Author: Brianne Waychoff

Tomorrow, Thursday, July 2 at 11:59 pm, Summer Session I and our class, end. Please complete all work before this time. I will be reading and grading all day on July 3rd and will post grades on July 4th.

What is left to do? (…and my suggested order for completion.)

1. Vocabulary Exam – Is available on blackboard – there is a link in the announcements that takes you directly to the exam and the exam is under “Course Information” with the following instructions.
   • You have 90 minutes to complete the exam. You can take it as many times as you like. Your last graded attempt will be the one that is recorded. You are encouraged to take the exam multiple times if you do not do well on the first attempt. Feel free to use notes and readings.
   • Questions are revealed one at a time. Each time you take the exam, the questions will appear in a randomized order. There are 92 points possible on this exam. Most of the questions are multiple-choice. There are a few true/false questions and there are three matching questions – two of the matching questions have 8 pairs, and one has four pairs. Each question is worth 2 points. For the matching questions, each pairing is worth 2 points.
   • If you have access issues, contact the helpdesk immediately and also let me know ASAP so I can try to help. You can take the exam as many times as you like, and your last attempt will be recorded for the final grade. You have 90 minutes for each attempt at the exam. You won’t be able to start it after the due date – so try it early.
2. Final Portfolio – If you need more information, this post explains what you should do. The only portfolio that has been started so far is Firdawce’s. When you go to our main page, you can see the portfolio tags on the lower right-hand side.                                              PLEASE NOTE – All posts in your final portfolio should be revised from the original post based on feedback. You should not merely add original drafts to the final portfolio. The drafts are just that – DRAFTS. You have all received feedback to improve the drafts for your final portfolio. Please make these edits. I will be looking for them when I grade. While you got full points for doing the draft, the same is not true of the version is your final portfolio. The grading criteria for each paper are found in the syllabus. The Gender Identity Project and the Institutional Artifact Project also include posts with these details. Please double-check you are meeting the requirements.
3. Discussion 8 – do this last if you haven’t done it yet. It is worth the smallest portion of your final grade and is a reflection on the course. The prompt is available here. I have enjoyed reading them so far and look forward to reading the rest. I may reach out to you with a few questions to help improve the function of both OpenLab at BMCC and the course in general.

Best of luck and please reach out if you have questions. I have truly enjoyed reading your work and interacting with you this semester. I look forward to reviewing your final portfolios and final discussion posts in the coming days.

This portfolio is a collection of your best writing from the semester that you have revised and brought together. It should showcase the critical framework you have developed during the semester for understanding the influential role of gender as it intersects with race, sexuality, class, physical ability, etc. Your final portfolio should be a total of 2500-3000 words. It must include: 

• Revised Gender Identity Paper of 750-1000 words (10% of the portfolio)  
• Revised Institutional Artifact Paper of 750-1000 words (10% of the portfolio)  
• Revised Informal Writing pulled from discussion post and reading journal between 500 and 1500 words depending on the length of the above revisions (15% of the portfolio)  

Because these will be revisions of previous posts, you do not need to change the categories. You can simply go back to your original post and edit, removing the word “draft.” If you prefer, you can create a new post instead of editing the original. If you do that, please select the category that best fits that writing – most likely the same category as the original post.

How do you share? For these posts only, you will create a tag using the convention “[FirstName] [LastName] Final Portfolio” and add it to ONLY the posts you want to be included in your final portfolio. You create a tag on the right-hand side of where you create your post, by simply typing it into the box and pushing “add.”

After you have created your tag, when you start writing the first few letters, it should automatically come up. You can also select it from”Choose from the most used tags.”

After you do this, your tag will show up on the course site and you can use that to see what you have included in your portfolio. Right now, the only tags are two I have made called “Video” and “Vocabulary,” but yours will appear soon.

How do you choose informal writing to include? You can look back through your discussions and reading journals. If there were any that you are particularly proud of, those would be good choices. Any posts that your classmates gave you lots of good feedback on might be another one to revise and include. It is up to you, but keep in mind you want to revise all these posts for proper grammar, punctuation, citations, technical writing, etc.

Some additional notes on posts for your portfolio:

• The only place your title should appear is as the title of the post – not in the body.
• Do not include your name, date, class, title, or any other information you would at the top of a printed paper in the body of your posts. They aren’t necessary because the digital nature of this course does that automatically and they do not count toward your word count.
• Continue to use other elements of MLA formatting when citing and quoting.
• Word Count does not include Works Cited.

DUE JULY 2 AT 11:59 PM

Thanks to those of you who have posted your Institutional Artifact Drafts. I will be reviewing them and getting you each feedback no later than Sunday. I have adjusted the schedule slightly, to give you more flexibility with the last week of class. I review some of those changes below.

Please note: ALL WORK IS DUE JULY 2 AT 11:59 PM.

I am required to submit grades by July 4, and won’t be accepting assignments after the July 2 deadline. If you can’t meet this deadline for some reason, contact me immediately via email to discuss options.

These are the tasks you have yet to complete this semester (assuming you are caught up):

1. Comment on SEVEN of your peer’s Institutional Artifact Drafts by Monday, June 29, at 11:59 pm. Choose those you wish to comment on – I am not determining it alphabetically this time, but this is roughly the same number you were asked to respond to for the Gender Identity Draft.
2. Post your response to Discussion 8 by July 2 at 11:59 pm.
3. Compile your Final Portfolio. Due by July 2 at 11:59 pm. There will be an additional announcement on this, but here are some notes based on a quick look at your drafts. Details are also in the syllabus.
   • Notes on final drafts. These are posts to a class website. Please do not add your name, date and class at the top. We do not need that because it is included in the post details automatically. It just eats up the word count. I will be editing it out of your posts if you include it and it will affect your final grade.
   • Continue to use other elements of MLA formatting when citing and quoting.
   • Works cited do not count toward your word count.
4. Take the vocabulary exam on blackboard. It will be available beginning Monday, June 29, through Thursday, July, 2. Details are in the syllabus and will be posted with the exam on blackboard. A list of terms to consider is posted here.

This post sums up what we are doing for the rest of the semester. At the start of the semester, I posted more frequently. In the middle, I let you all do most of the posting. Now, as we approach the end, I will be posting more again to keep you on track to finish.

You have an assignment due tomorrow, June 23 at 11:59 pm. Details were posted in a previous announcement. It will include your final journal entry as we will be done with the readings. Additionally, part of the assignment is Discussion 7, where you will discuss what you wish to write about for your Institutional Artifact Project. I will read your discussion posts and approve the artifact on Wednesday morning – so please post these on time. If you would like to post them early, I will try to get you feedback tomorrow.

Your Institutional Artifact Drafts are due June 25 at 11:59 pm. It is important you post the draft on time so that I can give you feedback in time for you to make revisions before including this in your final portfolio.

Once you have submitted your draft, you will be asked to respond to the drafts of your classmates and to write one final discussion post reflecting on the course. From June 26 through July 2 at 11:59 pm, your tasks are the following:

• Revise your Gender Identity Draft and Institutional Artifact Draft to include in your final portfolio (descriptions in the syllabus).
• Review your journal entries and discussion posts to identify your strongest informal writing. Revise it to include in your final portfolio(descriptions in the syllabus).
• Take the vocabulary test on blackboard. A list of terms was posted here.

I will provide more details about how to actually share your final portfolio and take the exam in a future post. Please check out the links included in this post as they contain valuable information. I will be in zoom office hours Tuesday, June 23 from 10 am to 12 pm. Feel free to come by or make an appointment for another time.

Finally, I have been posting grades to blackboard so you can begin to figure out where you stand. The work you have done to date is reflected in the grade center. If you have any questions, please let me know.

I have posted the discussion prompt for this week, but I want to give you some extra time. It is imperative that you do the discussion properly so that I can give you feedback for moving on with your Institutional Artifact Draft. I will create another post with some housekeeping details regarding the rest of the semester.

For TUESDAY, June 23 at 11:59 pm you should:

• Respond to discussion 6 posts
• Watch the video on Powerful Reading.
• Read Performing Gender and Intercultural Communication and watch the video below that explains gender performativity a bit more.
• Read Consent And Refusal Are Not The Only Talking Points. There is also a link to listen to it being read on the page. I encourage you to listen and read along.                                                                         
• Write Journal #6 over these readings. Some of you wrote an additional journal when there was not one assigned and your numbering got off a bit. Please be sure to write a journal about these readings regardless. If you already have a Journal #6 you can label this on Journal #7.
• Write Discussion 7. PLEASE FUTURE DATE THIS POST. This is an important post where you will tell me and your classmates what you will be writing your Institutional Artifact Draft about. Please read the instructions. Note that you MUST tell us what you are writing about – it can be text, a picture, a video, etc., but link us to it and explain it. If you haven’t already or need to refresh your memory, read about the bigger assignment so you know what you are working toward.