Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century: Re-designing Student Success

DISCUSSION AND ESSAY!!! THE DISCUSSION REQUIRES YOU TO FIND TWO ARTICLES THAT SUPPORT THE TOPIC OF THE ESSAY. THESE TWO ESSAYS MUST BE INCORPORATED WITHIN THE ESSAY ASSIGNED: Freire, Paulo. "The Banking Concept of Education." Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Continuum, 1993. N. pag. Print.

AND

Mark Edmundson in his essay "On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students" MUST BE INCORPORATED! These were used in previous assignments and now tie in to this one.

Discussion Welcome to the unit discussion area.

This area will fill up quickly with lively interchanges among you, your colleagues and your instructor.

As explained in the Reading and Essay assignments, for this unit you will search a library database for two articles related to the future of higher education. Use these articles to test, extend, and complicate your ideas. Ultimately, you should blend these new sources with Edmundson and Freire in order to make your own argument about changing higher education for the twenty-first century.

The sources you find should be unique in the sense that they will not be shared by anyone else in the course, except in the rare event of a coincidental match between you and a classmate.

Locate your sources using the Park University McAfee Memorial Library's Pirate Search feature, which allows you to search multiple databases with a single search. For all references, use an appropriate form of documentation (MLA, APA, or another standard academic style discussed in Easy Writer.)

Discussion Topic Up to this point in the course, we have applied the concept of "reading rhetorically" to analyzing the audience, purpose, context, and persuasive techniques of the authors we've read. However, this concept can also be applied to assessing the credibility and relevance of sources we find via research. As explained in the Reading and Essay content items this unit, you will search one of the online databases for two articles that discuss some historical event or figure.

Use these articles to test, extend, and complicate your thesis from last unit's essay. The sources you find will be unique in the sense that they will not be shared by anyone else in the course, except in the rare event of a coincidental match between you and a colleague. You will locate these sources using the Park University McAfee Memorial Library's online databases. (I recommend JSTOR and EBSCOhost.)

For the purpose of this unit's revision project, you should seek articles that meet the following criteria: longer than 500 words available in full text format You should feel free to imagine a wide range of possibilities for integrating the sources into your revised essay, as long as the end result is consistent with the rhetorical aims of the assignment. You should also know that exploring fifteen to twenty items deep in any search is probably necessary. In other words, for the best results, be diligent about exploring beyond the top three hits of any single search. In your post to this discussion thread, first compose MLA-formatted Works Cited entries or APA-formatted References entries for each of the two scholarly sources you found for this unit's essay. Then, write a two-paragraph post that:

Briefly comments on how each article has affected your thinking on issues related to access, power, teaching methods, and higher education - in other words, how each article is helping you "re-see" your thesis from last unit's essay; based on Greene and Lidinsky's criteria for evaluating source, explains how you know the sources you located are suitable (i.e., credible) for academic conversations.

ESSAY:

Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century: Re-designing Student Success

Include at least two additional outside perspectives on the future of higher education. (You will discover these outside perspectives by conducting library research, and you will include them via quotation, paraphrase, and/or summary, which we will practice in this week's discussion.) Argue for specific recommendations about how higher education could be re-designed for the students of the twenty-first century. You might begin by designing a working thesis about how higher education needs to change. Then, begin researching what other writers have said already about your ideas. Start with an search on your subject using the Park University McAfee Memorial Library's Pirate Search feature , but also consider consulting Google Scholar (Links to an external site.). We will spend time this unit discussing and analyzing sources together.

-Think about what you would like to teach your readers about how higher education should change. Consider making precise, practical recommendations.

-Be sure to provide explicit reasoning, and describe the implications of your ideas for today's college students of history.

-Make sure that every paragraph of Essay #3 points your readers toward your particular focus and argument. Length: Approximately 1,000 words

Style/Format: This, as all essays in EN106, should be formatted in a standard scholarly format. (Most students follow MLA or APA guidelines, which are outlined in Easy Writer.)

No matter what format you follow, be sure to do the following: Use 12 point, Times New Roman font, double-spaced. Use 1-inch margins top, bottom, and sides. Although no cover page is needed, you should include your name, my name, the course number/title, and date at the upper left-hand corner of the manuscript.

Research & Documentation: Because you will rely on the work of others to make your argument, this essay must include formal references to not only the assigned readings but also the sources you locate via research. Use your skills of quotation, paraphrase, and summary to incorporate these other writers' perspectives, and be sure to provide in-text citations using a standard scholarly style outlined in Easy Writer, such as MLA or APA.

Works Cited/References: Your essay should include an appropriate bibliography, with an entry for each individual source you reference in the body of the essay. See Easy Writer for directions on how to create appropriate entries for works appearing in an anthology and articles archived in a database. (Hint: Look for the terms "anthology" and "database" in the directories for models in Easy Writer.)

Titles: Include a descriptive title at the beginning of your essay that tips your readers off to your thesis. Do not format your title with quotation marks, boldface, underlining or italics. Quotation marks or underlining are only appropriate if the title borrows words from another source.