Fluent Essays

------------------- PROMPT ----------------------------we will continue the exploration of remote teaching, based on what youve learned through your own experience, through your analysis of journals, through your reading of other peoples key theme documents in peer review, and through your discussion with classmates. The first document you wrote was a discussion of themes that you found in your analysis of the journal materials. The second document, for this assignment, is a report to the university on the experience of remote teaching, with a set of recommendations for both technological and policy solutions that you think the university should implement to smooth remote teaching in the future. As throughout this class, you should imagine that you have been recruited as an organizational IT consultant, using your knowledge of organizational practice, gleaned from the lessons of this class, to provide a service to your client, UC Irvine.As with Assignment 1, well do this in stages -- first, a drafting stage; then a peer review stage; and then a revision stage. Weeks 7 and 8 will be the drafting stage; peer review will happen during week 9; and youll have week 10 to revise based on feedback. (These reports are longer, so youll have just one other report to review in the peer review stage.)The analysis that you provided in the prior assignment forms the basis for this one. It is fine to reuse and restate that analysis, although you should revise it in light of the shift of audience (from me, to the university administration). Your document should comprise the following elements:Executive summary (a one-page summary of your findings and recommendations).Statement of the context and an explanation of the data sources that you are using.Analysis of the data.Specific recommendations for the university to implement.Items (3) and (4) should be the bulk of the report. It should be written in a formal tone. The projected document length is 3500-4500 words.For this part of the assignment, 2.1, you should generate a first draft of this document for peer review. That is due on Sunday May 24th. As with the first writing assignment, thats a strict deadline, since the peer review process will begin automatically once the due date passes. Also like the first writing assignment, this draft wont be graded.------------------------- DETAILS AND GUIDANCE ABOUT THE PROMPT----------------------------------I wanted to post a little more guidance on how you should think about the second writing assignment.As a reminder, the first assignment was directed to me, and focused on discourse models. The second assignment, by contrast, is directed to the university; you should imagine that Im going to send it to the Vice Provost for Learning and Teaching (and perhaps I will!) There are four implications of this:First, I had noted that you didnt need to bother explaining to me in the first assignment that we were engaged in remote teaching and what Id asked you to write about. (Some of you did anyway, which is fine.) This time, though, since you are writing for a different audience, you will need to explain a little more about the context in which youre writing (ie, that youve been asked to make recommendations for learning and teaching in the face of remote operations) and what material youre drawing on (journals, your own experiences, other things, as applicable). Second, the recommendations that you offer are going to drive things. Your report is building towards a series of recommendations you make about how to address the organizational challenges of remote teaching and learning. So when Im asking you to discuss your data and analysis, it would be sensible to focus these on things that lead towards or justify the specific recommendations that you are going to offer.Third, although I was asking you to focus on discourse models in the first assignment, thats not a consideration here. Im going to guess that the Vice Chancellor isnt terribly interested in those. So you do not have to present your recommendations in terms of discourse analysis. (Maybe the discourse analysis youve done offers particular insight that you want to share; thats fine, of course. But its not required.) Im guessing that this will make this assignment easier; youre not being graded on the specific mode of analysis that you adopted.Fourth, the tone should be formal, communicative, and practical.Although Im asking you to imagine that the report would be forwarded to the Vice Chancellor, you should couch your recommendations and comments in the third person (ie, say the university should... rather than you should...).In the first assignment, because you were doing a discourse analysis, I asked you to work specifically with the journal entries that were assigned. You can certainly use those again, although you can also draw on other data sources, including your own experience. We all know much more about remote teaching than we did at the start of the course -- and you guys know more about it than I do because youve been experiencing even more of it than I have! So feel free to draw on those experiences too, and on what youve heard from your colleagues. In particular, you have been in multiple classes and so I imagine that you can compare experiences of classes taught in different ways, classes with different kinds of content, and so on. You can certainly make use of that.Its fine to reuse ideas from the first assignment. You dont need a whole new set of ideas (although your own thinking might have evolved). But even if you are going to explore some of the same themes, you probably cant just cut-and-paste from the old document, because the frame, the tone, and the focus will be different now.Im asking you to write an executive summary. Its fine that it repeats material from elsewhere in the document; in fact, Id expect it to. (Its a summary, after all. Although it goes at the start of the document, I recommend that you write it last. When I say it should be a page, I mean, no more than a page.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I HAVE ATTACHED ASSIGNMENT 1 For the first assignment I was assigned to read journal entries written by other students about how they are coping with the new online learning environment and I had to write a discourse analyses about what they are experiencing. So a lot of the findings are in my assignment 1 file that I attached to this doc.Please read the prompt and guidance carefully Please follow instructions and stay within 3500 - 4500 word count. assignment_1_4.docx Unformatted Attachment Preview After reading my colleagues’ journals multiple times, I was thinking and trying to dig deep about how they feel about this remote learning transition and also learning why they decided to write about their thoughts about this new system the way that they did. A word that was used very often in many reports is the word “anxiety”. This word was used in order to show the writers’ concerns about this new transition. This word was very common in the journals; many students use this same word in order to demonstrate their feeling of worry. According to the dictionary, the definition of the word “anxiety” is “a feeling of worry, nervous, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome”. The part of that definition that stood out the most in the context of the students’ journals is the “uncertain outcome”. Most students, at least all the journals I have read, have never had to deal with this full quarter remote learning transition; as a result they are uncertain about what to expect. This experience is new to both the students and the staff; therefore, students wrote about their uncertainty about what could happen to their grades which causes them to feel anxious. In one of the journal entries studied, the writer states that he/she is experiencing a lot of anxiety due to the fact that he/she has taken an online class before and it was a very bad experience for him/her. This same writer says that this change is the cause of anxiety, the word change was used to link the feeling of anxiety to him/her. Therefore change is a big part of the anxiety for this student. The word “change” is commonly used in the different journals. This word is used to describe the same thing even though the journals were written by different students. The word “change” is being used to describe the transition from a live and face to face interactive learning experience to a virtual and prerecorded learning experience. This is a common topic amongst most of the students because, according to the journals, this shift is very new to the students and this shift happened very suddenly. However, this word “change” wasn’t only used to describe my colleagues’ school learning experience, it was also used to describe the way this pandemic altered their daily lifestyles. Based on the journals, it was clear that most students have never experienced a pandemic that affects the world this severely; therefore, they all had to make changes in order to adjust to this new system and adjust to a new lifestyle. In one of the journals I was assigned to read, the writer states that he/she is not used to this idea of staying at home and not having human interaction, the writer then states that this change caused him/her to take interactions at school for granted. Many of my colleagues wrote about how this change caused them to lose discipline and also caused them to realize that they need to make change to their schedule so that they can cope with this change. Most parts of my colleagues’ daily lives has been affected by this whole pandemic; when something of this caliber is imbedded into society and affects everyone in society, then there has to be change in most aspects of our lives. My colleagues use the word “change” to demonstrate that what is happening is out of the normal and can last for a very long time; therefore, there has to be change such as the change in the educational system. This change in the educational system also causes many people to adopt new habits. For example, one of my colleagues stated that his/her sleep schedule has been negatively affected due to these changes. Another important key word that was very common in the journals was the word “adjusting”. The word “adjusting” is stated in the response to the major changes that have taken place due to this large scale pandemic. My colleagues have to adjust to every major and minor change that has happened due to this pandemic. One of my colleagues stated that it is very difficult to keep up with the different platforms of communication due to the virtual learning change; this writer is still trying to adjust to this change by frequently checking his/her communication platforms. This same colleague stated that he/she is using the Gmail search bar to keep track of class updates. Professors of every class sends a large amount of emails since this is the main way to communicate with students due to the change in the system; as a result, emails can easily get lost. As a result, this student was able to adjust to this change and just search for the classes by using the Gmail search bar to filter all the emails for the specific class he or she searches for. One of my colleagues stated that he/she is trying to adjust to this quarantine lifestyle and online experience. The word adjust came up in this person’s paper more than once. Since most things are not in the normal and not what we are used to, the students have to adjust in order to deal with the current problems. Adjusting can be difficult to a lot of people since it takes a lot of time to break old habits and start new ones. After we adjust we will be used to a new normal, this process takes some time and effort. The same colleague states that he/she is worried about assignments stacking up as he/she is still trying to adjust to this new system. The fear of not being able to adjust quickly enough is very common among the journals studied. A different colleague of mine states that his/her days are feeling uneventful and he/she is still trying to adjust to this new system. It is clear that adjusting is a very important topic to my colleagues. This word has been mentioned more than once in many different journal entries. If students do not adjust to the major and minor changes that are happening in their lives due to this pandemic, they will not be as successful as the ones who learn how to adjust. For example, due to the shift to the online learning system, students have to make sure they are paying attention to course deadlines and also regularly checking their emails for announcements; if the students fail to do that, they will miss out on assignments and instructions; as a result, this will cause them to not be as successful in their classes as the ones who are adjusting and coping with the change. Another vital element that will allow the students to be more successful than others throughout the quarter is time management. According to many students this pandemic has affected their daily routine and caused a lot of time management issues; therefore, the students that manage their time and stick to deadlines will have a more organized and successful quarter than those who are doing all the work last minute and event submitting incomplete assignments due to failure in adjusting to a new time management schedule. Another journal writer mentioned that the government and people are dealing with this pandemic “horribly” by not social distancing and hording supplies. This is also an example about adjusting to the current situation even though this writer does not use the word “adjust”; instead, this person uses the phrase “managing this pandemic horribly”. This writer was very upset at the government and at the people for dealing with this pandemic “horribly” instead of saying people are failing to adjust. In particular, the word “horribly” stood out to me. The reason that this particular colleague uses this word seems to stem from anger and frustration. Many of the journals conveyed a sense of boredom and sadness about this whole pandemic; however, this writer seems angrier and more frustrated than my other colleagues do. This writer didn’t use the word “bad” which is a more subtle and less emotion filled way of using the word “horrible”. This shows me the level of how much this person is frustrated; his/her choice of words convey a lot of emotion and anger with the government and society as a whole. This colleague also states “I am also super disappointed in how our government is reacting to this pandemic. It has really shown that America loves to think it is the best but in reality we are just a country that cares only about money”. In order to talk this way, this person seems to believe that the government does not care about people’s lives. This colleague’s choice of words make it clear that he/she is very angry and frustrated; as a result, this writer is venting about his/her concerns in the journal. Something that many students are happy about from the shift to the online learning system is flexibility. The word “flexibility” was brought up a few times in the journals. Although students like flexibility and not having to drive to school, they are also dealing with a lot of loss in discipline and they are dealing with a lot of procrastination. For example, one of my colleagues states “On one side, my schedule has become incredibly flexible. I can watch lectures when I want to and I can do homework when I want to. Every single day has the opportunity to be customized to my needs and convenience” this is an example of how this person is enjoying the flexibility of time. In the same paragraph this writer also states “However, the other side is that it has made it a lot harder to remain disciplined”. Another student states “Although it was obviously good for me that I would be able to organize my class schedule more flexibly, I was seriously concerned about whether or not I could finish all my classes with a good result”. This idea of flexibility seems to be a bitter sweet feeling to the students according to their journals. Almost everyone likes the fact that they now have more flexibility; however, it appears to come with a cost. The word “flexibility” portrays the sense of freedom and comfort. That is why my colleagues like this idea of flexibility; however they do realize that it can also distract them from their responsibilities. Reading these journals and learning why students have used certain words and phrases to express their emotions has been very insightful. Everyone is different and have different experiences; however, many students expressed some of the same feelings and used the same words to express those feelings. None the less, every journal was unique in its own way and everyone was coping with this change in learning experience in their own ways. Although some students have been coping with the whole shift in lifestyle and learning experience more quickly than others, they also expressed that they have endured struggles at some point during the adjustment phase. ... Purchase answer to see full attachment