The day I assign a scantron exam is the day you can put me in a box.

Focusing on grades gets in the way of learning. Alas, the system we are in requires a letter grade at the end of a course.

You are in your final year. I want this class to be an opportunity for you to swing for the bleachers, to try things out that you might otherwise be inhibited from doing for fear of the impact on your grades if it went wrong (I have many thoughts on this matter, having written an entire book). You don’t have to be ‘techy’ to be part of this class.

You do have to be open about what has worked, what hasn’t, and be willing to explore why that is.

No fear. Swing for the bleachers. Try things out just to see. That is what I want for you.

I value process over product. This means, the process of learning (composed of experiences that sometimes work, experiences that sometimes don’t) is what I’m after, including the documentation of that process.

That said, I have to put some kind of assessment scheme together. The assessed parts of this course depend on the following elements (you will notice that the things that you produce in this class are all evidence of your learning process):

• scholarly presence (part 1) 40%
  • session leader
  • in-class free writing
  • active engagement with discussions
  • hands-on exercises
• project (part 2) 40%
  • design document (part 2 meeting 2)
  • paradata in progress (part 2 meeting 4)
  • showcase (part 2 end of term)
  • grimoire (assembling your various projects/free writing into a coherent whole)
• scholarly generosity (over full course) 20%

‘Process’ does not mean ‘not scholarly’

A focus on process does not mean that we become slack in other regards. I expect that you will bring your best game to class: your writing will be correct, scholarly, and appropriate to the task. It will demonstrate evidence of thoughtful reflection. Punctuation will be used appropriately (and for the love of god, commas are not periods). [^1]

Ok, I hear you say, so can I use some kind of AI tool for my writing?

This is a reasonable question, but in the context of what I want you to do here, it would be inappropriate to use such tools to create work meant to demonstrate your own thought processes. It would also demonstrate that you have largely missed the point of this class. Finally, text-generation is quite possibly the least interesting application of AI. Don’t you want superpowers?

On the other hand, I would encourage you to use an LLM to understand how a piece of code works, or to generate your own. You could install Simon Willison’s LLM package or Ollama on your own machine and use a locally hosted model to help you ‘rubber duck’ ideas. If you do do that, I expect you to fully document the prompts that you use, the resulting code, and that you comment the code thoroughly with your understanding/questions about what the code is doing.

Presence & Generosity

For ‘Scholarly Presence’ you and I will discuss this together to arrive at an appropriate grade. You will self-assess your contributions under ‘scholarly presence’ and indicate in a one-page note what you think is appropriate grade. Your note should open with one of these two lines:

• ‘My presence has made meaningful contributions to this class’ or
• ‘I have made meaningful contributions to this class but there are reasons why I haven’t made more’

‘Active engagement with discussions’ of course is predicated on being in class, but that doesn’t necessarily mean being loud or dominating a discussion. It can be quiet, smaller sub-group conversations. It can also be demonstrated through things like annotation and via your free-writing and the way you document your work in the hands-on exercises.

We will assess scholarly presence at the end of Term 1. I will take your self-assessment into consideration, and if I agree, then that will be your grade. When I have disagreed in the past with a self-assessment, nine times out of ten it has been because I have seen greater value in your contribution that you have. Sometimes I’ve had to have a frank talk.

For ‘Scholarly Generosity’, I will consult your peers on the ways you have been generous in your scholarly identity in our classroom, on a three point scale: ‘excellent’ | supportive’ | ‘developing’, with examples, and will use the median result to inform my view.

(For more on the concepts of ‘generous thinking’, see Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s introduction to her book of the same name).

Image is a detail from a photo by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu on Unsplash.

[^1]: Pet peeves:

• Do not use ‘said’ as a definite article (“said author claims”… just use ‘the’).
• Things are based on, not based off of. Think about it.