The Lede: Why They Can't Write: CEIT Book Club
CEIT (The Center for Excellence and Innovation in Teaching) is sponsoring a discussion in “book club” format of John Warner’s widely-noticed book Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2018, 288 p., ISBN 9781421427102 –and a copy is on rush-order at the Library). Warner responded to questions about his book in January Inside Higher Ed – “the five-paragraph essay is more avatar for the problem than the problem itself. . . [It] comes coupled with some very troubling things.” It can (or has) become so highly-prescriptive that the practice does not "actually help student learn to make better arguments of think in the ways we expects in college."
"Effective argumentation is about learning to make choices consistent with audience, purpose and message (the rhetorical situation). The way the five-paragraph essay is employed as prescriptive practice actually prevents students from practicing those far more vital and complicated skills."
The Library also holds Warner’s The Writer’s Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing (Penguin Books, 2019 -- PN145 .W374 2019) –a really useful book with practical ideas that could help you write even the most demanding peer-reviewed research article. He winds up with quoting Jeff O’Neal memorably dark but realistic quotation, “You are going to spend your whole life learning how to write, and then you are going to die.” O’Neal’s post on the bookriot blog, “9 Things I’ve Learned About Writing by Teaching Freshmen How To Write” gives another bracing tonic for the depressed instructor.
Initial conversations will take place on Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 1:30, Friday, Oct. 18 at 12 noon and Wed., Oct 23 at 3 p.m. in the CEIT, Martire E244. Due to the level of interest, you are requested to attend one of those, and please send an RSVP to ceit@sacredheart.edu
New Resource: Campus-Wide Subscription to The New York Times
The Library is pleased to announce campus-wide access to The New York Times. All students, staff, and faculty with a Sacred Heart University email address are eligible to sign up for a free Times digital account. Follow the link "Activate Now" to start your subscription. When you first activate your account, you will have to be on campus, or using Sacred Heart University VPN. After that you can read it anywhere, and you have full access through Times apps on devices.
The Times resources for instructors are particularly rich. The Learning Network provides access to resources by subject area, level of instruction, and modes of interaction (such as personal narrative essay, photography and photojournalism, and a weekly e-mail collection of lesson plans, prompts, and activities). Many of the resources are intended for secondary-level instruction but still serve as a useful prompt for college-level course planning. The Times provides an excellent introduction to the resources for bringing the world into your class instruction. Times resources include full access to its rich video collection, with some channels focused on a current topic (such as Hong Kong Protests) or regular blog video (such as Anatomy of a Scene). The Times also provides excellent resources for ESL and for all those learning English.
New Resource: PolicyMap
PolicyMap is an online U.S. national data and mapping tool and analytics platform with multidisciplinary applications for undergraduate and graduate students and faculty.
Go directly to PolicyMap or see the Library's research guide. This resource is browser-based; no software installation is necessary.
PolicyMap is used in undergraduate and graduate curriculums and research related to:
Users can leverage thousands of U.S. data indicators in PolicyMap to perform demographic and socioeconomic analysis, from a neighborhood census block group in many cases, up to a national level, as well as create custom regions, for their research and studies.
PolicyMap's new Curriculum Resources site contains case study videos showing how it is being used in classroom projects, as well as a repository, of actual data and mapping assignments, syllabi, papers, and projects that use or cite PolicyMap (sorted by disciplinary area). It also has sample assignments you can give to students, as well as webinars with professors discussing how they use PolicyMap in their classes.
You might be particularly interested in this quick video about an actual assignment and student project, in which students identify population health risks and develop data-driven responses and recommendations. It gives a great example of how PolicyMap can be used in the classroom:
Statista is a statistics portal that provides data on over 80,000 topics from more than 10,000 different sources including agriculture, advertising, health, hospitality, consumer goods, and much more. The content is geared towards business and marketing statistical needs, with a focus on current (not historical) statistics. Ready made tables are available for download as images to insert into presentations. You can search for a general topic or an exact statistic, and browse through statistics sorted by brands, regions, media, industries, and more. You can set your graph option (for different views), and download your results as .pdf, .png, or .xls files. You can also find citations in APA, MLA, and Chicago styles (the "Share" or "Settings" links), but those citations must always be proof-read carefully. Find Statista here.
This video gives a great introduction and explanation of Statista:
Statista Explainer - ENG from Statista GmbH on Vimeo.
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