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Over my lunch break from my "real" job just wrote an IHE blog post using one of my favorite methods, take two recent things you read and liked & mash them together and try to make a point even though you have no idea what you want to say when you start.
I used Kyle Korver's recent piece in The Player's Tribune and Death of an Adjunct by @AdamHSays theatlantic.com/education/arch…
What I like about it is it requires discovery and making connections that may not be immediately obvious. I often have students do this kind of work, but I usually give them two pieces that obviously overlap. There may be something better about it being more random.
When students are working from related texts I wonder if they think there's a specific answer they should be heading towards. With the non-related pieces, you have to start with observations and small inferences to get to something larger. It's inductive rather than deductive.
Despite the prominence of the "thesis statement first" in student academic modes, I'm thinking that much more writing (and maybe more interesting writing) happens when we have students work inductively rather than deductively.
If I don't know what I'm trying to prove, there's much more room for exploration and discovery, and dare I say it, it's fun. Very busy at the "real" job today, so I had a very small window for other stuff and the post came quickly and was actively energizing.
Of course, to do this in class requires a high tolerance for differences in approach and outcomes, and that serves up its own challenges in class contexts. Does it matter if everyone makes something different as long as they went through a similar process?
Extra bonus, doing that post has led to this tweet thread of thoughts which could one day launch another blog post. It's the circle of blogging life!
