Saving Private Lauren

I noticed that Lauren wrote her summary on my article instead of the one assigned to her. So, while I realize this is kind of last-minute, here is a (rather cursory) summary of HER article

Blakeslee's "Bridging the Workplace and the Academy: Teaching Professional Genres through Classroom-Workplace Collaborations"

1) the problem:
--People learn new genres through immersion and participation, but this is pretty tough to do with the classroom being a different activity network than the workplace.
--case studies are not effective (which she explains in more depth)
--there is conflicting evidence on whether classrooms can effectively teach with accurate/ample exposure, authenticity, and transition.
2) the solution:
--use client projects! Blakeslee defends these projects by looking at two examples of classes she taught. (one was from a large research state university tech comm class of undergrads. their project was to make an initial project proposal, an annotated bibliography, a preliminary design report/test results, an oral report, and a final recommendation, all for a company that wanted them to develop a set of icons for Unix documentation for a multinational audience. The other class was a undergrad/grad mix class on computer documentation at a large teaching state university made primarily of commuters and non-trads. they were supposed to document some list-serv's administrator/editor tasks.)
--blakeslee looks at the results through four criteria: exposure, authenticity, transition, and response.
--Exposure:  this is important to look at because if people need to be immersed in the AN to truly learn the genre, then you need as much exposure to the AN as possible. Blakeslee determines that her client projects were, although not perfect, good starts to immersing the students in new ANs and the academic conversations that take place there. she also says "classrooms can be productive sites for questioning workplace practices", so there's a nice balance still (356). she also reports that students found this exposure valuable.
--Authenticity: important to look at because students need to believe the project is real in order to be motivated and in order to avoid pseudotransactionality. It will make them more sensitive to audience and context, thus making them better writers. blakeslee admits that students still see projects as slightly artificial, but not totally, and not nearly as much as other typical assignments. this is because the students realized that their projects weren't like SUPER important to the clients. also because they realized that they didnt entail some of the more mundane aspects of work. she also says that it might be impossible to escape all artificiality in classrooms. still, the students said they appreciated the projects as not totally being textbook-based. they found these projects more motivating. they also understood the audiences better because they were more concrete, which resulted in them taking things more seriously.
--Transition: important to look at because students will move from classroom to workplace fully after they graduate, and they will optimally want to avoid typical reports of disorientation, frustration, and double binds when they move to this new AN. she says this type of project works well as a transition because students are on a boundary. students "get a taste of workplace practices while still experiencing the structure, support, and familiarity of the academic learning environment, a kind of guided legitimate peripheral participation" (361). students found that they appreciated the experience because there was less pressure than if they were simply taught to swim by being thrown in the water. it also allowed students to apply course content in structured and meaningful ways. it was also nice for some students to hear from experts who said they also sometimes felt overwhelmed starting new projects-- they learned that they weren't alone.
--Response: important to look at because the different sources of response (teacher or client) affect how collaborative and active students are in their work.  students got upset with the client feedback and as a result, loved the teacher's feedback. the clients were, according to students, either too nice or too critical. the too nice made students suspicious that the clients were just desperate for ANYTHING, and it didn't help them grow or improve. the critical comments werent appreciated because students felt like it was too final and evaluative, because thats what they were used to from other teachers, so they ended up resistant. they also sometimes complained that they just didnt get ENOUGH feedback, or that the feedback was too vague from clients. however, they definitely still wanted the client feedback, and i think its an important part of the authentication process.
--blakeslee concludes by stressing the importance of more research on the subject, and encouraging people to think of more than the four issues she touches on. she also spends alot of her conclusion talking about questions teachers of client projects should be asking themselves. A few include: what is the nature of the clients work and what genres are typically produced? how much exposure will the students get to the workplace? what kinds of tasks will they need to do and will these be useful in the workplace? where will they do these tasks? what resources do they need for them? how much structure does the teacher and client provide? how will the work be evaluated and to what extent does the client factor into this evaluation?
3) questions:
a) what are other ways of getting students to bridge the gap, or start thinking of the classroom as more workplace-like? especially in terms of grading...
b) similar to applying theory to practice, how can we get students to apply theory in these very practical client assignments?
4) connections:
-- very similar to spinuzzi because both talk about the importance of immersion in acitivity networks in order to learn genres. also because it tackles avoiding pseudotransactionality through authenticity.
connection to info design one because one student said the exposure was valuable because it make him aware of "the WHOLE PROCESS of documentation", which reminds me of one of the defiintions given on info design. similar to spilka because working with both teacher and client, and in both classroom and workplace is a sort of cross-boundary communication.