Pilot Projects, Spring 2003

 

Soc 202 - Sociological Analysis - Mary Bosworth

Soc 202 is required for all sociology majors, and enrollment is limited to majors. It is intended for new majors, to provide an in-depth introduction to sociological research methodology. Mary Bosworth (Sociology) worked with Kendall Hobbs and Suzy Taraba (Library) to provide instruction and practice in using professional literature and primary sources. To provide content for learning methods of sociological research, the course is centered on the theme of sociology of sport. The students work in groups to produce a brief review of the literature on an aspect of sociology of sport, and then to examine the Wesleyan archives for a variety of primary sources relevant to research on that aspect of sociology of sport. In the course of doing the literature review, students write up a brief "research log" outlining the resources they used and how they used them, to evaluate how well various resources and strategies work.  For a final project, students (working individually) write an extensive research proposal which includes a literature review to place the proposed research in the context of current work in the field. Four class periods are devoted to demonstrations and practice in the library, both in the general collection and Special Collections & Archives. 

 

Phil 331 - Being Good and Acting Well - Kelly Sorensen
Phil 340 - Socratic Paradoxes, Old and New - Mary-Hannah Jones

Since philosophy students need to learn philosophical analysis of primary texts before they can profitably venture into the professional literature, the department decided that upper level seminars were the appropriate classes in which to include discipline specific information literacy instruction. In Sorensen's class, much of the assigned reading for the class is from the current professional literature. For one assignment (involving both a class presentation and a paper), students will find and read a paper which cites one of the papers assigned in class, then analyze its critique of the assigned paper (e.g. does it present valid criticisms, how might the author respond); in addition, they will find a few related articles from the professional discussion and integrate them into their presentations and papers. In Jones's class, students' main reading is primary texts, but they will be using secondary literature to prepare for class discussions, and the final assignment is an extensive paper which analyzes and contributes to the professional discussion of an aspect of the class's theme as well as an analysis of the primary texts. Kendall Hobbs is scheduled to meet with each class as a group to introduce the resources and research methods relevant both for the specific assignments and for philosophy in general.

Sociology 293: Jobs, Unemployment & Social Welfare - Jonathan Cutler

Jonathan Cutler's students in Sociology 293 work together in groups of six to collaboratively develop websites that document and suggest connections among the people, events, and organizations that comprise any given country's political, social, and economic structure. In addition to the important lessons in applying sociological methods to questions of 21st century globalization, students in Cutler's class are simultaneously confronting the complexities of collaborative web authoring, using the web to do research, and in learning to de-code and contextualize financial publications.

In their provocative essay "Information Literacy as a Liberal Art: Enlightenment proposals for a new curriculum"  (Educomm Review, Volume 31, Number 2,  March/April 1996) Jeremy J. Shapiro and Shelley K. Hughes propose seven types of Information Literacy : tool literacy, resource literacy, social-structural literacy, research literacy, publishing literacy, emerging technology literacy, and critical literacy.

Cutler's class through this web exercise engage in activities that promote four of these literacies:

Publishing literacy (defined by Shapiro and Hughes as " the ability to format and publish research and ideas electronically, in textual and multimedia forms, to introduce them into the electronic public realm and the electronic community of scholars." )

Research literacy ("the ability to understand the form, format, location and access methods of information resources, especially daily expanding networked information resources")

Resource literacy ("students learn how to develop precise search language for research tasks accomplished using Wesleyan's online premium news databases"), 

Social-structural literacy ("students learn how financial press news coverage is socially situated to serve the needs of a particular constituency, even as it can be "decoded" in particular ways for uses far beyond the investing community"). 
 

Software Guru

The goal of the Software Guru project  is to promote what Hughes and Shapiro call research literacy, or the ability to understand and use the IT-based tools relevant to the work of today's researcher and scholar. This  includes discipline-related computer software for quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis and simulation, as well as an understanding of the conceptual and analytical limitations of such software.
More information about this project can be found at http://twiki.wesleyan.edu/cgi-bin/view/Projects/SoftwareGurus