Liberal Arts Project Rough Draft: Lenses Social Science & Natural Science

Hi All,

In the first few weeks of the course, we filled our toolbox. In the middle part of the course, we learned how to draw up a plan, in the form of a KWL Chart. In this final part of the course, we’re going to use our tools and our plan to build a project.

As we put our tools and our plans into action, we are also moving up the levels in Bloom’s taxonomy. Creating your final project will require you to apply what you’ve learned about the lenses, analyze information from the assigned articles, and synthesize that information to describe what you learned.

In your final project, you are being asked to think about the topic that you chose and to think about thinking—that is, how did using the lens framework help you to understand your topic. This metacognition can be challenging and will require some extra reflection on your part. You won’t simply be reporting what you read; you will need to describe how each article reflects one of the lenses and what you learn by looking at the topic through multiple lenses.

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For your final project, you will be creating a presentation using 2 of the 4 lenses. This week, you will need to

• Select the 2 lenses that you want to use: SOCIAL SCIENCE & NATURAL SCIENCE (Please feel free to expound in your own words as to why this was chosen)
• Create a draft of your presentation slides using the templatesprovided for PowerPoint

You should have at least one slide for each of the following

• Introduction: Why you chose your topic. You should go beyond just stating that the topic was interesting to you. Tell me whythe topic was interesting to you.
• Lens 1: How does the article for the first lens demonstrate that lens? How does it illustrate the key characteristics, typical questions, or types of evidence for that lens? Aim for 3-5 well-formed statements that summarize key points or provide examples.
• Lens 2: How does the article for the second lens demonstrate that lens? How does it illustrate the key characteristics, typical questions, or types of evidence for that lens? Aim for 3-5 well-formed statements that summarize key points or provide examples.
• Convergence: What is similar about how the two articles demonstrate the lenses?
• Divergence: How are the lenses in the two articles different?
• Both Lenses: What do you learn about the topic when you combine the two lenses?
• Further Exploration: What questions from your KWL Chart are still unanswered? Did reading the articles spark any new questions? What keywords would you use to search for answers to those questions. Please include 2-4 well-formed questions along with at least two keywords for each question.
• Conclusion: What have you learned from the research process? What are the benefits of using the lenses? This should be a reflection on the research process, not on the content of the articles.

Your slides on Convergence and Divergence should focus on how the information in each article reflects the lens that it is illustrating. See the exemplar presentation.

You do not need to be exhaustive in summarizing the articles or in your discussion of the sites of convergence, divergence, and both lenses. Your summaries should contain 3-5 well-formed statements that summarize the key points of the articles. Your discussions of convergence and divergence should include 2-4 well-formed statements for each; your discussion of what you learned from both lenses can be summarized in one well-formed paragraph of 2-5 sentences.

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Week 6 To Do

• Read “Preparing Your Presentation” and “Introduction to Project 3.”
• Post to the Discussion Board by Thursday and reply to at least two peers by Sunday.
• Read “Drafting Slides for Your Two Chosen Lenses” and review the NimblyWise resource.
• Read “Drafting Convergence and Divergence Slides” and review the NimblyWise resource.
• Read “Drafting Further Exploration and Conclusion Slides.”
• Submit the draft of your presentation slides by Sunday, August 9. Note: Although you are submitting a draft, this is a graded assignment and you should prepare your slides as if you were submitting them for the final project.