When I first enrolled in this course, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I actually enrolled in the class just because it was listed as an English course and I am an English major. I had no clue what “Discourse Analysis” meant. One the first day of class when I learned that our course topic would be Participatory Culture I was interested because I had never heard of it before. As that first class went on and we discussed social media and talked about the types of projects we would be doing throughout the course I was actually excited. Excitement is not my usual reaction or feeling about classes but it seemed like the work would be tedious but also fun and that intrigued me. After class I actually had a discussion about it with one of my classmates who said he thought the class would be “fye”—another word for cool.
One of the things that interested me about the coursework was the different ways in which we would be writing. I’m a writer—I write in my spare time, I have my own personal blogs via wordpress and tumblr, and I sometimes write for the Emory Wheel—so when I realized we would be writing a lot but in non-traditional way I was very interested in how the assignments would turn out. My first opportunity to practice writing in a non-traditionally academic way was when we were assigned our first BitStrip comic. I was excited about this assignment because I had used BitStrip in the past. There are always time periods where new apps come out and everyone uses them and talks about them on social media. I remember the “BitStrip craze” that took place a few years ago. All of my social media feeds (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) were filled with BitStrip comics. So when we had to create one illustrating a conversation based on what we learned from the readings in The Participatory Cultures Handbook and the Fuchs readings. Most of the other assignments that we did around this time garnered a similar reaction from me. I enjoyed creating the interactive quiz, and the Socratic Dialogue because each of these assignments allowed for me to use what I learned from the readings and apply my knowledge in new ways. Writing essays can become redundant but the variety in the types of assignments we had combatted this.
Throughout the semester, another difficulty I found was with the readings. Many of the readings were very dense. I have trouble concentrating and staying focused on difficult readings, but I did learn things from the readings. The assignments following these readings such as the blog responses to PCH and Fuchs, the book review to Wark’s Spectacle of Disintegration, and the Kelley and Mickenberg presentation were all assignments that took time and thought, but reiterated the information presented in the text. This is important when trying to understand new information.
Another aspect of the course that I found difficult was the midterm project and it’s components. First, there was an infographic. I had never of nor created an infographic before and it seems confusing in the beginning. This scared me a bit because I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do well on the assignment with no prior knowledge about infographics and no peers that could explain it to me. In the same way I felt that it was very difficult to write the Literature Review for the midterm project. The midterm project was just difficult overall because of all the components required to complete it. Despite the difficulties I found while doing the project, I did learn a lot. I learned to do individual original research. I also learned about all of the elements that go into creating a full research project. This helped me a lot while working on the final project, which I actually enjoyed working on a lot. Because of the work I had done on the midterm project and gained some experience in, I was much more confident when completing the final project. I am very proud of my final project and I worked very hard on it. I appreciate having the freedom to choose topics of research that we actually care about because it makes the work more intriguing and not such a drag to complete.
Overall, I learned a lot more than I expected to learn from this course. I expected to learn about social media, which I did, but I also learned to apply new and past knowledge in ways other than writing essays. There were times where I felt like giving up because the course work was so difficult for me, but I’m glad I did not because I am proud of what I have accomplished.
One of the things that interested me about the coursework was the different ways in which we would be writing. I’m a writer—I write in my spare time, I have my own personal blogs via wordpress and tumblr, and I sometimes write for the Emory Wheel—so when I realized we would be writing a lot but in non-traditional way I was very interested in how the assignments would turn out. My first opportunity to practice writing in a non-traditionally academic way was when we were assigned our first BitStrip comic. I was excited about this assignment because I had used BitStrip in the past. There are always time periods where new apps come out and everyone uses them and talks about them on social media. I remember the “BitStrip craze” that took place a few years ago. All of my social media feeds (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) were filled with BitStrip comics. So when we had to create one illustrating a conversation based on what we learned from the readings in The Participatory Cultures Handbook and the Fuchs readings. Most of the other assignments that we did around this time garnered a similar reaction from me. I enjoyed creating the interactive quiz, and the Socratic Dialogue because each of these assignments allowed for me to use what I learned from the readings and apply my knowledge in new ways. Writing essays can become redundant but the variety in the types of assignments we had combatted this.
Throughout the semester, another difficulty I found was with the readings. Many of the readings were very dense. I have trouble concentrating and staying focused on difficult readings, but I did learn things from the readings. The assignments following these readings such as the blog responses to PCH and Fuchs, the book review to Wark’s Spectacle of Disintegration, and the Kelley and Mickenberg presentation were all assignments that took time and thought, but reiterated the information presented in the text. This is important when trying to understand new information.
Another aspect of the course that I found difficult was the midterm project and it’s components. First, there was an infographic. I had never of nor created an infographic before and it seems confusing in the beginning. This scared me a bit because I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do well on the assignment with no prior knowledge about infographics and no peers that could explain it to me. In the same way I felt that it was very difficult to write the Literature Review for the midterm project. The midterm project was just difficult overall because of all the components required to complete it. Despite the difficulties I found while doing the project, I did learn a lot. I learned to do individual original research. I also learned about all of the elements that go into creating a full research project. This helped me a lot while working on the final project, which I actually enjoyed working on a lot. Because of the work I had done on the midterm project and gained some experience in, I was much more confident when completing the final project. I am very proud of my final project and I worked very hard on it. I appreciate having the freedom to choose topics of research that we actually care about because it makes the work more intriguing and not such a drag to complete.
Overall, I learned a lot more than I expected to learn from this course. I expected to learn about social media, which I did, but I also learned to apply new and past knowledge in ways other than writing essays. There were times where I felt like giving up because the course work was so difficult for me, but I’m glad I did not because I am proud of what I have accomplished.