For your final project this semester, you will write an autoethnographic essay about your experience in our ENGL 201W class that considers how your relationship with collaborative writing has evolved over the course of the semester. This assignment asks you to integrate your own narrative with two of our assigned sources to better understand your personal relationship to collaborative writing within the context of our classroom community. The new skill you will develop as researchers is the gathering and coding of narrative data.

Narrative data is any written text that you will systematically gather and analyze. For our purposes, the narrative data available to you is the work your peers have written on their WordPress sites. You are required to select three blog posts from different students in this class to analyze using grounded theory coding. According to Charmaz (2014), “grounded theory coding is the process of defining what data are about [by] categorizing segments of data with a short name that simultaneously summarizes and accounts for each piece of data” (p. 111). Once you’ve selected, named, and sorted your data, you will be able to identify how the themes you’ve found in students’ narrative data intersects with your own reflections on collaboration this semester.

Autoethnography is a research method that focuses on the self, on the author’s personal narrative, within a particular cultural context. Autoethnography uses personal evidence, narrative data, and published research. This means that your final autoethnographic essay will make three interpretive moves:

• offer your personal narrative about your relationship with collaborative writing,
• engage your personal narrative with what you learn from doing grounded theory coding of your peers’ narrative data, and
• use at least 2 assigned sources from our class this semester to support your research and/or personal narrative.

In other words, you will bring multiple texts together to make meaning about collaboration and collaborative writing in ENGL 201W this semester.

I WILL USE THIS RUBRIC TO ASSESS YOUR FINAL AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC ESSAY.

Stage One: Practice Coding together

TUES 4/9: We’ll practice coding narrative research together in class. For homework, you will read chapter 5 from Charmaz’ Constructing Grounded Theory, and I will ask for a volunteer whose work we can code together next time.

TH 4/11: Review Charmaz in-class and collaboratively code an excerpt of student writing together. Your homework is to select 3 blog posts from 3 different students in class. Place the excerpts you’ve chosen into tables (like I did for today) and code your data. Bring those completed tables to class on 4/16. Read the selection on autoethnography (posted to Bb).

Stage Two: Moving from Coding to Your Autoethnography

TUES 4/16: You will begin mapping your experience with collaborative learning this semester alongside your findings from your grounded theory coding. How do your findings intersect with your own experiences collaborating? How is your data illuminating your experiences as a learner and writer?

TH 4/18: CLASS CANCELED

SPRING BREAK

Stage Three: Composing the Final Draft

TH 5/2: Review Rainey’s and Smith’s autoethnographies (on Bb). Your homework is to begin writing your autoethnography of collaborative writing in this class while integrating the data you coded. Come to next class with a draft ready for workshopping and peer review.

TUES 5/7: IN-CLASS WRITING WORKSHOP

TH 5/9: IN-CLASS PEER REVIEW & “About” Page drafting

TUES 5/14: LAST DAY OF CLASS! ABOUT PAGE DUE! Review any final questions before your final autoethnography is due.

TH 5/16: FINAL AUTOETHNOGRAPHY DUE

Requirements of the Final Essay

You will write this essay as a single author and post your final to your WordPress site as a new page. Your autoethnographic essay will blend your personal narrative with data you gathered from coding your peers’ narrative data; you will also be required to use at least two assigned sources from our class this semester.

I WILL USE THIS RUBRIC TO ASSESS YOUR FINAL AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC ESSAY.