Your Work

Project Points
Specs 25
VTSF 15
Course Web 20
Precis 10
Term Project 30
Total 100

Specs ("Speculations")

Points 25 possible (5 @ 5 each)
Due see VTSF website to get an idea of the project.

Collaborative Course Web

Points 20 possible (4 additions @ 5 each)*
Due throughout the semester; subject to community evaluation.
Participants in the course will work collaboratively on a World Wide Web site, building from the more formal materials already in place with individual pages and clusters of pages, but focusing on several collective areas organized as conceptual mappings of the discourse we're calling "speculative fiction." Our beginnings with these maps will at first, of course, reflect the textual sites we've actually visited collectively; as we continue to build the web-site, however, they may well become considerably more diverse--though not, probably, ever reaching the Borgesian fantasy of an isomorphic relationship with their territory. You'll be encouraged to add to the maps themselves, but also to consider new maps. . .

Some likely maps might be organized along familiar lines, such as

  • Themes
  • A Time Line
  • Psychological Patterns
  • Archetypal Patterns
  • Myths
  • Narrative Structures
Other maps, though, may not emerge immediately, but will suggest themselves the more of this discourse we explore, for instance
  • Generic Paradigms
  • Cultural Motifs
  • Ideological Structures
These maps are all too large to complete in a single term, or by a single person. Instead, regard them as regions in which to begin exploring in the "country of the discourse," and in that exploration, you will naturally wish to leave behind some notes and drawings, a few links, some topographical writing in a cluster of linked web pages.

Precis

Points 10 possible*
Due: you pick the date, but all precises must be completed and online (i.e., posted to SpecFic; later it will be linked to your node(s) in the course web) by October 12th; subject to community evaluation and response.
This grounded and focused speculation about your term project (500-word minimum) will be posted initially to SpecFic, and after community response and revision will be linked into the course web.

Term Project

Points 30 possible
Precis--will be linked into the Course Web. It may be an individual or team project, and it may be a linear essay and/or a hyperdocument (linear essays can be easily converted into HTML). In all cases, emphasis will be on lucidity, substance, development, and specificity in the analysis of some issue or text(s) we have encountered in the semester's discourses. To save time and somewhat level the field, hyperdocuments will need to be constructed in HTML (training will be offered).


Community Evaluation

 Top?

This course will be making extensive use of the networked computer environment in order to explore collaborative ways of researching, writing, and learning.

To help us share in the process of assessment in the discourse, I've decided to try an experiment in community evaluation on some of the projects (the Course Web and the Precises; see descriptions above).

For these projects, course participants will make an assessment of the individual or team offering, typically using a point scale (such as 1 to 5), and adding questions and suggestions. These assessments and responses will be posted either to SpecFic or transmitted in some other digital form.

Final points for communally assessed projects will reflect an approximate average of the evaluations.