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Created: November 3, 2003
Latest Update: November 3 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Midterm Options, Fall 2003

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, November 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

Announcing Mid Terms

Wednesday, October 22, 2003:

Dear Friends and Students (including unintended field mice):

The mid-term is not designed to cut your tails off with a carving knife. Honest. I've been getting messages like Henry's: "Have you decided what day the mid term assignment will be due? I'm still having transportation problems and can't attend class this week. Henry." Some of you are trying to decide on a topic, and worrying about starting. No, no, no.

Share your choice of topics with us, either in class or by e-mail. Then share your ideas with the class. These mid-terms are meant to be community projects that turn into your mid-term only after we have all shared them. That's called the aesthetic process of answerability. As soon as you have an idea, bring it to share or e-mail me. Or share it with your friends. I'll try to keep up, and I'll help you with conceptual linking.

Especially if you're an undergraduate in the graduate seminar, be sure to seek this extra help. jeanne

* * * * *

Mid Terms are jeanne's way of consolidating each class and of locating the 50 or so field mice I now have running around not attending class and not in touch with me. If you are a field mouse, you might need the grade the mid term can generate. If you are not a field mouse, you may choose whether to accept a grade for the mid term. But these are class projects necessitated by the fact that so few of you do have books. I had to find a different process that would guarantee some substantive learning. So, yes, you have to do the mid term. No, you don't have to have a grade on it, unless you have no other grades. jeanne

• Monday, October 27, 2003. Web-Enhanced Learning: Web-Enhanced Learning One of you asked about how you might focus your midterm on education. That was such an tall and non-specific order, I put it aside for a while. As I came across an e-mail message today that led me back to Paul's Web-Enhanced Learning site, I thought again of your request. It seems to me that a good midterm page could be put together from comparing Paul's information with our Dear Habermas program. I believe that the various ways we find to together the experience of fractal patterns, as Steve Risken calls them, into an empty memory space, will have more to do with education and its quality half a century from now than almost anything else we do. jeanne

• Saturday, October 11, 2003. MidTerm Alternative Issues: Changing Cultures, Changing Lives Based on a commentary by Hao Tran from the Graduate Theory class. Dea;s with issues of diversity. Lecture and some discussion questions already up. If you want to choose this topic for Statistics, you'll need to talk to me and Hao Tran about how to get data. jeanne

• Saturday, October 11, 2003. MidTerm Alternative Issues: Breaking Normative Expectations Feels Uncomfortable Based on student drawing. This topic also might serve well for a midterm topic, but I will have to get up essay questions later. jeanne

• Saturday, October 11, 2003. MidTerm Alternative Issues: Answerability and the Nobel Prize Based onthe October 8, 2003, announcement of the Nobel prize for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Especially for the class on sociology of knowingness this is an excellent example of the extent to which we cannot "know," and the harm we do in the arrogance of believing that we do know. There is considerable and extensive information up here, and you may wish to use this as an alternative midterm topic. jeanne

  An additional note to the MRI issue: Measuring Social Pain with MRI What we think is not related to sociology today is related to sociology tomorrow. Let us be cautious about "what we know." Discussion questions included.

• Monday, October 6, 2003. Mid Term Material: Race and Answerability Based on Dwayne Sanders' commentary on the Rush Limbaugh affair on ESPN, this piece is detailed and covers quite a bit of our theory discussions. It will serve as a basis for a mid-term in a few weeks for the graduate theory class. jeanne

• Tuesday, October 7, 2003. Mid Term Material: Answerability and Differences Based on Dwayne Sanders commentary on prison term length and rehabilitation. This piece will serve as a basis for a mid-term in a few weeks for the Sociology of Knowingness class. jeanne

• Tuesday, October 7, 2003. Mid Term Material: Mid Term for Statistics Class will be a Report of the Survey on the California Recall, complete with an oral defense of that report before a community professional.

• Tuesday, October 7, 2003. Mid Term Material: Mid Term for Agencies class will be a class project demonstrating the class' collective ability to display leadership in helping ordinary folks find the help they need. The class will determine over the next week what form the aesthetic product will take. The product must take into account administrative law and leadership in a traditional environment.