Each of the four groups should now have a set of reports and a set of answers to (or reports on explorations of) the questions you posed for yourselves last time. The next thing to do is pull that together into one report to the rest of us, and a recommendation about what should come next with respect to your writer and your text(s).

So, between now and Monday at class time, assemble what you know into one readable report, describing the text or texts, placing them in context for us, and including a list of the resources you used. To make this more doable, I've set up four wiki sites, which anybody in the group can edit, and to facilitate that work, I've also created four temporary email lists -- locke@stu.ca, montagu@stu.ca, paine@stu.ca, and swift@stu.ca -- such that if you send an email to the address it will be distributed to all the members of the group and to me.

Use the time you have during class time today to decide on how best to do this. I'd suggest looking at the documents you have and marking sections to include, and perhaps copying and pasting them into the wiki for editing later. Aim for completeness and inclusion rather than telegraphic brevity; these reports may need to substitute for the experience of reading the texts in question. If someone's not here, post an explanation of what's going on to the group list.

As the last section of your report, make a recommendation: should we be satisfied that we've done what we need to with this writer (at least until we discover a new reason to do exploration), should we go further and read other works, or should we all read together and discuss some specific selection (and, if so, why?)

And at the bottom include your list of sources consulted -- where you found texts by the author, and where you found information about the work or its context.

Working with the wiki

If you haven't worked with a wiki before, please know that all you need to do is click the the "Edit" tab at the top; and the "History" tab will allow you to go back to any previous stage (so you can't inadvertently mess the whole thing up -- or, well, if you do you can always fix it. The whole point of a wiki is to enable people to edit texts collaboratively.

A suggestion: you might decide on a set of parts, each under a subheading, and work on those separately. Remember, this isn't an essay, it's a report. The essay, since the time of Montaigne, who invented it, has been a vehicle which featured the individual, unique voice (that's worth bearing in mind, in a course focused on nonfiction prose). The report, however, is the voice of a group, and as such doesn't really need the kinds of personal connection-making that characterize the essay.

You should, at least in theory, be able to do all this without meeting outside class time -- but if you find that likely to be useful, go for it; the email list should be a help arranging that.

Have your wiki saved by class next, time, an be prepared to tell us how to read it, and fill in problems you had or issues you think we should know about that you didn't fit in.

Self-assessment, feedback

I expect to respond to the self-assessment postings over the weekend. You might want to look at the ones posted by others, and see what sorts of things people had to say about their learning.

I also usually conduct a sort of anonymous survey in which people can discuss what's working for them in the course, and what's not, as a way to channel and make useful the kinds of things that might otherwise wind up, irrelevantly, in a self-assessment, and might help me improve the way the course is working.  I expect to have a survey form up by the weekend, and I'll leave it up for at least part of next week. Watch for a link to it on the main course Web page.