Grading Rubric
I will grade your 20% projects in terms of three broad categories.
(1) Framing: It will be important to frame your project within concepts and genres of autobiography (RA will be a handy tool for your once again here). If you are making a cookbook, embodiment seems like an important concept. If you’re making a cookbook with someone else, the idea of collaborative autobiography seems key. For both, it will be important to discuss the autobiographical genre in which you are participating: cookbooks and autobiography–or gastrography. I expect you to articulate this framing during your presentation, and also to include it in you 20% project page online (more on that below).
Each project will reflect either on one’s own autobiographical self, or the autobiographical self of some other person, place or thing. Sometimes, your reflection on another person or thing or place’s autobiographical existence will also involve some part of your own autobiographical self (think genealogy, for example). The autobiographical status of your project should be clear in the way you frame it.
(2) Presentation, ~6 minutes (more details below): It will be important to present your topic successfully for your various audiences. In class, this means that you have a well-rehearsed, engaging presentation for the class that stays within the 6-minute time limit. Online, this means that you will have a clear, well-formatted and engaging synopsis of your project along with pictures (if it exists as a non-electronic entity), links (if it exists elsewhere on theweb) or simply the embedded project itself (a prezi, a video, etc.). You can use my computer to present your project in class or present using your own.
(3) Effort: This category includes both creative/intellectual effort and good old fashioned labor. In many cases, the amount of time and effort will be evident in the project itself. But I also still ask that you include an account of your project–what problems you ran into, what took more time than you expected, how you solved problems that arose, etc. This is your opportunity to explain your project explicitly for me–the one charged with the task of assigning the grades!
Online Presentation:
You should all by now have “tagged” your 20% projects using precisely that tag (“20% Project.” If you have not, please review how to do so by refreshing yourself on the blogging instructions or asking me after class. Each project–no matter how it exists in the world or online–will need to have a dedicated blog post bearing that tag. That post should make the same “framing” gestures that you offer in your presentation for the class.
As many of your projects have changed since their initial conception, you should over-write / re-write your original 20% post. Make sure the post has a proper title if there wasn’t one before (please don’t include the phrase “20% Project in the title”). Your post should appear in the past tense: not “For my 20% project I will, hope to, etc.–but In my 20% project I examined, studied, crafted, etc. By the time you present, it will be a done deal after all! If you consulted sources to research your autobiographical genre or anything else, you can include your MLA works cited list in this section as well.
Also, please be sure to include a record of your work at the very end. Simply call this section “Effort / Timeline / Sources.” If you’ve been updating your timeline, you can offer a version of that in this section, and also offer any additional explanation as you see fit. I’ll go back and delete this record after I issue your grades, but I need it to be there for grading.
You can all access your posts either through the “user” menu or by clicking on the 20% Project Tag in the Tag Cloud on the right-hand side of the course website.
