Citing My Students: Links and Recs

As a teacher, I'm always struggling to figure out good assignments that will cause my students to think, engage with the material, explore their own interests, and, hopefully, present me with papers that won't bore me out of my goddamned skull while I'm reading them. (In case you didn't know, most professors consider grading the single most awful thing we do for our paychecks. I don't know, I think scanning articles for uploading is worse; occasionally papers are interesting.)

This semester, I gave my students an annotated bibliography assignment. Twice during the semester, they have to find 10 sources having to do with Middle Eastern diasporic communities, write a properly-formatted bibliographic entry for them, and then a short paragraph about how the material relates to class. A source could be anything--an event, a blog post, a YouTube video, a book.

I got a huge number of interesting sources from the students in their first round of assignments. From my perspective, this assignment worked--the students learned (mostly) how to use Chicago style to cite sources (a big problem in my previous classes), they read and watched other interesting things about Middle Eastern diasporas, and now I have a bunch of cool recommendations to read for later. I'll have to ask the students if they liked it, but this one might be a keeper for future classes.

(Incidentally, my attempt to do response papers was a total failure, as most of the class simply hasn't turned them in. Folks who are/were in American universities and colleges as undergrads: are several short response papers (2-3 pages) a part of your experience of humanities and social science classes? What types? I'm mystified by the fact that my students don't seem to understand that they have to do them.)

Here are some of the highlights from the assignment. From my students' computers to yours!

( graphic novels, interviews, and YouTube videos )