Practice of scholarship (Spring 2016)

The Practice of Scholarship

Media, Technology, and Society 503

Northwestern University

Tuesdays 9am-12pm, Frances Searle Building Room 2-378

Instructor:Aaron Shaw (aaronshaw@northwestern.edu)

• Frances Searle 2-142
• Office Hours: M 1-3pm; T 3-5pm and by appointment.

Course resources:

• We will use Canvas for announcements, submitting assignments, and maybe discussions.
• Everything else will be linked to from this page.

Overview & objectives

The goal for this course is simple: submit a piece of academic research for publication by the end of the quarter. The piece should (obviously) be original. You should be the primary person responsible for the research and should be the lead author of the submission.

The course and assignments are structured to help you cultivate (more of) the skills, wisdom, and experience necessary to publish independent, original, and high-quality scholarship in relevant venues for your work. There are also several milestones to help you measure your progress towards manuscript submission at the end of the quarter. The seminar will be run as a workshop in which we will provide individual and collective feedback on each other's work. Most weeks, we will also read and discuss materials related to the crafts of designing, conducting, writing, submitting, reviewing, revising, and publishing scholarly research.

A note about this syllabus

You should expect this syllabus to be a dynamic document and you will notice that there are a few places marked "To Be Determined." Although the core expectations for this class are fixed, the details of readings and assignments will shift. As a result, there are three important things to keep in mind:

1. Details on this syllabus will change, but I will not change readings or assignments less than one week before they are due. If I don't fill in a "To Be Determined" one week before it's due, it is dropped. If you plan to read more than one week ahead, contact me first.
2. Keep an eye out for emails and announcements I send through Canvas re: updates to the syllabus. You can also review the edit history of this page to track what has changed recently and compare it against earlier versions.
3. You can always give me feedback and suggestions related to what works and what doesn't about the course. I will explicitly solicit your input a few times during the quarter, but be bold and feel free to submit your feedback to me at any time in any format. In the past, I have made substantive changes to courses on-the-fly in response to student feedback.