Assignment Description
Reading Response (6) are designed to allow students to begin to build idea and concept webs that allow for richer, more complex models and methods for making sense rhetoric, play, and game related issues.
To do this, students must have a solid understanding of this reading as well as one (or more) other course text. Then, in 700 – 1000 words, students will need to explore and explain the ways in which two (or more) texts can be brought bear on one another to (1) illuminate (and/or challenge) the key ideas at stake in each text; (2) serve as complimentary frames for explaining an activity or artifact outside their original scope; or (3) offer a point of intervention into an area or practice in need of more significant inquiry. In all three cases, students will need to demonstrate a critical understanding of the readings in question, represent the core elements of each in concise and effective prose, and use specific elements from the readings to support particular claims.
Evaluation
Reading Response (6) will be graded on its overall written quality (Is the prose readable? Is it relatively free from grammatical and punctuation issues? Does it offer a sense of clarity of thought? Is it concise? etc.), the ability to wield two (or more) conceptual structures in a shared space, the depth and insightfulness of the exploration of the concepts toward their targeted purposes, and the ability to stay within the guidelines of the assignment.
Goals
Reading Responses are a course resource. They are not just busy work, nor mechanisms to ensure students are doing the course reading, but are opportunities for students to stumble upon key ideas or concerns that they might later pursue in course work.
Reading Response (6) are designed to provide a significant level of engagement that absolutely should function as foundational elements in other course assignments.