Goucher College Writing Assignment Bank

1.  Product Purchase Recommendation

2. What level of student is this assignment most appropriate for, and are there any essential skills typically taught at Goucher which the assignment requires the students already to have mastered adequately?

Second semester freshmen with basic library research skills and a command of logical argument, some skill in college-level evidence use, documentation, etc.

3. What writing skills and/or concepts are taught, developed or reinforced by this assignment?

    Internet-based research, source evaluation, topic analysis, use of combined sources in a persuasive argument, audience need and belief analysis.

4. Describe the assignment in a few paragraphs and/or provide a classroom handout.

See attached file.

5. What tips and suggestions can you offer about using this assignment? Especially, when in the semester will the assignment work best (if that matters) and how much time probably should be allotted to the assignment, in class and from the time you hand it out until the due date of the revised final drafts?

        It takes at least two weeks from start to finish, but you can spend some class time on related mini-lessons about the various sub-skills and concepts as needed. This also could be adapted to a discipline specific recommendation that could involve studying a particular range of products' construction (e.g., which one of several competing scholarly biographies to purchase for the library collection, which research instruments to purchase for the laboratory, which lesson-plan strategies to adopt for a third-grade class, etc.).  The main  skills this assignment teaches are the selection, analytical reading of, and comparison of source information.      I present this to the class in the form of a "grid" on which I lay out a simplified list of product's main features and the various brands' specific versions of those features. 

        In later assignments, this same "grid" graphic strategy also allows them to analyze the sources' patterns of agreement and disagreement, and can be translated into comparisons of scholars' opinions about complex issues.  The "products" in this case are the scholars, and the features are the scholars' assumptions, evidence, and conclusions.  For a sample of the "grid" applied to a critical controversy, click here.

        The initial "product" research appeals to students' consumer instincts, as well as their well-known, enthusiastic embrace of the Internet as the source of all research information.  The process is designed at first to frustrate them because of the low quality of popular sources they will find most easily, and then to lead them through source quality testing to detect patterns of bias, amateurish evaluation methods, and other faults that distinguish popular commercial sites from expert sites.  In following assignments, the question of what constitutes reliable, expert knowledge in the field can become the first thing the class discusses because they won't want to waste their time with biased, amateur sources.  This leads naturally to a conversation about scholarly methods, sharing and ownership of intellectual property, and the significance of scholars' accountability to each other by means of peer review processes and post-publication scholarly reviews.

6. What typical problems and predictable catastrophes might be encountered, and how might these be prevented?

        A few students who fail typically pick products outside the commercial mainstream, seeming to deliberately seek things about which "nobody can say which is best," perhaps as a rebellion against commercialism, consumerism, etc. Require a preliminary report on the available expert sources of opinion about the product (3 or more?) and require students to analyze the sources' credibility. Swiftly intervening at that stage, requiring students to choose another topic if they report "one or no credible sources," can help stop them from self-destructing.  This can teach a practical lesson about structuring research plans in the real world, allowing adequate time to acquire resources and steering clear of projects which never could be completed because the basic groundwork for research has not yet been done.

7. If you have one or two, please provide examples/models of successful student responses to the assignment. If possible, please get students' permission and provide a digital copy.

Sample responses are available from the author of this page at asanders@goucher.edu or in person.

8. Suggest a strategy and criteria for responding to rough drafts and for grading final drafts--what are you looking for in good to excellent work, and what mistakes do you typically encounter in the finished product?

        See the attached file for grading criteria. In rough draft responses, I generally try to focus students' attention on the analysis of the product's features, guiding them to a choice of "most important" features, and I ask them to discuss the sources' methods for arriving at recommendations with critical attention to the subtle ways in which "bad news" can be hidden or falsely delivered. Advertising and marketing inter-relationships frequently are an invisible source of potential corruption in commercial reviewers' representations of products. Some "reviews" are essentially product advertising, with payment being made to the writer by means of advertising revenue channeled through the intermediary magazine or web site. This might be a place where a marketing/economics assignment spins off in that discipline, but I use it to define the difference between free scholarly inquiry and unbiased reporting of results in scholarly sources, and the for-profit world of commercial information within which most students have grown up, ignorant of its most subtle effects on their decisions.

9. Provide copyright information from sources if any of the text is borrowed, or indicate whether you wish to retain the copyright, yourself.

Yes, I do wish to retain copyright.

10. Can you briefly suggest ways this assignment might be adapted for teachers in another academic discipline?

        Change the "product" to something routinely used in your discipline at a level students can understand. For instance, think about the practical decisions made every year when you spend your department budget. What instruments or other equipment do you choose to buy, and why not buy the competition's product? Which text books do you order and why? I could do something with that in my English 211 British literature survey where there are three competing publishers trying to capture an enormously lucrative and intellectually influential college survey text market (Norton, Oxford, Longmans). If your students use search engines for scholarly purposes, you can ask them to design tests of their quality and to critique the effects of commercial pressures upon the results they deliver.  Artists' materials, commercial theatrical supplies, websites maintained by news organizations, and other commodities relevant to our disciplines also can be compared and evaluated.  The assignment's essential element is its ability to bring students' curiosities into collision with the frustrating rarity of reliable information and analysis in the popular media, and to use those curiosities and frustrations to help them discover in their own minds a need for scholarly sources, methods, and theoretically grounded understandings.

11. Will you give your permission to allow this assignment to be posted to a web site?

Yes.

12. Please provide your name and title as you would wish it to appear in an acknowledgment.

Arnold Sanders