My summer course fulfills the UCSB writing requirement for undergraduates, thus I knew my class would be writing intensive. I conceived of the final writing project as following a progression of “staging and scaffolding.”

My final project required students to develop their own definition of religion based solely on the Asian religious traditions we covered in class (it is presented as a challenge to the understanding of “religion” as based on monotheistic Western traditions which emphasize “belief” and “holy books”). This would require students to engage higher levels of thinking with the material (including analysis, evaluation, and creation), far beyond just memorizing foreign terms and names. It also required them to construct a written argument. Both of these goals require staged assignments, and my course was developed with these outcomes in mind.

There were three basic stages building up to the final writing project.

1. Daily Reflections: In addition to my N-O-O assignments, students had to write and post daily informal reflections on concepts that they could use for the foundation of their definition. The concepts, which I called “threshold concepts,” were introduced through short podcasts, and each student had to locate where these concepts were found in that day’s reading assignment. They were also asked to reflect on where these concepts may have been illustrated in other materials as well, thus creating a network of comparisons. These were informal low-stakes writing tasks which focused more on critical thinking and idea development than formal writing structure. These daily ideas formed the beginnings of an argument for how a religion might be defined. Students also had to opportunity to read the posts of other students, thus increasing the cross-pollination of ideas.
2. Idea-Generating Writing Project (Mid-term Exam Essay): For the midterm essay I had students take a definition of religion we looked at or created during our first class and either defend it or critique it according the the material we had covered thus far (we had covered “Hinduism,” Jainism, and Buddhism – or the Indian cultural sphere). They had to employ one or more threshold concepts as the basis for their argument. This was envisioned as a conceptional rough draft for their final project which required them to create their own definition. They had to bring in a copy of their paper for peer review and I provided audio commentary on what they turned in. I required this to be a formal academic essay, and gave insight into the construction of the thesis statements, the use of evidence, and organization of ideas. While some of the content would vary, these concerns would carry over into the final project.
3. Final Writing Project (Final Exam Essay): This essay was the culmination of student efforts to understand and create useful comparisons among the rage of Asian religious traditions we covered. I made the essay due a few days after our in-class final exam so they could spend time referring to class and teacher commentary and to incorporate the East Asian material we had covered since the midterm. To make sure they remained on pace I required them to draft a definition of religion and post it to our course website a little more than a week before the paper was due.

Final Paper Prompt