Inquiry into Action, Spring 2011

Here are two different rubrics that we will be using next week for our final presentations. The first one is the rubric used by the faculty evaluators; the second is for peer evaluation.  See you all in seminar this week.

RING Presentation Rubric

RING evaluations

Here is the description for all the final presentations and their order.

Thursday May 5^th,  JC Cinema, 9:30-3:30 pm

9:45 – 10:30 – Seminar D – Volunteer Fairfax (VF)

Volunteer Fairfax is a volunteer center that responds to the various needs within Fairfax and surrounding areas. Students are researching the specific needs of the region’s nonprofit organizations that Volunteer Fairfax can address, and the extent to which these organizations are aware of the services already provided by VF.

10:30 – 11:15 – Seminar C – Facets

Seminar C is working to analyze the effects of FACETS’ Hot Meals Program. This program provides a nutritious evening meal and Sunday morning breakfast to families and individuals who are homeless, living in and around three sites along Lee Highway in Fairfax, 365 days per year (over 42,000 meals per year). Students are assessing the importance of the Hot Meals Program for the clients who receive meals, the quality/quantity/and frequency of the meals provided, the demographics of recipients, and the motivation of the volunteers who sustain the Hot Meals Program.

11:15 – 12:00 – Seminar B – Fairfax County Public Library

Woodrow Wilson Library serves a very diverse Falls Church community where, at the last count, 71 languages are spoken.  It also attracts one of the highest proportions of in-library use in the Fairfax County Public Library system.  But no one knows exactly what those library customers are doing during their library visits   Seminar B is researching how patrons spend their time in the library, with the aim of helping the forthcoming renovation of Woodrow Wilson Library meet as precisely as possible the emerging needs of its local community.

12:00 – 12:30 – Break (a pizza lunch will be served in the Cinema Foyer)

12:30 – 1:15 – Seminar E – Opportunities, Alternatives and Resources (OAR)

OAR is an organization that seeks to help ex-offenders and their families with programs that reduce the chances for recidivism. Considering that access to quality employment is the number one factor affecting recidivism, our students are researching employer attitudes about ex-offenders and re-entry programs and which programs offered by OAR are most effective in accomplishing these goals.

1:15 – 2:00 – Seminar A – Centreville Immigration Forum (CIF)

CIF is an Interfaith organization that works to enhance the lives of the immigrant population in Centreville, VA through ESL training and various cultural exchanges. Currently the CIF is in the process of developing a Worker Center where day laborers can meet prospective employers and also find various  resources.  Students are collecting information to help CIF develop and sustain this worker center. Through direct contact with the day laborers and observational work, research centers on building relationships with the community in order to understand more clearly just what the workers and volunteers need to make this plan a success.

2:00 – 2:45 – Seminar F – Mason’s Office of Alcohol, Drug, and Health Education

Each semester, this office distributes tens of thousands of condoms on campus. Students are researching whether these condoms are used as they should be, and are more condoms (or different kinds of condoms) needed.

2:45 – 3:30 – Wrap up and debriefing

You may download the Learning Foundations Evaluation Rubric to keep a copy for reference.  Do let your seminar leader know if you have any questions.  We’re looking forward to exploring your work online.

One of our most important assignments this semester is the Community Events Observation assignment, through which you will examine how to work within a community to conduct research and generate positive change.  Here’s one way in which you can start this work for NCLC 203 on Monday, 31 January.

The University sponsors an annual Visions Series of lectures  by faculty on key social, political, economic, cultural and personal issues.  On Monday, 31 January, Associate Professor Rebecca Goldin  will talk about the uses and misuses of statistics in the media. These lectures are usually quite lively, with good Q & A sessions, and often followed by a reception with the speaker.

Although we would not normally recommend a formal lecture as a community event, this lecture is so relevant to our focus on Inquiry into Action, especially the segment on how we draw conclusions from data, we should be delighted to count this lecture as one (out of a total of 4) of your community event observations for this semester.  You will find detailed instructions on the concepts you should be considering before and during any community event in the guidelines for the assignment.  In the meantime, read the outline of the lecture below, and remember that the lecture takes place in the Center for the Arts.

Should You Believe It? Use and Misuse of Statistics in the Media

Rebecca Goldin
Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 7 p.m.

News accounts are filled with numbers and implicit advice. How much coffee is too much? Is the internet making us smarter or dumber? Do vitamins improve our health or harm us? In contexts as diverse as criminal courts, opinion surveys, and our personal health, statistics are playing a larger and larger role. Despite our need for clear rendering of numerical information, many media accounts using statistics are misleading.

Eye-catching headlines typically promote exaggerated benefits of medical treatment, exaggerated risks of everyday living, and tragic or comic opinions of survey respondents. We will use recent news accounts, both humorous and serious, to illustrate this process and to suggest how to become savvy news consumers. Numbers can be powerful when we move past politics and morality to clarify what science actually tells us, what it does not, and what it cannot.

We’re sorry that we were unable to meet with you today and look forward to finally getting started next Thursday. Meanwhile, be sure to look ahead with readings and look over the various assignments posted. This will help you a lot in planning for the semester.

One of the assignments you have is to attend four community events – we’re thinking meetings, hearings, possible lectures, etc. Look at what’s happening around Mason and around Northern Virginia to get an idea of what to attend.

Be sure to  check in at this site and we’ll keep you updated on various activities.

Enjoy the snow!

The 203 team

Happy New Year!

You will find  The Allegory of the Cave, for discussion on the first day of our learning community, at the History Guide website.  Please print the reading and bring it to class: if you copy the text and paste it into a word-processing document, you can adjust the type size to fit more text onto each page, and thus save paper.  Looking forward to our semester together…

Just a quick note from your faculty (check the faulty page to the right) to welcome you to NCLC 203.   We have been working hard over the fall to create as compelling a learning community as we can, and we’re looking forward very much indeed to working with everyone in the Spring.

In the meantime, our books for NCLC 203: Spring 2011 will be:

The Research Imagination: An Introduction to Qualitative and Quantitative Methods [Paperback]
Paul S. Gray, John B. Williamson , David A. Karp & John R. Dalphin
Cambridge University Press, 2007

A Writer’s Reference (Seventh Edition)
Diane Hacker & Nancy Sommers
Bedford/St. Martins, 2010

If you have any questions about the learning community, please do contact our team leader, Dr. Janette Muir, for information or guidance.  You will be able to locate her e-mail address on the George Mason University People Finder screen or via the Faculty page on this site.