well to get a sense of when low- and high-stakes writing for the rest of Unit 3 is due.

Reference List for This Week’s Resources