| |
Submitting
The Final Exam
Substitute Project |
read this;
it's what you have to hand in |
1. Start with the cover sheet.
2.
After the Cover Sheet, insert the Summary
Essay.
3.
Immediately after the Summary Essay (use no dividing
sheets of paper), insert the individual group members'
submissions. Label each submission clearly
at the top as to which medium it covers and who wrote
it, and put them in
the order in which they are described in the
Media
section below.
4.
Insert one separate sheet, if needed, headed "References"
which lists only those sources to which you made
specific reference in the paper.
5. Upload: NOTE THAT ONLY ONE GROUP MEMBER WILL UPLOAD
THE PAPER.
This is a term-long project; do NOT leave it until the
last week. |
Structure of the Final Exam Substitute
Project
Summary Essay
Written Together as
a Group |
 |
Wrap it all up. You won't do this until the
end but it comes first in your submission. Work
on the topic both individually in each person's chosen medium,
and in connection
and correspondence with each other.
Two to three weeks before the final due date, start putting
together an essay that expresses as a group the whole experience of working on the topic
you chose, what you learned from it, your reactions to
it, how it fit with the other learning you did in the course. Include
1) an introduction that tells why you
chose the topic, how it is relevant to you as current or
future managers, and a brief description of the sources you will
be using;
2) a
body that tells how the elements all came together
(or didn't) to enhance your understanding of the topic, things you learned from the project,
and how you felt about those things.
Do NOT write about
the experiences of group work per se; this is about your
learning of the subject matter.
3) a conclusion that sums everything up, including a
specific statement of your recommendations for improving
the situation you wrote about. Be sure your
conclusion ties back directly to your thesis statement and to
some of the sources you used.
This
summary essay tells me what you learned together as a group; the individual pages help me see who
did what and with how much effort. I obviously do not grade personal
reactions, but I can rate you compared to your peers on
how well you pull together into a coherent and concise piece of
writing the experience and meaning of all you have studied. Do
not do this piecemeal without consulting each other and do not leave
it till the last minute and
then just toss it together; it always shows.
Individual Group Members' Two-Pages
Exploring The Topic In One Medium
Written Individually but
Approved by the Group
The group essay is followed by
a submission (not necessarily an essay) from each member of the group, each of whom has taken specific
responsibility for viewing the topic through one particular
medium as outlined below.
Each member writes their own submission, explaining what they studied
and how it is relevant to the group's topic, what they themselves
learned from their work (in terms of content not in terms of the
experience of working with a group), and how what they did contributed to
the group effort and learning. At
the start of each individual person's section, briefly summarize what you're talking
about and how it relates to your
topic. Then do what the instructions ask you to do for each
part. Do not give long involved synopses of movie or book plots.
Summarize in a sentence. Numbers of members in groups
will vary due to people dropping the course, and in the final
submission you are to do ONLY one area per-person-remaining-in-the-group. If someone was doing a poem for the fiction part and
drops the course, drop the poetry part from your paper, unless
perhaps the poetry person quit early and someone else wants to
switch areas, but don't switch too far into the course; time
moves swiftly in a semester and catch-up football is a rough
game! Try to choose the assignment to
these different areas in a way that best makes use of the
diverse talents in your group. Some people are better at some
things than others. For example, if I were in a group, you'd be
far better off asking me to review a work of fiction than to
dredge up statistics and analyze them.
Peer Evaluation
At various times in the
course and usually without warning I will ask for an in-class
(or online for Internet students) peer evaluation in which
groups will evaluate each other's contribution to the project so
far.
Media in Which to Study the
Group Topic (each group member chooses
one)
Do a literature search of the last one or two years and
prepare an annotated bibliography of two non-fiction books other
than your textbooks, and
two
journal articles that you consider important in the area you are
researching. The field of gender issues in business changes so rapidly that books
and articles written five years ago may already be out of date.
These must be print, not internet articles (the Internet is a
separate section).
This may sound strange in an
academic setting, but you don't need to fully read each book. When you do academic research,
you spend a great deal of time wading through a great mass of
material that is not relevant. You need to learn to skim quickly
to get the main gist and to decide whether it's worth reading
more of that particular source. So skim books and find two to
peruse more carefully. Do read
fully the two journal articles you settle on. Skim articles until you find two good
ones and then read them carefully.
Use articles from academic journals or
as close as you can to them. Academic journals are serious,
intellectual, usually peer-reviewed collections of writings (i.e.: not popular magazines). If
your field is very narrow or very new or too avant-garde or
controversial to have much
written about it in the scholarly journals (the scholars
who think they "own" the field because they
edit the journals often are not eager to publish
articles which challenge the status-quo), either
consider broadening your topic, or just do your
best to find what you can consider "academic" as opposed to "popular."
The popular press would be things like daily newspapers and magazines
such as Working Woman, or Mclean's.
What is an annotated
bibliography? It's
basically a list of books you find relevant to the topic with a
description of each one, including some personal
reactions. Here, for example, is what I might write in an
annotated bibliography about Sally Helgesen's book, The Female Advantage,
from which you do a reading for this course.
| Helgesen, Sally (1990) The Female Advantage: Women's Ways
of Leadership. New York: Doubleday/Currency. Takes us
through a day with each of four successful and non-traditional
women managers, covering the important topics of inclusion,
voice, and spontaneity in their stories. Because the book mixes the
women's own voices ("i" statements) with explanations
of what their unique and different leadership skills can mean
for the improvement of management, I found the book particularly
useful to me as both a women's studies professor and a business
professor. I also just had great fun reading it; it is well
written and entertaining as well as useful. |
| What
Not To Do in an Annotated Bibliography
|
Don't write gobblydegook
and don't fake it. Actually find the books and articles;
carefully peruse the books and read the two articles and
write something meaningful. A friend in
undergraduate school writing an annotated bibliography at the last minute at three
o'clock in the
morning, needed to describe a book that she
hadn't read and hadn't been able to find in the
library. She decided to fake it and wrote something like,
"not particularly useful, failing to cover many of
the crucial issues of the time." Turns out it was
the top book in its narrow field, written by the thesis
supervisor of the professor for whom she was doing the
paper! Review Academic
Honesty. |
Students are asking more and more often if
they can use Internet Journals - you may, but they must be
formal academic journals include that just happen to be
published on the Internet rather than in paper.
| Classics |
 |
In any field, no matter how current or
fast-changing, there are books and articles that are
"classics." In Marketing this would include Theodore
Leavitt's 1960 article on "Marketing Myopia", which I
still use in my Marketing classes today, forty+ years later. In
genetics we would find Darwin's Origin of the Species. In
the area of gender issues, an example would be Betty Friedan's The
Feminine Mystique.
Find one or two of these classics, read them
carefully, and write a review of them, including what the book
(or article) has contributed to the field, and telling why you
think it has become a classic.
Find a novel, short story, play, poem -- any writing that
isn't non-fiction, that relates to the issue you
are investigating; read it and write about it, linking it to
your topic. Be sure it's fiction. Fiction refers to works of
writing that are made-up, not true stories. Do not
include a copy, even of shorter pieces; tell me about it. The
point is for you to experience reviewing and summarizing a piece
of work to relate it to a topic. For all of these,
recognize that the piece of writing does not have to be directly
about your subject matter. If you're doing sexual harassment of
men, then Michael Crichton's Disclosure will be perfect,
but we can't always find a direct link. Look for supporting
characters, sub-plots, side issues; look for things you can
interpret as related to your topic. It does not have to be
direct. It also may be something you have read before.
Novel -
the usual thing we think of when someone says,
"fiction." Note that I do not necessarily require you
to read "good literature" here. We often can learn as
much from pulp fiction as we can from Jane Austen. I recently
supervised the Interdisciplinary Studies Masters thesis of a woman who analyzed Harlequin Romances and
the issue of women's self-image. At one point she realized that
none of her professors, who were turning up our noses at trash
literature, had actually read a Harlequin romance and that Christmas, Sarah
Benjamin made us each a gift of one. Sarah wrote
a superb thesis on her topic, successfully defended for her
Masters degree, and is now working on her PhD at Purdue
University.
Short Story
- There's a big difference in length between a novel and a short
story, but don't get in a knot over how many short stories you
might have to read to equal one novel. It's quality not quantity that
matters; you can read only one, or several if you choose. Short stories are generally known to be much
harder to write than novels, because they are shorter. As Stephen Leacock
wrote in a
letter to a friend, "I'm sorry this is so long, I didn't
have time to make it shorter." If you find a short story
you like, use it.
Play
- you can read one or go see one. I grew up on theatre and adore it.
You cannot substitute a film here for a
play because film is a separate area.
Poetry - A poem doesn't have to relate
directly by subject matter or title, that's
the beauty of poetry - you really do get to do more interpretation. A group one winter used Wallace Stevens'
"The Woman in Sunshine" which while not directly
about women in business, lent itself beautifully to
interpretation of their topic.
Humour - A
group in the Fall 2000 class of Women and Business gave me this
idea; they had great difficulty finding a novel related to their
subject, but found a book of awful anti-women jokes which they
wanted to analyze in terms of the damage that kind of humour can
do. What does the humour written about your subject teach you?
Humour is one of the major ways we as human beings deal with
oppression, especially women and often minorities (think of
Jerry Seinfeld's dentist who has turned Jewish for the jokes -
it's how they survived 3000 years of oppression; 5000, Jerry
corrects him). One of my long-time favourite books of feminist
humour, recommended by a woman who
took this course the very first time I offered it (Ruth McKay,
now Dr. McKay and a professor herself) is They Used to Call
Me Snow White But I Drifted. There also are some wickedly funny
comedians who deal with gender issues. One I heard on TV one
night saying to her audience, "I only have two
children..... that I know of." I don't think you have to
have had children yourself to appreciate the absurd humour of
that statement, and its reflection on men who indeed do have
children of whom they know nothing. A cover of one of the early
editions of Ms Magazine asked, "Do you know the women's
movement has no sense of humour?" and the reply on the cover
was, "No but hum a few bars and I'll fake it." The issue
dealt with the fact that liberated women do NOT find anti-women
jokes particularly funny.
Find a particular magazine that deals with your topic, either as
its main theme (e,g, Ms Magazine), or as frequent or
occasional articles (e.g.: Canadian Living, Macleans).
Review and critique the articles, either individually or as a
group or both, making clear their relevance to your topic and
whether or not you agree with the writer.
| Newswatch |
 |
Keep an eye out in any medium (except the
Internet) for news items about your
topic - things that are actually happening in the real world
today. Choose
several and write about how they represent current trends in your
subject area. Critique what you are reading/viewing/hearing.
Consider such issues as: Are they accurate as far as you can
tell? Is the reporting biased? How does control of the
particular medium affect what people get to hear or read or see?
| Television Review |
 |
This is a different category from your use of
television as a news source. Watch some sitcoms, soap operas or
other fictional show, or a so-called "reality show," either a set of shows from one series or a group of different
shows, and write about how your issue is seen by and used in
television entertainment. You cannot use a film shown on TV
here; film is a separate category.
| Film Review |
  |
Watch a film (documentary or fictional) relevant to
your topic and write about how it relates to your topic. See the Film
Strategy Sheet provided by York's Centre for Support of
Teaching for some ideas. Do not try to write your own submission using this format as it would take more than the number of pages you
are allowed, but you may find it
useful for ideas of what to look for in and say about a film.
Some possible films
Air Force One (woman VP
of the U.S.)
Chocolat
The Contender (US female Senator becomes President)
Evita
The First Wives Club
The General's Daughter
GI Jane
Mona Lisa Smile
Pretty Woman
Silence of the Lambs or its sequel Hannibal *
Sliding Doors
Working Girl
Wall Street
*use
the Hannibal Lecter films ONLY if you've already seen
the films; they're pretty graphic and I don't wish to be
responsible for horrifying you if I recommend it, but
both contain some fine portraits of some
of the issues of gender in the workplace.
Many films contain relevant parts
about working women even if that is not the main topic
of the film. One such film is Hearts in
Atlantis. Think broadly when looking for possible
sources. A film may deal mainly with a woman in a
non-management job but issues of management will still
be there.
|
Try the Internet Movie Database http://us.imdb.com
| It lists for example, a 1944 film called
Danger!
Women at Work and the following intriguing
note: Plot Outline: 3 women inherit a 10-ton
truck & decide to go into business.
|
Read the newspaper film reviews for ideas. Michael Stern writing in
the February 10, 2001 Toronto Star section on Careers said of
the film Fargo:
| "Frances McDormand
plays another understated leader in the offbeat 1996
comedy, Fargo. As Marge Gunderson, the calm, capable
local sheriff who tracks down some dim-witted but deadly
killers, Marge is the moral centre of the film. Marge is
also seven months pregnant." ...makes me want to go see the film!
|
| Statistical
Analysis |
 |
For those of you with a more numbers-oriented
view of the world, find some statistics relevant to your group's
topic. Present them in your section of the report in a way that
is meaningful; you must use the bulk of your section to analyze
and discuss the meaning of these statistics. Stats by themselves are pretty
dull and usually rather meaningless. Charts don't count as
writing, and can be included (if you feel you must) in an
attached sheet along with the References.
| The Internet |
 |
Surf the net and find out what's being said
about your topic. Use of this medium does not preclude your
finding reputable online journals for the literature search or
using it to find information such as from StatsCan; what you are
to do in this medium is to "surf the net" - look around in all
kinds of interesting places and report back on what's out there.
This is a different use of the Internet than going online to
find specific things that also are perhaps available in
libraries (e.g.: journals/statscan).
In addition to commenting on how your subject
is dealt with on the web, accept that what you find on the
Internet is not vetted in the same was as is material in formal
journals or even on television news shows and consider such
issues as how the Internet as a source is different from more
traditional academic sources, how reliable or correct the
information appears to be.
| Web Site |
 |
Create a website about your topic. This one is
new and wide open; you decide what and how much you want
to do. You have to actually create a website that can be put up
on the web. Either publish it to an Internet website and give me
the URL where I can go look at it, or publish it to a CD ROM
which you will hand in.
| Song Lyrics |
 |
Are there songs whose lyrics speak to your
issue? Don't write out all the lyrics as part of your
contribution, but describe how the
song as a whole, or some of its lyrics, relate to the topic. You
can attach the words to the song along with the Reference page,
if you wish. I
once used the lyrics to a song as the basis for a test question
in this course.
| Music Videos |
 |
How about music videos? Are there music videos
that speak to you about issues of gender in management?
Ads from anywhere - ads on television, ads in
magazines or newspapers, on the radio, on the Internet. Look at your topic as
it is seen in advertisements.
| Creative Piece |
 |
Do something creative and write about it, relating it to
your topic; do not hand in the actual piece of work; I can't
carry it home and I don't want the responsibility of keeping it
till it can be returned to you. Just tell me about it. We all learn in different ways and one of the ways too often
overlooked in university education is the creative. We all have
different skills and talents. Draw on these (pun intended) and produce
something creative. I have written two novels and a number of
poems based on the
theory and practice of what I teach in Women's Studies and
Business, and a further one based on the 1997 York Strike. You probably do
not have time to write a novel, but do something creative. In past
courses, students have drawn, painted, sewn, written, cooked,
sung.... this
section is limited only by your creativity. And don't tell
me you don't have any! That's just a myth perpetuated by adults
and teachers and parents who didn't like how openly you used to
express yourself when you were young. Artists are dangerous people! They often say things
that no one wants to hear. EVERYONE is creative! Explore it. Use it.
Being asked only to describe your creative
piece opens a whole range of things
you can do for this section. If you envision a huge art project,
you could describe it along with a brief
description of what it is and how it relates to your topic. Or
perhaps you just want to think about something. My first husband
was an artist and very much into "conceptual art" (I
thought it was crazy back then but have come over the years to appreciate it
more). While he never achieved the publicity that Christo did
hanging curtains across the Grand Canyon or most recently the
saffron curtains in Central Park in New York, or Chris Burden who
sold for US$150,000 as a piece of artwork the experience of
himself being shot in the arm (pistol, not vaccination), he did
a number of interesting things. You may want
to do a piece for the creative section of this project that involves
conceptualizing something creative.
If you have something special you'd like to do
but you don't find it here, email me or see me in class and ask
me about it; I'll most likely say yes.
