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Hi. I'm Sid Dobrin. In this video I'll be talking about the Essay assignment that provides
students with a series of topics from which to select and then evaluate.
I should start off by saying that I've tried to include a range of kinds of subjects for
students to evaluate. I've divided them into two groups: general subjects and local campus
subjects. Of course, you should feel free to add, delete, or modify any of these subjects
to fit your curricular or pedagogical needs—or even just your students' interests.
I designed this assignment to meet the needs of curricula that require traditional academic
essays. When I teach the assignment, I try to focus on talking about how students will
develop criteria for their evaluations that might be considered valuable within an academic
setting. That is, the twelve topics I provide are of less importance than how students develop
the critical criteria through which to conduct their evaluations.
I spend a lot of time encouraging students to begin their evaluations by asking lots
of questions about the topic and the situation in order to better understand the topic and
its position in the situation before developing the evaluative criteria. This, I find, helps
students focus their criteria development toward audience and situational needs. I also
emphasize that as they define their criteria based on audience and situational needs they
must provide clear definitions as to what they mean by their specific criteria.
As they work to define their criteria, I also encourage them to think about the kinds of
information they will need to gather in order to accurately and ethically evaluate their
topic based upon those criteria. That is, I use the assignment to also talk about the
range of kinds of research that they might conduct in an academic setting that could
provide information needed to accurately evaluate their topic, including both primary and secondary
research. As students begin to gather the information—or
even the tools they might need for further re- search—I ask them to begin to outline
the ethical considerations they will need to account for in conducting their evaluations.
I emphasize this point, and ask that students identify an ethical concern or consideration
for each criterion they identify as valuable for their evaluations.
Because the prompt asks students to write a traditional academic essay, I also review
the assessment rubric I use with this assignment. I've included that rubric with the instructor
materials for this chapter, so please feel free to adapt it to your classes as best serves
your pedagogical or programmatic needs. I walk students through the entire rubric, and
show them how I will use the criteria articulated in the rubric as my evaluative criteria for
assessing their evaluative essays. I talk about the criteria situational understanding;
purpose; thesis; rhetorical knowledge; critical thinking, reading, and writing; process; and
knowledge of conventions. Because I don't accept print documents for assignment submissions,
only electronic submissions, I also talk with them about the composing in electronic environments
component of the rubric. So, that's a little bit more about how I approach
the writing to evaluate Essay project. Thanks for using Writing Situations and thanks for
watching.