a discussion of karam planning and prototyping
transcript of audio
00:00 In the second segment of Karam’s case study, I will continue to discuss his work in the DFA to FYC course, using the scaffolded Design Process, to move through Projects 3 and 4 of the course sequence.
00:11 I will examine Karam’s first Project Builder for Project 3 in the context of Design Step 3- to Plan, and the project’s final draft to show Design Step 4- to Prototype.
00:21 The project builder and prototype artifacts will illustrate how Karam demonstrated specific learning outcomes of the course, as well as how he described using a DFA to FYC.
00:31 Let’s zoom into Karam’s Project Builder 1. Karam has written a draft of his third project, an argumentative essay. The first paragraph of the essay, shown here, closely follows points in his bulleted list from the second Design Journal, which I analyzed in the first case study segment.
00:50 So let’s take a look back at what he had written in the second design journal. He begins the essay with imagine a scenario of an intoxicated driver who manages to make their way to the ER having been injured in an automotive accident.
01:16 He narrates a detailed story of the driver and how he eluded the police and being arrested. However, once the driver stopped medical attention, it was obvious that he was intoxicated.
01:27 “The physician is now faced with a dilemma,” to decide if they were to report the patient to authorities.
01:33 He includes brief discussion of patient confidentiality and defines the term right to privacy. Karam ends the opening paragraph by stating his position that a physician should in fact report the patient as it is within the scope of their moral and legal obligation.
01:49 And in being so, inevitably positions them to reasonably break the physician-patient confidentiality. So, Karam has used his notes from the Defining step to further the text of the first paragraph in the argumentative essay Prototype.
02:03 In the third step planning, he is filling in the paragraph with necessary details and explanations that provide the clearer picture of the issue and justification for his position.
02:13 I think at this point it is important to determine the advantage of using a Design Focused Approach which utilize the steps Ideating to Planning, then Planning to Prototyping instead of a traditional method moving the student from pre-writing to writing using the tool of an outline.
02:30 Often the outline will follow a predictable formula. In the introduction: a hook, some background, and three- prong claim. Then the body paragraph should each present one of the three reasons articulated in the three-prong claim, and 2-3 supporting points of evidence.
02:46 Next, there should be a counter argument and its refutation. And to conclude with the paragraph by restating the claim in its implications.
02:53 Karam, as well as the rest of the class, were not provided with an outline or any other template to format their projects.
03:01 They were two reasons for this. 1. to support student agency in making all rhetorical decisions about the Project and 2. to support student flexibility in using multimodal methods to design their Projects.
03:14 I did not want students to rely on the template to tell them how to write the project and inherently nudge them toward writing an essay where they would be guided by the outline with what to include and in what order.
03:25 There is a lot less thinking happening for students when they use the outline is a fill in the blank document.
03:30 Despite the outline demanding that the student locate the research and information to include, it does not ask that the student read the research like a writer.
03:38 It also does not ask that the student build their case according to their own feeling, experience and knowledge or instinct.
03:45 Worse yet, they will not determine the most effective means to argue the point in a given space.
03:50 They might write an essay for a rhetorical context where it does not make sense. During the argumentation unit, Karam’s class engaged in a live in-class debate over the course of a few weeks.
04:00 Students were placed into two teams and they learned the art of debate. Opening statements, facts, rebuttals, crossfire, closing statements as well as quick and responsive
04:10 research methods to help fact-check as well as perform rhetorical listening. It was a thorough and engaging unit that ran concurrent with students writing their argumentative projects.
04:20 So instead of interrogating the genre of the argumentative essay, students practiced the skill of debate. They could perform various skills in class, then return home to think about- how the same moves might be made in the form of their own projects, whether they were essays, podcasts, or public presentations.
04:37 This approach to teaching argumentation centered on the argument, enforced students to determine what was effective reasoning and evidence as opposed to weak, how and when it feels necessary to employ rhetorical appeals, and how to insert themselves into the conversation. The students were not caught up in organizing their paragraphs, proper
04:55 sentence structure or including enough quotes. Instead, they were actively engaged with asserting the knowledge they had built up on the subject and finding ways to communicate it to those that disagreed.
05:06 The students constantly thought about how to respond to the other side. side. 8 not to win per se, but rather to acquire the skill of being in a conversation, listening and responding respectfully.
05:17 This is an important aspect to include to situate Karam’s work on his third Project. He was working through the in-class debate and qualifying the moves that worked best.
05:27 Those might be the ones to think about employing in his own Project. How might he design an effective delivery?
05:33 The comparison between Karam’s Journal entries 2 & 3, with the first Project Builder, the Prototype of the essay, illustrates how Karam had complete agency over his project.
05:44 Karam was responsible for determining a sequential list of what to do in the essay. He was not given an outline or any other organizational template to use.
05:53 In “Teaching Writing as a Process Not Product,” scholar Donald Murray presents a list of implications of the writing process. He asserts, “the students are individuals who must explore the writing process in their way.”
06:06 Although some of the features of Karam’s Ideating list is reminiscent of traditional outline formats, there are also some other inclusions like where to employ rhetorical appeals, logic right away in the intro, and concluding with emotion, a way of impacting the audience or really leaving Karam’s
06:22 audience with something to think on- to tug on their feelings. As Karam shifts from Ideas to Plans, from Design Journal 2 and 3, to Project Builder 1, he is finding his way through building an argument.
06:35 Karam takes a logical approach to the subject matter by providing background information, setting up an example, and defining terms, which shows that he’s practicing the lessons from the debate unit.
06:46 In the draft or Project Builder 1, he has done these things, especially in light- of his intended audience. And yet another of his journal entries, Karam summarizes his project.
06:57 He explains, “the purpose of this essay is to inform readers, potentially the state medical board, why it is inherently better to treat and report patients, as opposed to letting transgressors go unpunished.
07:09 An essay format works best to highlight the intricacies of this product topic, such as the implications of the federal law, state law, and moral compass.”
07:19 Karam has determined that his argumentative essay would be suitable for publication within the discourse community, a professional organization or academic journal for medical practitioners.
07:29 His discussion of the issue may prompt a change to the current practice in the state, so he views his work as important and meaningful.
07:36 His position may impact the way physicians practice, especially in light of amendments to current laws and regulations. During one of my interviews with Karam, he named Project 3 as the most meaningful to him.
07:47 He explains, “there was a sense of enjoyment and fulfillment from it.” It obviously had him thinking about the issues and problems of practicing medicine, and he was learning a great deal in terms of preparing for them.
07:59 The full-scale essay can be seen with Design Step four to Prototype. Karam submitted a thorough iteration of the essay.
08:14 He included all elements he felt necessary to present a convincing case. He expanded the initial Ideating points, presenting the information logically, a counter argument, and refuting the counter argument.
08:26 Again, his notes of thrust the expectations of the genre, but he did not adhere to a completely predictable pattern, to specify three main points and with each of the three main points presenting respective evidence.
08:39 This is where Karam took ownership of how he would design the argument of the essay. A closer look at the paragraphs of the essay show that he built it.
08:52 He has identified three reasons for his position: moral, ethical, and legal. He begins by following his plan with the lengthy scenario, which intentionally couches the issue in an everyday situation to make it more appealing and accessible for his readers.
09:08 Karam then moves into his first body paragraph, where he proceeds to interrogate the legal aspects in favor of mandating the physician’s reporting patients that are intoxicated when involved in the automotive accident.
09:22 He includes a vast array of state laws for drivers as well as protections for physicians. Refraining from an assessment of the quality of the writing, I am instead providing an evaluation of how Karam used the DFA to write.
09:35 Based on the quantity effects and figures as well as the density of information that he includes, he followed through with his initial plan to include the “intricacies of this topic.”
09:46 Karam included everything. I suspect to be sure that he could provide a lot of information for his reader to convince them that precedent for physician reporting has been set elsewhere throughout the country and in many legal aspects to do the kind of work he ultimately seeks.
10:01 For instance, Karam not only includes a few figures about drunk driving fatalities, but also feels compelled to talk through the reasons for the drunk driving.
10:08 In fact, if a physician were to report a drunk driver, then they might also be positioning the patient for support and seeking help or recovery.
10:22 Karam evidences rhetorical responsibility in that he is composing arguments that actively participate in critical conversation. Although Karam performs logos, I get a sense for the emotional way alcohol addiction and recovery curious for many potential readers.
10:40 Therefore, making his position persuasive and effective. He is showing rhetorical flexibility by adapting conventions in linguistic choices. Despite Karam identifying that he envisioned the essay being published as a professional or academic piece in the field of medicine, his rhetorical choices also
11:02 show that he is mindful of the unintended audiences. Readers that do not practice medicine but are no less interested in the issue.
11:10 In his 3rd body paragraph, Karam picks back up again with appeal to pathos. He discusses the moral ramifications of a physician reporting and the personal factors and biases that push them into one direction versus the other.
11:25 Karam reasons that physicians are human too and sometimes have difficulties separating their personal opinions and biases from their practice. Instituting universal mandates for a physician to report eliminates this potential problem.
11:39 Furthermore, it helps to minimize the challenge of having to decide what or who has more value: the patient with whom they have a relationship and obligation to protect or an innocent civilian that may be put in harm’s way as a result of their patient’s drunkenness.
11:53 How do they choose? How is that ethical? Moral? Karam has successfully demonstrated the learning outcomes of the DFA to FYC in the Planning and Prototyping steps, especially regarding rhetorical agency.
12:07 He has made clear decisions about how to progress. He expanded on his ideas from the first two Design Steps and was able to develop them into complete thoughts.
12:16 Then he began to make rhetorical decisions about language choice in the employment of rhetorical appeals. I like to use the revision of his first sentence in the introductory paragraph to illustrate a more specific outcome of rhetorical agency.
12:29 Whereby Karam evaluated his own linguistic and rhetorical choices to strengthen his writing. In the third step, the draft of the essay, his first sentence reads, imagine a situation where a 25-year-old
12:45 young man is dropped off by a friend to the emergency department 30 minutes after a motor vehicle crash.
12:53 As I discussed earlier in this segment, it is clear that he is couching the issue to a familiar scenario. However, in the next design step, he revises it to say, “physicians often care for patients who were responsible for or are the victim of a drunk driving accident.”
13:18 What this shows is Karam’s awareness for getting his reader interested. In the first iteration of the first sentence, he is a bit general, and the reader may not know what Karam will argue in the essay.
13:28 Whereas in the first sentence of the Prototype, Karam is much more explicit about the issue that he will argue. He includes a series of keywords such as physicians, patients, and responsibility.
13:39 Furthermore, Karam includes the term victim, which is a clear change to connote the negligence of the drunken patient and the legal responsibility of the treating physician to do the right thing in protecting innocent civilians.
13:52 Here and in several other excerpts, mentioned from the artifacts of Karam’s Design Steps, more specifically the first Project Builder in the final draft of the project.
14:02 He was able to demonstrate learning outcomes specific to rhetorical agency, flexibility, and responsibility.