Day 14

English 102 Winter 2011 Day 14

1. Bonus Points this week—Library, Diversity Series?

2. Complete Thesis statement review

3. Homework for Monday: Rough Draft. 4-6 pages (works cited not required yet). Bring 4 copies to work with your peers. I will grade it 0-20 based on COMPLETION of FOUR PAGES. Less than four (or fake margins, huge font, massive spacing etc) will earn less than 20 points. I am NOT critiquing the essays. I will give my feedback on the essays you turn in next Friday, along with a grade for the paper. You will have a chance at the end of the quarter to revise one of your first two essays and make use of my comments.

4. Counter Argument slides.

5. Argument essay format/outline example.

I. The Student Completion Initiative will help more students learn how to learn, navigate the internet, and achieve higher education degrees. I also believe that it will force us to solve the infrastructure gap. However, there’s good reason to worry about how it will impact our funding gap, the ambition gap, the numbers gap and the gap at the bottom. So, while the initiative solves some problems we face in the globalized world, it creates larger ones and should be revised or scrapped.

II. The Student Completion Initiative defined—especially the open course library and the math section.

III. Why it’s important to learn how to learn and how the SCI will help students do this.

IV. Why it’s important to teach students how to navigate the internet and how SCI will help.

V. Why higher education is so important in globalized economy, and how the SCI will increase the number, if not the quality, of higher education degrees.

VI. How the SCI will decrease our ambition (pajamas).

VII. How the SCI might water down the math requirements, lowering the bar and decreasing the math majors.

VIII. Although on the surface, the Open Course Library is meant to help low income students, it might actually put them at a disadvantage.

IX. How the SCI is education on the cheap, when we should be spending more on it.

X. How we should fix the SCI: Keep open source text books. Don’t push “distance” education. Spend more on smaller math classes/math centers/tutoring and on math in K-12.

Alternative outline:

• Some say SCI will increase ambition by allowing more students to access higher education. I say it will decrease ambition due to the informality of it.

• Some say SCI will shrink the gap at the bottom by making text books cheaper and maybe classes, too. I say it will increase it due to the digital divide.

• Some say the SCI will help us spend money on the right things. I worry we will use it as a way to cut corners and balance a hole in the budget.