In week 7, you will submit a portfolio of 5 blog posts, of at least 400 words each. All 5 of these posts should document the preparation you have done for that week’s classes. As they are preparation exercises, they must be uploaded before the first class of the week for which they are preparing (i.e. before the 11am Tuesday lecture). In week 7, you will choose your favourite five posts to submit as part of your assessable portfolio. The topics for the blogs are listed in the week-by-week class guide.

The blog posts are meant to be informal, thoughtful and exploratory, and demonstrate a genuine engagement with the topics and texts covered in the course. So feel free to use the first person ‘I’. As you proceed, you may also add links to interesting and relevant material, and connect points across different weeks. 

In addition to contributing at least 5 blog posts, you are also required to use iLearn to regularly engage with the course in other ways, by, for example:

• posting responses to classes, readings or relevant events in the world,
• offering feedback on the posts of other candidates,
• asking non-bureaucratic questions of the course staff or of other candidates.

There are three parts to this assignment.

Step 1

Imagine you need to explain your research project/idea to a panel of non-experts, and to convince them of your project’s significance. This panel will consist of:

1. an academic from another faculty (e.g. if you are in biology imagine an ancient historian on your panel),
2. an interested member of the public,
3. a representative from a potential funding body (who is not an academic)
4. a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald

Give a summary of your project/idea in language that is accessible to this diverse audience. Explain the research problem or question you are interested in, and say why it matters to you. Aim for about 1000 words.

Step 2

Organise yourself into a pair (or a group of 3) with another student/s. You will have time to do this in Week 10’s tutorial.

In choosing your partner/group, bear in mind that while there are advantages to working with someone from your discipline or who knows your topic area well, there are also advantages in having input from someone outside your field. You may well be surprised by how useful it is to have a reader who isn’t from your discipline.

Once you have partnered or teamed up, you need to swap a current version of your draft (activity in Step 1) with each other. You will give feedback to your partner or group member on their piece of writing. You will also receive feedback from your partner or group member on your piece of writing. Remember, this is only a draft at this stage; the writing does not need to be polished.

Step 3

Based on the feedback you’ve received, and on your own critical distance from your initial draft, identify a potential problem, issue or dilemma that you expect to face in communicating your research. This may be an actual problem that you are facing right now, or it may be an issue to ponder over a longer time frame. Your issue/problem could be:

• Topic related – working with complex subject matter.
• Approach related – a question of framing and how much detail to include.
• Writing, style, tone – detecting the difference between jargon and everyday language.
• Level of engagement – balancing being engaging and being faithful to the evidence.
• Audience – checking assumptions of what an average layperson may know.
• Real-world application – a question of social impact.
• Ethical – e.g. identifying the different ways in which people can participate in the study.

Write a short critical reflection on your problem or dilemma. Explain how and why it might make it difficult to convey the significance of your project/idea. This should be reasonably elaborate. Don’t just state what the dilemma is. You need to flesh out why it is a dilemma, what some of your options are, why you feel stuck on it, the implications of different ways of resolving it, and so on. Use specific examples to help explain this problem.

It doesn’t matter (in terms of your mark) how successfully the problem is resolved. What matters is the quality of your analysis: why, for example, do you find it difficult to write in your own voice, or to imagine writing as having a good conversation? What assumptions about academic writing or the scholarly persona underpin this obstacle? Why is it hard to put yourself in the shoes of your reader/audience? What does perspective-taking tell you about how to frame ideas?  It may be helpful to make use of the readings discussed in the course to develop your reflections.

Here are some of the learning outcomes we will be looking for in the assignment:

• Skilful and engaged writing that adapts research interests for a non-expert or non-specialist audience.
• Depth of thought, in drawing out the assumptions beneath anticipated research and/or writing problems,
• Evidence of close engagement with course themes, pre-class readings and activities.

This assignment is designed to improve your skills in engaged reading and writing, critical thinking, and ‘metalearning’ – that is, to increase your understanding and attention to your own learning styles, strengths and weaknesses.