Each course module has assigned reading that you are expected to read and think about. Each module will also have posted reading questions to help you check your comprehension of the main claims and arguments within those readings.
To assist you in this process, you will work with your classmates on Perusall to collaboratively annotate the readings within each course module.
2 modules are assigned each week, and so the annotations of their readings are due at the end of the week that those 2 modules are assigned.
For these purposes, each week ends on Saturday at 12:00PM (noon), Buffalo (Eastern Standard) Time. However, keep in mind that you also have an automatic additional 36-hour grace period for making your weekly annotations.
Nothing is assigned during the week of Fall Recess, and so you do not need to do any social annotations that week.
- Here’s What I Want You to Do
- Here’s Why I Want You to Do It
- Here’s How to Do It
- Here’s How You’ll Earn Philosophy Experience Points
- Using Philosopher’s Stones
- Considerations for Your Perusall Account
Here’s What I Want You to Do
Make at least 3 annotations to the reading for each module.
2 modules are assigned each week, so that is a total of at least 6 annotations per week.
Here’s Why I Want You to Do It
The purpose of social annotating is pretty straightforward: they have you work with your classmates to practice and build the skills for critically reading texts about ethics while connecting that material to your own experiences.
As such, social annotating gives you a basic starting point towards achieving the last 4 learning outcomes for this course:
| 2. | Explain and summarize arguments within philosophical texts, |
| 3. | Apply important ethical concepts and theories to various hypothetical and real-world situations, |
| 4. | Assess competing claims concerning the demands that morality places on your actions and decisions, and |
| 5. | Reflect on your own assumptions and form more considered judgments on moral issues. |
To these ends, work with your classmates connecting the readings to current events and your experiences, assessing the positions those texts try to establish, and reflecting on what it is you believe about all of this.
Here’s How to Do It
In general, each of your annotations must do at least 1 of these 3 tasks:
- Highlight text that you find particularly interesting, profound, and/or controversial—and then explain why you highlighted that text (that is, why do you find it interesting? or why do you think it profound? or why might it be controversial?);
- Highlight text that you believe helps us answer the reading questions, give the number(s) of the reading question(s), and explain why you believe the highlighted text helps answer the question(s); and/or
- Respond to the annotations made by your classmates, expanding in a substantive way on whatever it is they are saying.
Your annotations may do any combination of these task. The choice is yours.
No matter what task you choose, though, all your annotations must be…
- Relevant,
- Substantive, and
- Respectful.
By relevant, I mean that your annotations are clearly doing at least 1 of the 3 tasks above and not going off topic.
By substantive, I mean more than generic commentary, simply repeating whatever the text or a classmate says, or giving a thoughtless “I agree”. No matter which task(s) you choose, I want to see you presenting your own careful reasoning by substantiating your claims and providing concrete examples.
By respectful, I mean that you critically assess the claims the readings and your classmates are making while not attacking the person(s) making those claims. It is fine to disagree with the reading and your classmates—even with me!—but it is disrespectful to besmirch the integrity or character of another person. Indeed, personal attacks suggest it is your position that is weak and unsound. So please no flame wars, no bullying, and no being a jerk!
Here’s How You’ll Earn Philosophy Experience Points
You will earn up to 60 philosophy experience points for each module’s social annotations. With 2 modules a week, that is 120 possible points per week.
The number of points you earn will be based upon the Perusall autoscoring algorithm. This works by first evaluating each of your annotations as “deficient”, “improvement needed”, or “meets expectations”.
After that, Perusall takes into other considerations for determining your score. For instance, Perusall gives a small penalty if your annotations are not distributed throughout the reading. The idea is that you should be reading the whole text and not just one small part of it. Your score will also be slightly modified by other considerations as well, such as how many people are responding to your annotations.
The good news is that Perusall itself will encourage and help you make better annotations to improve your score. Because of that, I have found that this autoscoring algorithm works quite well. Even so, I will still regularly check its results, making sure that the points it awards are reasonable. Of course, if you feel that your annotations are not being fairly scored by Perusall, let me know and I’ll gladly assign your points myself!
Finally, be aware that each week I will add up the philosophy experience points you have earned from your weekly social annotations on Perusall and from your weekly discussion posts on Twitter. I will then cap that number at 120 points per week.
The purpose of capping your weekly philosophy experience points in this way is to give you flexibility in how you engage with the course material: are you the bookworm focusing primarily on the readings in Perusall? or are you the social butterfly having more general discussions with your classmates on Twitter? or are you a bit of each? Most importantly, I know some students are not comfortable using Twitter and so I do not want to penalize them for only doing social annotations on Perusall.
Using Philosopher’s Stones
You may exchange 2 philosopher’s stones for the Decipher Script philosophical power.
Decipher Script
Cost: 2 philosopher’s stones.Area of Effect: 1 week of social annotations.
Duration: Instantaneous.
You select 1 week of class and give up 2 philosopher’s stones. You then gain the full 120 philosophy experience points for that week’s social annotations.
You may do this at any time during the semester. For example, in week 12 you may use your stones for the discussion posts from week 3. For that reason, I encourage you to save your philosopher’s stones until the end of the semester. At that point, you may then decide whether to use them for any weekly social annotations.
Considerations for Your Perusall Account
This means that you need a Perusall account. The good news is that this should be set up automatically when you start clicking on the Perusall links I have posted on this website. (For instance, here is a link to the course page in Perusall showing all the reading assignments. Clicking that link should automatically take you to Perusall.)
The first time you use Perusall, please be sure that you are using your real first and last name, so I can identify you. I also recommend making sure that it is linked to your UB email. (When someone tags you on Perusall, you get an email message letting you know.) You may also need to enter your student ID. To keep things simple, please use either your UB Student ID Number or your UB email for that ID.
Keep in mind that you cannot be anonymous on Perusall. However, only people enrolled in the course will see your annotations. No outsiders are allowed!
If you have any trouble setting up or using Perusall, please do not hesitate to seek help from me.
Photo: Colleen Hayes / NBC.