Brooke Notes (30%, 30 points)
Brooke Notes are a note-keeping system designed to be routine, generative, usable, and accumulative throughout and beyond your graduate program of study. This approach to note-keepin, which I credit to Collin Brooke, takes as its first principle that if it warrants reading, it warrants annotation. Even more, scholarly and curricular reading warrants annotation that is right-sized (i.e., neither excessively thorough nor too thin to be useful later on) and built-up in a database that you can search later on. Whether or not that database is kept publicly is up to you; there are strong arguments on both sides of the decision to post such notes publicly or, instead, to keep them privately, and we will discuss some of these considerations in class.
Here are a few general provisions for Brooke Notes:
- Develop your notes entry while the reading is reasonably fresh, preferably within a few hours of reading and never more than a day later.
- Set a timer. Try to keep the development of your notes entry to under an hour.
- An entry's scope should be between 400-1000 words. Longer entries make sense for complex or inspirational articles and book-length works. Briefer entries are appropriate for most scholarly articles.
- Such note-keeping practices are habitual and accumulative; they will over time amount to a personal archive invaluable to the development of lit reviews and a reliable, lasting resource of personal knowledge.
Learn more about the rationale for this approach and the basic guidelines for developing a Brooke Notes entry over here: http://www.cgbrooke.net/2014/01/16/reading-notes/. Each entry should—at a minimum—include the following:
- A title. Lastname, Firstname. Title of article, abbreviated, if necessary.
- A full citation adhering to MLA or APA style. This should be complete and correct, ready to copy into a bibliography, references list, or works cited.
- A one- or two-sentence summary, or an abstract. This should capture concisely what is the focus of the reading. If an abstract is already available, it is fine to copy/paste it into your notes. But writing your own abstract is excellent practice, too, as such summaries are challenging and require a thorough sense of the reading.
- Keywords/tags. A list of 5-10 keywords or phrases that index the entry in terms of important terminology, methods and methodologies, sites/materials/objects of analysis, and theoretical underpinnings.
- 2-3 citations. These are sources cited in the reading that you consider especially important, insightful, and possibly worthy of your tracking them down as reading cascades into further reading. Include the full citation information.
- 2-3 quotations. These are gem passages, either for the ways they capture striking ideas, pose questions, or connect with things you are thinking about, working on, or considering important. Include a parenthetical page or paragraph number to make the quotation easy to locate later on.
- 1-2 questions. These are questions you formulate that articulate the edges of wonder and prime further exploration.
A complete Brooke Notes entry will include all seven of these features. It may also include some discussion, if you wish, of salient issues or reminders of ways the reading connects with other readings or your other work—whether that's tied to your teaching or some other project.
Brooke Notes in WRTG500
As part of WRTG500, you will develop six Brooke Notes entries at a minimum. The first Brooke Notes entry is due by Monday, September 21. This is a complete entry on one of three articles assigned as reading that evening: Phelps, Lauer, or Vealey and Rivers. Plan to post your notes in one of three places: either on a Wordpress blog you create (you can use a blog you already have, if you prefer), in Evernote, or in Google Drive. Remember that you can develop more than six entries throughout the semester, and those entries can come from readings you do in other classes or in reading you select for yourself. However, among the six required entries for WRTG500, you must include the following:
- Inaugural entry (due Monday, September 21).
- Two entries on specific threshold concepts.
- Two entries on articles assigned as reading for the class.
- One entry on an article from the journal you profile for Monday, November 2.
These six entries together will be considered as 30% of your course grade for WRTG500. A work-in-progress check-in will take place on Monday, October 26. Plan to have at least three entries completed by this date. Remaining Brooke Notes entries must be completed by Monday, December 7. Selected entries will be included in your end of semester portfolio, as well.
Contact Information
Derek N. Mueller, PhDAssociate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing
Director of Composition
Department of English
Virginia Tech
Office: 315 Shanks Hall
Spring 2020 Office Hours: T, 12-3
Phone: +1-734-985-0485
dmueller@vt.edu
http://derekmueller.net/rc/
