https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/1avz21q/what_to_teach_in_an_obsidian_workshop_at/

[[Kathleen Fitzpatrick]] in Peculiar Genres of Academic Writing

Syllabus: Peculiar Genres of Academic Writing<br /> https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:44397/ by Kathleen Fitzpatrick

https://www.cyberneticforests.com/ai-images

Critical Topics: AI Images is an undergraduate class delivered for Bradley University in Spring 2023. It is meant to provide an overview of the context of AI art making tools and connects media studies, new media art, and data ethics with current events and debates in AI and generative art. Students will learn to think critically about these tools by using them: understand what they are by making work that reflects the context and histories of the tools.

https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/QM/spring2022.html

Surprising! particularly since they traditionally come at the end.

Though for teaching purposes, I can definitely see a professor wanting it up front. I also frequently skim through bibliographies before starting reading works now, though I didn't do this in the past. Reading a bibliography first is an excellent way to establish common context with an author however.

the amanuensis has evolved into a typist.

A subtle admonishment here to "do your own work".

In academic settings, depending on level, the amanuensis may do more than just type or transcribe. For students, it should just be transcription, but for others, the level of input is highly likely to increase...

Definitely a paragraph aimed at the student in the manner of a syllabus, but also an interesting tidbit on the potential evolution of writing forms over time.

How does language over time change with respect to the types and styles of writing forms, particularly when they're prescribed or generally standardized over time? How do these same standards evolve over time and change things at the level of the larger pictures?

Sadly, he doesn't define "good style" here and only a paragraph after saying to avoid the style of Carlyle and Macaulay.

This paragraph is one of the several of the type that would more appropriately appear in a syllabus than in a published journal article on this particular topic. Thus the style is here is part journal article on writing, but also format which could be subsumed into syllabi by others.

https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:33585/

See also Wiki created in combination with this course: https://digitalbookhistory.com/culturesofthebook/Main_Page

While being able to view the history of a problem space from the perspective of a creation process is interesting, in reverse, it is also an interesting way to view a potential learning experience.

I can't help but think about the branching tree networks of knowledge in some math texts providing potential alternate paths through the text to allow learners to go from novice to expert in areas in which they're interested. We need more user interfaces like this.

The most prominent example of this type of online curation, in my personal experience as a teacher, is curating reading lists for my university courses.

In some cases (more "traditional"), this list is part of the syllabus and coursepack that I distribute ahead of the semester so it's something that I would do in the Summer or during a Winter break. Having taught several courses on a short notice (getting the contract a couple of weeks before the semester starts), I've fine-tuned my technique to be as efficient as possible. Some of my reading lists were better than others and a few were really solid. Teaching with such a reading list is quite a joy. Much more so than teaching from a textbook. At one point, I stopped having printed coursepacks. I simply give links to the fulltext articles available through #OpenAccess or through the databases to which the university's library is subscribed. A few students complained early on but it does mean that they don't have to purchase text material for the course. The reason it's important to me does have to do with the cost of higher education. It's also about shifting the role of text resources. We use these texts to do some work together. It's not like these texts are "transmitting the knowledge" to learners' brains.

So, that's my more traditional pattern: a syllabus with a list of links to articles (typically PDFs) that I distributed before the semester starts.

In other cases (my "enhanced" practice), it's something I do every week, based on what has happened in the course. And I do mean a full reading list each week. Class members choose the text on which they want to focus. Though several of them expect me to be "the sage on the stage" who will lead them to that one nugget of wisdom they will have to "retain", a shift happens once they take ownership of those reading choices. That practice is quite timeconsuming and it doesn't necessarily improves my teaching in obvious ways. It's rewarding in other ways. (I sometimes ask learners to find resources on their own, which really deepens the learning process. It requires a significant level of autonomy that they might not reveal during a given semester, even if they have significant experience as university students).

My routine of building weekly reading lists also means that I got quite a bit of practice at this.

Typically, I start the collecting with a "forward citation search" in Web of Knowledge, Scopus, or Google Scholar. I often know this one key article which is likely to have been cited by a number of authors more recently. I collect as many of those as possible and some patterns emerge. Quite frequently, there would be subtopics that I rearrange. It might send me in a "rabbithole". Which is ok. I'm in a discovery mode. And some of the texts which fall under my radar at that point become relevant at a further point.

In other words, I often cast a wide net during the collection phase.

The selection process is mostly a matter or rearranging the reading list so that the first few items cover enough of the range of subtopics. Sometimes, my lists remain quite long, which means that learners have more choice (which is uncomfortable enough to help them learn). It also involves an organization phase.

Summarizing the significance of the collection is the basis for my presentation of the list to the class. My description of the collection is the moment in a class meeting during which I switch to lecture mode. If I do it at the end of the class meeting (or just before the break), students are likely to pay less attention, even though it's typically short. If I do If I do it before discussing the items for the current week, it gets a bit confusing. So it often works best if I present this list after we've worked through the previous ones but before some kind of activity which links the two topics.

As for sharing in the cloud, I typically do this through the LMS I'm using in that institutions. I've tried more public methods but they weren't that effective.

All this to say... I could probably optimize my method.

One of my early prototyping experiences in the OER field.

The basic economics of this system would indicate (especially as classes become larger and larger) that more careful consideration of choice, economics, accessibility, availability, etc. on a larger institutional level creates larger marginal gains for those in the class. If a staff librarian, teacher, or someone else within the system does the leg-work up front and does it well, then the dozens or even hundreds of students in the course don't need to spend (read: waste) their own time re-inventing the proverbial textbook wheel once they're in the class.

Portions of the situation here make me wonder if we might pull a page from Dr. Peter Pronovost's playbook in the health care space and create a simple checklist of what to do when planning for textbooks and readings. Checklists that include things like:

• will the texts actually be used?
• will they be primary to the subject or are they supplementary?
• What are their prices?
• Are alternate materials available?
• Are older editions available?
• are public domain or open web versions available?
• are there copies in the library? reserves? pirated versions? pre/post prints?
• etc.

Once such a checklist is available, institutions should require that it be available along with syllabi and other course listings.

cross references:

• https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist
• https://laparoscopy.blogs.com/outcome/ItsTheOutcomeDocs/Peter%20Pronovost%20Protocol.pdf

Interested folks might also want to check out @RemiKalir's updated post: Annotate Your Syllabus 2.0.

Human contact supports success.

As the professor points out below, this "invisible 'more'" (or "only") is one of the fundamental misreadings of the #BlackLivesMatter slogan and movement.