Reading Responses

Objective

Rather than me trying to determine and assign a grade to how much you’ve learned from the reading assignment, you should just tell me what you thought about them. I’m interested learning in WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THEM, not just getting a recap summary of the readings.

Basics

• ~200–250 words
• Informal, but free of typos and basic grammatical errors
• Original thinking
• Posted ON TIME at UNM Learn. On time means ideally the day it appears on the syllabus, but includes a grace period until the end of the following day.

Questions to think about

• What ideas did you find most interesting?
• What was most unclear or confusing?
• What questions did they bring up?
• How did the reading(s) alter your thinking about food (or not)?
• What topics weren’t addressed but should have been?
• How do the readings agree or disagree with each other?
• How do the readings overlap with previous readings?

Reflect more than summarize

I’m much more interested in reading about YOUR PERSONAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE than reading a summary of the assignment. Of course in describing what you found most interesting or what you disagreed with the most you’ll end up restating some ideas from the reading. That’s important! But this exercise is NOT about just regurgitating the readings or identifying the “most” important points—everyone will learn something different from them.

Don’t forget your learning assessment (1-3)

At the end of your post, evaluate your own effort for that day’s readings using the following scale. Individual points seem like they don’t matter all that much per each assignment, but they add up over the month!

You can use half points! (.5, 1.5, 2.5); but don’t do other fractions (1.8, 2.4, etc) because it leads to too much nit-picking.

• 0: You really can’t give yourself a 0, because that’s what you get when you don’t submit a response.
• 1: Acceptable. You skimmed the readings quickly and your response provides a coherent but rather simplistic description of what you learned. Look, it’s pretty obvious if you’re breezing through the readings and then just writing out an opinion in your post. AND THAT IS OKAY! Doing acceptable but not especially interesting work is nothing to be ashamed of. Own it. But don’t do it all the time if you care about your grade.
• 2: Solid. Read reasonably carefully, and your response shows you thinking critically about the ideas, arguments, and evidence presented. This is what most people should get most of the time because there is a lot of reading and everyone is busy. A typical post in this category will show familiarity with some of the readings (but not all of them), and have have a slippery (but at least somewhat) grounding in the readings.
• 3: Excellent. This score indicates a comparatively excellent effort to understand the SET of readings and their relationship. Your reflection will make it obvious that you read most of the assignment carefully, and that you are critically RESPONDING to (not just summarizing) various complementary or conflicting ideas presented in the readings. Other should read your post and think: “oh that’s interesting”. Not “Oh, this person might have done the reading.”

Remember that you are evaluating your effort for the assignment, not the absolute “quality” of your final response. If you spent a lot of effort learning from the readings, even if you feel your response doesn’t sound particularly sophisticated, you can give yourself a 2.5 or 3.

Typically, over the course, students report mostly 2s with a bunch of 2.5s, some 3s, and a few 1s sprinkled in—and an occasional 0 for when life was unusually busy that day and an occasional 4 when they got really into something.