401 handbook
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Intro
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Your Intructors
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Theme
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Critical Terms
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Student Advice
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Introduction Welcome to UNIV401! This is a class that you've been hearing about since you arrived at Greenville University––you probably thought and prayed that by the time you were a senior 401 would be gone! Well, you were wrong and 401 has finally caught up to you! 401 always gets a bad reputation. You've heard stories of presentations falling apart, huge writing assignments, frustrating group members, and so on–– I'm happy to report that, yes, it's all true. 401 is hard work with high stakes, but you've been prepared for the hard work by your department, your general education courses, and your mentors. No matter how difficult this may seem, we're all rooting for you to blow us out of the water with an incredible project.
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Your Instructors Dr. Matt Bernico Bio: Dr. Bernico is a faculty member in the Media Communication department. He studies the history of science and technology. Email: Matt.Bernico@greenville.edu
Dr. Larissa Malone Bio: Dr. Malone is a faculty member in the School of Education. She studies critical race studies and education Email: Larissa.Malone@greenville.edu
Dr. John Brittingham Bio: Dr. Brittingham is a faculty member in the philosophy department. He studies Phenomenology and Decolonial Theory. Email: John.Brittingham@greenville.edu
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Theme: Love Your Neighbor(hood) The Great Commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself, is one of those verses that can be used in any number of convenient situations. Does your neighbor keep stealing your lawn gnome? Love your neighbor as yourself. Does your roommate keep using your toothpaste? Love your neighbor as yourself. Do your neighbors suffer from infrastructural issues (lead in water, expensive housing, architectures of segregation, redlining, gentrification, the suburbanization of poverty)? Love your neighbor(hood) as yourself. Intellectually, Christianity has historically thought about what it means to love individuals, but the prevalence of urban design, political policies, and environmental catastrophes forces us to ask how we love our neighbors in light of systemic violence and issues of mass injustice. This UNIV401 topic asks students to think about Christian love along the lines of communities, geography, and infrastructure. The successful project should answer the question: what kind of contribution can Christians make into these situations?
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A Taco Driven Guide to Form and Content Picture yourself at Taco Bell, standing in front of a giant board full of different formal options of food. You can get a Burrito, a Taco, a Crunchwrap, a Burrito Bowl, A Chalupa, etc. As far as their content goes, these items are all pretty similar: tortilla, beans, cheese, meat, but in their execution their form makes a huge difference. A Crunchwrap, while containing all of the necessary components of a Burrito, is significantly different and irreducible to saying it’s just a Burrito (this is a hill I will die on). Form and content are interconnected in a significant way. You wouldn’t say that a Crunchwrap is a Burrito, you also wouldn’t say that a research paper is the same as making a podcast or video. They contain many of the same components (writing, grammar, syntax, research etc.) but are significantly different and deliver their contents in dramatically different ways. In past semesters, UNIV401, like most of your classes have relied heavily on the research paper as a form of scholarly production. In producing knowledge through scholarly methods, we engage with form and content in very specific ways. For example, a research paper,
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formally, is somewhere between 5-20 pages, 12 pt font, Times New Roman font, written in the present voice, has a thesis statement, presents an argument in a linear fashion, etc. This form is just what’s expected in academia. But, what if it wasn’t? What if we wanted to do the knowledge production through scholarly methods in a different format? For this class, your capstone project, you’re invited to explore the topic laid out above through any formal means you and your group think necessary or interesting. This means that:
1. You choose your own topic Think through the topic above, do some research, consider it broadly and choose any topic or research question that is related to it. Think big, be adventurous, be bold! The course instructors are here to help you figure out how to do your topic or answer your question.
Think Big!
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2. You can present your research anyway you want. Graduation from a BA or BS program actually means something about your skill and knowledge of a field. You’ve come a long way since you have graduated high school and you have achieved specialization in a specific field. Use what you know as an expert in your field along with your creativity and commitment to Christianity (or living an ethical life of character and service). This assignment lets you express all of this in anyway you and your group thinks is best. Do you want to just write a paper? Great. Do you want to do a gallery show? Make a video game, create a magazine? Also, great. The “do it anyway you want” approach means that this project is solely belongs to you and your group. Use the medium of your choice deliberately to produce something interesting, creative, and critical.
3. Be evaluated on how compelling and effective you are.
This all might sound too good to be true, so let me bring it back down to earth. While you can do anything you want, there are a few caveats. 1.) it has to be approved by the instructors of the course. 2.) You may have to recruit another faculty member to evaluate the
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It’s Interesting, Complete, and Truthfulthe project. Your course instructors are incredibly intelligent, but probably aren’t the best at evaluating a project that is largely related to science, mathematics or business. Besides these caveats, your project will be graded on the following attributes: It’s Interesting, Complete, and Truthful -it is as interesting as its topic and approach allows -it is as complete as its topic and approach allows (it doesn’t leave the audience thinking that important points are being skipped over or ignored) -it is truthful (any questions, evidence, conclusions, or arguments you raise are honestly and accurately presented) It Looks Good In terms of presentation, an the project is effective when it shows some combination of these attributes: -it is readable/watchable/listenable (i.e. the production values are appropriately high and the audience is not distracted by avoidable lapses in presentation) -it is appropriate (i.e. it uses a format and medium that suits its topic and approach) -it is attractive (i.e. it is presented in a way that leads the audience to trust the author and his or her arguments, examples, and conclusions).
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Examples As stated above, you're welcome to do whatever you'd like! However, here are some examples of possible formats your project might take: Research paper. Film (animation, documentary, narrative, video essay). Video game. Podcast/radio production. Photo essay. Gallery show. (Painting, sculpture, drawing, etc.) Performance. Investigative journalism. Zine (creative writing) Do a scientific experiment. Do a social scientific experiment. Get wild and do a combination of these things. You can do anything! Just make it interesting, complete, and True!
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Critical Terms One of the big difficulties this class faces are the vague academic-ish words that get thrown around. Really important terms ought to be defined and not left up to misunderstandings or confusions. What follows is kind of a critical dictionary of terms for your work in this course. All of those buzz words you hear thrown around in class or on the syllabus should be defined below. If you find one that’s missing, let your instructors know. Discipline When you were young, your parents would discipline you by sending you to your room. When you were in elementary school, your teachers would discipline you by giving you detention. If you were to exceed the speed limit on the interstate, a police officer might discipline you by pulling your over and issuing a ticket. Normally, we submit to these forms of disciplines because we learn that these individuals have the right to exercise power over our behavior and life in general. Obviously, some of these forms of discipline are actually incredibly problematic, but that’s a conversation for a different time. Generally speaking, however, we might agree that learning a behavior through repetition over a period of time is the meaning of discipline.
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When you ask a fellow student, “what’s your major” you’re inquiring about their discipline. In what area have you been trained to think in? A student who has been trained by the History faculty at GU are trained to ask different questions with different considerations in mind, than, a Business major, for example. Universities, are, for better or worse, arranged by discipline in order to train students a uniform set of methodologies for engaging with the world. A discipline is about how one studies, but does not always inform what one studies. For example, a digital media student studies the art and technique of photography, but in doing so they may also investigate what it is they photograph through documentary of photojournalism. Or, in another example, an Education student may be engaged in student teaching and working toward a future teaching high school students, but is also actively engaged in researching the effects of prisons on PoC in the greater St. Louis area. The point is that our disciplines are the techniques that we, as scholars, use to think about the world, not necessarily what we explicitly study. Interdisciplinary This may be the first time anyone at Greenville University has ever asked you to do a project that is “interdisciplinary.” If this is the case, this is an institutional problem: it’s not exactly fair to
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just expect you to know how to do this type of work if you’ve never seen it modeled or explained. Though it may be too late, some of the guided research in this course will attempt to fill in the blanks with regards to “interdisciplinary work.” If a discipline is the specific ways you’ve been trained to think about the problems in the world, then interdisciplinary research is making connections between your particular discipline and other disciplines. Interdisciplinary research is finding creative ways to cross the boundaries of your discipline into other ways of thinking. You will quickly find that some connections are easier to make than others. For example, making an interdisciplinary connection between Communication and Philosophy doesn’t take much effort. Both disciplines have the tendency to study similar topics and types of human interaction. Though, bridging between Digital Media and Biology might be a bit of a more difficult connection to make. Though, they might be difficult, you can find common ground and affinities between these two undertakings through practical projects. When we say “interdisciplinary research” we’re talking about what two or more disciplines might share in common and the ways they’re completely different, but can still inform one another.
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To get at these qualities a bit deeper, we can break up interdisciplinary research into four types.
1.Cognitive Connections - Adapting and using ideas and approaches from different fields or disciplines. 2.Collegial Connections Collaborating in teams or networks that span different fields or disciplines. 3.Cross-Field Connections Topics that sit at the intersection or edges of multiple fields or disciplines. 4.Community Connections Problems that engage multiple stakeholders and missions outside of the University
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Collaboration Even whispering the word “group work” in a classroom full of senior students will elicit one strong response:
WH IF AT M YG M AN D D EMBE ROU P ON ’T D RS SU CK OA NY WO RK ?
This isn’t exactly an unfounded fear, what if your group members don’t do any work? That would be a total bummer. You can’t control everyone in your group (and if you do, you’ll have a really bad time), however you can control yourself and you can control the vibe in your group. Collaboration means working together, riffing off of one another, and being friendly. You can do your best to foster this type of group work environment. All of these things are easier said than done.
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In truth, group work requires a personal openness to the ideas of others and the flexibility to pivot when ideas change. All of this sounds nice enough, but what if your group members really do suck? What if they don’t do the work? What should you do? First, ask yourself “Am I being too critical?” Are you expecting too much of your group members? If the answer to that question is “no” then consider having a friendly conversation with your group member.
Faith-Learning Integration Greenville is a Christian school. We all know that, but what does that actually mean in practice? How does our Christian worldview, one formed out of the Free Methodist church, change the way we do things? Christianity is one of those really weird things that isn't just simply one thing--there are many formulations of Christianity. In case you weren't paying attention in any of your religion classes the religious flavor of GU is Methodism! Methodism is a Christian religious movement started by John Wesley. So, when we talk about "Wesleyanism" we're talking about how people have interpreted the work of John Wesley through history.
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Wesley was more concerned with method and experience than with a set of propositions one either affirms or doesn’t affirm. As a result, a Wesleyan approach to learning is not about finding ways to integrate a systematic belief system into a pre-existing disciplinary framework. Rather, a Wesleyan approach to faith and learning integration is better described as faithful learning. Faithful learning is ecological, not in the sense of ferns or buying a Prius, but in the sense of thinking about whole systems and environments in terms of their interrelation. Faithful learning begins, then, with an ecological assumption of a relational whole consisting of a transcendent Triune God, created human beings, and a created and evolving natural, cultural, and social world...Because of this complex ecology, the process of learning includes head and heart, intellect and piety, thought and practice. (Joining the Mission, pg. 122) Faithful learning is inherently interdisciplinary and extra-curricular. Thus, service-learning, travel, civic engagement, residence life, and student leadership all contribute to one’s unfolding understanding of God’s story and one’s part in it. ”John Wesley held that for most believers, theological convictions take the form of an implicit worldview framing the practice of their lives rather than a fully developed philosophical system...Real theological
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activity for Wesley was not systematic theologies or apologetics; instead it took place in carefully crafted liturgies, hymns, sermons, prayer books, spiritual biographies, autobiographies, devotional practices, and spiritual exercises and disciplines. Head and heart, knowledge and piety were both crucial aspects of growing as a Christian.” (pg. 128) Faithful learning thus involves: -Recognition of Christianity’s main tenets and how they are expressed in a variety of traditions and denominations. -Identifying and explaining the intersection of Christian practice and one’s own discipline. -Acknowledges the ecology of faithful practices which is interdisciplinary, extra-curricular, and involves the social, cultural, political, religious, and material aspects of one’s life. -Looks at the ways faith and spirituality is evident
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throughout one’s life and in the world. Such engagement is demonstrated in one’s projects with sufficient evidence. -Not just the Wesleyan Quadrilateral or a few bible verses but demonstrably critical engagement with the intersection of faithful practices, beliefs, and disciplinary practices.
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Student Advice I’d tell future 401-ers to figure out their topic early. That way they have plenty of time to ask questions and narrow down their topic. Getting clarification and feedback early on from our advisor and peers definitely kept us from going off on something that was either too broad or irrelevant to the topic. Selecting a topic early also gave us more time to research and write, which then gave us more time to add a creative component to the project. - Maci Sepp, 2018 pick your group wisely. Friends don't always make the best partners, but they can also make the greatest partners. Know yourself, your work ethic, know your friends, and their work ethic. I'd also say, it's a class where you are more independent than you've probably ever been, so the first few weeks you'll feel like you aren't doing enough or doing anything.
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When you think there's nothing to be done you can always be researching or compiling. It'll save you in the end. I also suggest using owl Purdue or the library to check your paper. If someone offers to read your paper, let them. It's okay if you need help formatting it. If you've got the research and the analysis there are outlets to help you craft it. But you have to do the work before that. - Gina Sanders, 2019
Listen to the Experts!