Important dates

Exams: mid-term, 'test re-test', final

There will be two exams, one scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, October 29-30, the other for finals week (Wednesday, Dec. 5, from 8–10 am). On the mid-term exam, you will take the test on Monday as you normally would. On Tuesday, you have the option of re-taking the test in a small group, where group members can discuss your answers before turning in one exam for the group (still closed book, though).

The individual portion of the exam (Monday’s test) will be worth 75% of your total grade for the test, and the group portion 25%. If you prefer, you can take the test again on Tuesday by yourself, or choose not take it again and settle for whatever grade you end up with from Monday’s test (sorry, I won’t have them graded …). If your group on the second day scores lower than you as an individual did the previous day, I will not lower your grade (i.e., I’ll give you 100% of the points based on your Monday, individual score). The point of this exercise is to, hopefully, turn the test into a learning exercise as well as an evaluation tool.
The final will not be comprehensive, and will cover only material after the first exam.

Each exam is worth 100 points.

Class participation

1. Daily participation

You’re rewarded for attending class and participating. This is new for me, and somewhat regrettable, but there’s much to be said for coming to class daily, so here’s my policy: There are 50 points possible, an average of one per day. We’ll pass out an attendance sheet daily to be signed.

2. Small group discussion

We’ll do this on Fridays, four times during the course of the term (on even-numbered weeks, 2, 4, 6, & 8). The fifth time, Friday before finals, will count but we’ll use it as exam prep. For the others, we will take a topic of current interest or controversy, and discuss it in small groups. You’ll be assigned some short online readings that are specific to the issue or topic of the week. They’re usually short news articles. You'll be asked to turn in a short abstract or summary, 200-250 words. This should be about 1/3 summary of the articles, and about 2/3 analysis. Your group will be given a set of questions to which you'll spend the hour responding, and turn in at the end of the class period. Here’s the point breakdown:

• Turning in abstract: possible 10 pts (9-10 shows effort and thought; 7-8 is lacking one of the two; 5-6 means you physically turned something in, but it isn’t clear you learned from the exercise; < 5 means there’s something terribly awry or random about what you submitted);
• Responding to group questions: possible 20 pts (17-20 shows effort and thought; 12-16 is lacking one of the two; 11 or below is a recognition that the group turned something in)
  

Should you miss Friday's discussion, you can make it up. If you notify me in advance, you can write an expanded reflection paper, following the guidelines below. You can also make it up afterwards, but you only have a week (you can turn it in no later than two weeks late for possible half credit). After the first absence, though, you’ll begin to lose points for not being present to participate in the discussion (that is, the very best you can score will be 14 out of 20). Make-ups should be submitted in Blackboard.

Total of 150 points possible (30 for each Friday discussion).

Making up small group discussions

Papers should be no longer than 3 pages, double-spaced (11 or 12 pt font) in length. This is how I would like you to structure the reflection papers:

• What for you were the most important points that you took from the readings and discussion for the Friday topic (do NOT use the regular readings for the week)? This is an exercise in abstract thinking—what is the ‘big picture?’ You should touch on each article, discuss common threads between them, focus on the discussion of the articles, etc. I want to see what you got out of the readings and the week’s topic, and gauge your depth of understanding. I’m not looking for book reports here—do some summary, but your paper should be no more than 1/3 summary (and no less than 2/3 analysis).
• Critically evaluate the authors’ arguments. Do you agree or disagree with what they said? Remember to read with a critical eye. Don’t be afraid to question the authors’ reasoning or evidence, or to use your own experiences or background to offer other views. Just keep in mind—take a stand, but don’t make points if you’re not going to support them with evidence or logic.
• Questions. I will give you the questions groups responded to in class, and you will need to respond to them. You can use points you’ve made previously to do this, as long as they seem appropriate and relevant to the questions. Plan to spend an hour and a half on this—time writing the summary/analysis, and responding to the group questions (about the same amount of time you would have spent had you attended class and submitted the abstract).
  

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Reflection paper

You’ll do a few things on the reflection paper. First, I want to you to discuss and analyze your closest personal brushes with the welfare system. This could be as a recipient of various kinds of services (and you need to think broadly, ask if in doubt, about what might constitute welfare), SSI, food stamps, reduced fare lunches, WIC, TANF, social security payments, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, unemployment, workers’ compensation, etc. Services don’t necessarily have to be public—they could come from non-profits, from a church or other religious entity, etc. You need to put some thought into this part.

It’s also possible that you’ve had few if any brushes with the welfare system. But you still should have some familiarity with it, sources of information that have informed your views. Maybe you’ve had friends who’ve received assistance, maybe your parents or relatives, maybe it’s just what you’ve read about or seen on TV, what you’ve gleaned from books, heard on talk radio, or with brushes with homeless people in a big city, etc., but you have some familiarity, and I’m interested in just how close and intimate you have come to the welfare system. In this part of the paper, I’m looking for thoughtfulness, description, and your impressions, given what we discuss in this class. In other words, you should have some insight into your experiences based on whatever contact you’ve had with welfare services (or lack of), guided by course content. You should spend at least a page on this part.

Second, I want you to think about your own philosophy of welfare—the role of government, of the private sector, need-based versus insurance programs, your attitudes about people on welfare, poverty, the level of benefits available, perceptions of welfare fraud, race/ethnicity/class/gender, inequality, stratification, bureaucracy, training of social workers, etc. To do this you obviously need to define what you mean by welfare—this is a multidimensional concept, and I expect to see some thoughtfulness in your definition and description. Again, this should take at least a page of fluff-free writing.

Third, I want you to reflect on how your own experiences, whether frequent or very limited, have affected your attitudes on welfare. In other words, I want to know where your attitudes come from. If you haven’t given it much thought, you need to state that, and perhaps explore any disconnects between your experiences and your own philosophy. The broader idea of this assignment is to give you some space to explore how you formulate opinions on important issues—through reading, personal direct experience, interactions with other people, work experiences, religious or cultural background, the mass media, etc. So I want to know: 1) What are the bases of your opinions/attitudes about welfare? Where do(es) your views/knowledge come from? Are they anchored in any personal values you hold? 2) Have your attitudes changed over time? As you are confronted with new information (e.g., this class), do you re-consider your opinions and values? 3) Do you think it’s important for those working in the welfare system to have a thoughtful philosophy about welfare? Or is it enough that they just perform according to their job descriptions? What would be the three most important areas, according to you, that welfare professionals should have developed some thoughtful opinions? 4) Show some understanding of the welfare population, and your views on who they are, why they're seeking/receiving assistance, and what ought to be done.

Fourth, You need to volunteer. There are a few ways to do this:

• One, Spend an hour at the Salvation Army ( 1114 Y Avenue).
• Two, volunteer at the Neighbor-to-Neighbor Food Bank. You can call Carmen Gentry at Community Connection and either: help with the unloading of food, or with the distribution of food boxes on the last Saturday of the month, October 31 (at Valley Fellowship, 507 Palmer).
• Three, help with a Food Drive (which the Haven from Hunger project will plan for Fall Term).
• You will need a signature that you actually participated from someone in a survervisory role (with contact information, preferably a business card), either at a Food Bank, Community Connection, or the Food Drive.
• You need to write up your observations and analysis of your participation, and relate it to your welfare philosophy. How well does it fit? Did anything surprise you? Think about the ‘clients,’ the ‘providers,’ the setting, the organization, your interaction with other volunteers and clientele, etc. Again, at least a page here. If you do something like work on a weekend food drive, you need to make some careful observations about where you went, and include a thoughtful discussion of the method(s) you used and the choices you made.

I’m expecting a 5-6 page paper. This is a 100 point assignment. Rremember you're being asked to justify and support your attitudes and opinions, using readings, philosophies from class or elsewhere, etc. This is not an opinion paper—it is a reflection paper, you need to reflect on your attitudes and beliefs, and where those attitudes and beliefs come from, and perhaps how they have been affected by your exposure to some of the material from this course (or not). I do not want to see a paper uninformed by your time and intellectual effort spent in this class.

How I'll evaluate these:

• Incorporation of class material into the paper (how has it informed your thinking?). I'll expect to see this, in a non-gratuitous way, in all sections. 20 pts
• Analysis and description of your experience(s) with the welfare system--you need to reflect on this and describe it well, because it's the basis for much of what comes afterward in the paper. 25 pts
• Development of your own philosophy of welfare. It doesn't have to be entirely your idea, you can certainly, and should, pick and choose ideas or concepts that you're familiar with, or that you picked up from class. But you need to respond to the four bulletted points above. 25 pts
• Volunteer component--you can make this a separate section if you like. I'll evaluate it on how well you've described and analyzed your experience, and succeeded in tying it to the rest of the paper. 20 pts.
• Writing--you need to show you've proofread your paper, ideas need to be coherent. 10 pts

100 points possible

Writing assignments--some guidance

Format

I'd like you to stick with double-spaced, or 1 1/2 spacing, with reasonable margins. You don't need a cover page, but your name and the class will be a big help in identifying you. As always, do your own work. Cite sources whose ideas you've used (ON TOP of doing your own work ... ). APA is preferred. They should be cited where they're used in the text (for example, Smith 1979), and they should be cited at the end of the assignment in the references section. The standard I'm interested in is this: you need to provide enough information so that I could go find the article in the library or on the Web. As for using stuff on the Web, you may want to be a little more cautious (the Web Resources page has some links to sites that have good advice on evaluating content on the Web).

Content

Unless specified otherwise, the focus should be on analysis as opposed to summary or description. I'm not looking for book reports--I want to be able to see you thinking on paper. Headings, or at the least paragraphs, are a big help for the reader as well as the author (they should help you figure out what your main points are, and whether or how they're tied together). As far as the length of the assignment, the short 'periodic' assignments are sometimes the trickiest. You need to be pretty efficient in your use of words--1-2 pages doesn't mean easy, it means make your points quickly, make sure the reader knows what they are, support them with evidence, eliminate unnecessary verbiage, and get out.

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Grammar/spelling

By mid-term, I'll start deducting credit on writing assignments if they get in the way of me understanding the points you're trying to make. If you're having trouble, see me or go to the University's Writing Lab. They are not an editing service, but the tutors there can help you think through the writing process, which often solves minor editing problems. And please try to have your work proofread--spell checkers will bee tray yew giibbn heiffer chants.

Turning in assignments electronically

The reflection paper should be submitted in Blackboard (you'll see a 'submitting assignments' link). Discussion make-ups as well (you can only make up two without extremely compelling excuses). No .wps or .pages files--save them as .doc, .docx, rtf, and to be sure, paste your work into the field in case there's a problem opening as file.

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The 'P' word: Cite your sources!

Just a reminder about plagiarism. It's using someone else's work or ideas and claiming them as your own. It violates the spirit of the learning process, and anyone caught plagiarizing will receive an 'F' for the assignment, and possibly for the course. Much better to cite others' works properly. Who knows--one day you may be the ones whose brilliant ideas are being stolen. Again, you might want to check out a tutorial on citing others' works.

The big picture

Keep in mind the intent of the assignment--not to turn in something for a grade, but to show what you've learned, and how it can be applied. Use common sense, think about how important the subject matter of this course is to real-life human beings, and show some perspective.