Response Paper

Compose your response paper adhering to the guidelines set forth under the Instructions & Information page. Review the response paper rubric for grading criteria. Submit it to turnitin.com and to Drop Box 6.2 by the designated due date.

Information/Instructions

Three response papers are due during the quarter (Week 3, 6 and 10). These papers are not book reviews. They are based on what you learned from each of the three books, the articles, discussions, lecture materials, Skill Soft materials, videos, and classmate interactions. The length required for each response paper is three to five pages (double-spaced, APA style, including proper grammar and correct spelling). Click here to view the grading rubric that is used for scoring your written papers. Your response papers are to be turned in through turnitin.com and the corresponding drop box.

These papers are not book reviews. They include reading materials, discussions, web assignments, lecture materials, and interactions between classmates. Criteria for the response papers include:

• You must be in the paper. You have been trained your entire academic career to present, critique, analyze ideas and issues. This paper moves away from ideas and issues to focus on you (not just your ideas either). You may find this process difficult and your resistance strong.

• Your response should include the impact of the course material addressed prior to the paper due date or all material addressed between paper due dates including reading assignments, discussion assignments, web assignments, and lecture assignments, as well as interaction between classmates.

• The impact means describing the impact the course material is having on you. If you tell the instructor how wrong you think someone's ideas, discussion, or opinions are, then you are reflecting on the impact of your thinking on the material. RATHER: Tell your instructor the material's impact on your thinking.

• If you tell the instructor about the issues, the arguments, the facts then you are reflecting on things outside of you. RATHER: Tell your instructor the issues, the arguments, the facts impacts upon you.

• You have been trained to learn from the professors and give back information. The information these papers require from you (for an "A) is information an instructor cannot give to you... Nor is it information you already have. What is required in the response paper is the information that arises in and through the process of interaction with the course material.

• If this course material has no impact on you, then either you are not participating in the class or you do not know how to reflect on yourself. In any case, your resistance to the material is greater than your ability to be open, vulnerable or self-aware. Resistance to or lack of openness or vulnerability or lack of self-awareness will stand in the way of being the best negotiator possible for you. This usually indicates some form of protection.

• There is a lot about negotiation that provokes self-protection. Your instructor must see progression of growth through various levels. Grading will also take into consideration movement into deeper levels, as well as thoroughness within levels.

• Consider how you are different, what changes have been made on the surface, what does having this information feel like, how have you been permanently changed, how have your relationships changed?

• Go beyond the assigned textbook reading in your response papers. Include discussion assignments, reading assignments, lecture assignments, web assignments, personal encounters outside the class, professional situations, comments from classmates, interests and positions of others in the negotiations, and comments from your instructor.