Week 13, Chapter 10 -- Freelance Writer Course home | Weekly schedule | Announcements | Instructor Info | Desire2Learn | MasteringBiology® | Honor Code | FAQs | HELP!

Instructions:

Go to one of the following sites for news stories:

• Brightsurf, “The Resource for Science Information”
• Science Daily, “Your Source for the Latest Research News”
• National Geographic
• BBC News
• CNN
• ABC News
• CBS News
• MSNBC

At any of the above sites (or similar news sites), use the Search function to find a story containing a keyword from chapter 10. You may have really good luck with "evolution,” “species,” “fossil,” or "radiometric dating," but any keyword from this chapter will do. Browse through the list of stories that the search engine returns, and choose one that interests you. Make sure the story is no more than 6 months old.

(WARNING! Be sure the keyword is being used in the same sense as it is in this chapter – for example, the story can’t be about Fossil sunglasses or fossil fuels or the evolution of American political thought, no matter how interesting!)

Part 1

Weave the story you selected into a fictional installment of a TALK SHOW of your choosing (for more on this, see the information on the Freelance Writer assignment in the Types of Assignments page). For example, you could choose a story about a new species and work it into an installment of The Tonight Show or The View or the Ellen DeGeneres Show. Cut-and-paste your completed installment and post it to the appropriate forum at D2L. Some specific criteria to consider:

• Your installment must include a functioning hyperlink to the story, along with its title and the date of the story.
• The story you chose must be a major component of your installment (i.e. you can’t just mention the story in passing and then move onto something else)
• You must build at least three of the chapter’s key (bold-faced) terms into your installment, in bold or colorful type. This is easy to do if you use the "advanced" tab in D2L to create your post.
• For this assignment, you may use ONLY ONE of "biological evolution," "microevolution," and "theory of evolution" since they are somewhat redundant.
• In using the key terms, it is not enough to simply mention the key term in passing. Nor should you simply copy the definition of the term from the text. Instead, you must also make clear from the context that you are applying the term correctly. In deciding if there is enough context, use this criterion: Would the passage still make sense if you substituted another, totally unrelated word? If it would, you probably need to add some more context to demonstrate your understanding.
• Your installment should be between 450-550 words long.
• You must include correctly cited links to all references you used in creating your installment.
• Please make sure that you have proofread the assignment and run a spell check before you post your assignment.

Note that the instructor will grade these, using the rubric at the bottom of this page.

View sample Freelance Writer assignment.

Part 2

Respond to the Freelance Writer posts of at least two other students. (If you are the first or second person to post, you will have to check back later to complete this part of the assignment).

• Just as you spell checked and proofread your original post, you should do the same for your responses.
• Please respond to posts with 0 responses first; once every post has at least one response, you are free to choose any post to respond to.
• When you respond, please use the name of the student you are responding to. That is, say "Hi Trudy" or "Hi Paul" so that you can get used to the names of the people in class. (You can find a list of "real" names and preferred names at D2L).
• Make sure your response is substantive, meaning that you have read and thought about the original post and that you are extending one or more of the thoughts in the original post or offering an additional perspective as you might in a good conversation. Pay special attention to the use of the key terms from the chapter. It is not enough to say simply "nice job", "I liked that", "I feel the same", "I disagree" etc. The goal is to thoughtfully add something else interesting and new related to the content of the original post. At a minimum this should be at least 50 words, and 50-100 is preferable. Check out this page for more on the topic of good and bad responses.

After you have responded to two other students, go to Desire2Learn and complete the Gradebook Declaration for this week's Freelance Writer assignment. (Your Gradebook Declaration is subject to the Honor Code.)

Here is the text of the Desire2Learn Gradebook Declaration: (2 points) I have responded constructively to the posts of at least two other students (1 point per response; 50-100 words for each).

Grading Rubric for Week 13, Chapter 10 Freelance Writer assignment:

I will use the following rubric to grade your Freelance Writer assignments. Notice that the rubric does not heavily reward creativity; I am much more interested in looking for evidence that you understand the concepts that you have chosen to explore in your episode. In fact, you won't receive full credit for this assignment - no matter how realistic your installment - if you don't provide evidence that you really understand this week's biological concepts.  In addition, although you can choose your installment and theme for this assignment, keep in mind that some themes might be offensive to other students. Be careful that your installment couldn't be construed as hostile toward people of a particular race, nationality, sexual orientation or religion.

Please note that points will be deducted as follows if you fail to meet the "mechanical" requirements of the assignment:

• 0.5 point will be subtracted if you fail to explicitly indicate what your "theme" is (that is, you fail to say something along the lines of "I am writing an episode for The Simpsons" or "I am writing an episode of The Young and the Restless");
• 0.5 point will be subtracted for every 2 spelling/grammatical errors (see http://english.acadiau.ca/grammar-quizzes.html and http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/1/ for tips on correct punctuation in dialogue);
• 1 point will be subtracted if you fail to present your key terms in bold or colored type;
• 1 point will be subtracted if your post is too short
• 1 point will be subtracted if you fail to list references (if specified in the assignment); alternatively, 0.5 point will be deducted if you listed your references but they are not formatted correctly.

Contemporary Issues in Biology -- BIOL 1003 Mariëlle H. Hoefnagels, Ph.D. © 2004-2015. biology1003 at OU dot edu (at = @, dot =.) Last Updated August 5, 2014 11:02 PM