This webpage constitutes this semester's final exam assignment, to be updated until Monday, 4 December, when paper copies will be distributed.

Relative weight: app. 50% of final grade

Format & schedule: Iemail; open-book and open-notebook. Attendance not required on 11 December 2016.

Deadline for email submission is 11:59pm Tuesday, 12 December. 

Students may use classroom during regular class period and turn in exam by arrangement with instructor. Instructor keeps office hours 1-4 & 7-10 on 11 December.

Final grade reports will be emailed 5-10 days after the final exam date.

Special Requirements:

Title all three essays.

Text requirements: Essay 1 requires 3-4 texts since midterm, but you may also refer to pre-midterm texts for examples. Essay 2 requires at least 4 course texts (2 since midterm) and four outside references (details below). 

Website expectations: You are expected to refer to materials on the appropriate course instructional pages for the "Scenarios of the Future" you select for Essay 1.

Content: 3 essays

Essay 1: Course Content Essay: “visions or scenarios of the future” (6-8 paragraphs) Referring to 3-4 (or more) texts (at least 3 since midterm), organize a comparative discussion of 2 or more “visions or scenarios of the future” (Obj. 2). Compare and contrast your selected scenarios in terms of their visions of the future and their literary styles and appeals.

Essay 2: Complete Research & Reading Essay (7-10 paragraphs total, including revised Essay 2 from midterm): Referring to course readings and outside sources, revise and extend the Essay 2 Personal / Professional research topic you started  in your pre-midterm and midterm. Explain your interest, your research, your learning, and its potential significance to self, career, society, etc. Review, rethink, and revise what you wrote for your midterm Essay 2 and connect to new paragraphs for final exam. Apply your research and learning to two or more texts since the midterm and integrate at least two additional outside sources.

Essay 3: Web Highlights (5-7 paragraphs): Review at least 3 student contributions from course website's Model Assignments

Final Exam Content Details—Three (3) Essays total

Essay 1: Course Content Essay: “visions or scenarios of the future” (5-8 paragraphs) Referring to 3-4 (or more) texts (at least 3 since midterm) and to the appropriate "term-pages" for each scenario, organize a comparative discussion of 2 or more “visions or scenarios of the future” (Obj. 2). Compare and contrast your selected scenarios in terms of their visions of the future and their literary styles and appeals.

2. To identify, describe, and criticize typical visions or scenarios of the future (seen from 2015).  

a. High tech; virtual reality—slick, cool, unreal, easy with power (+ cyberpunk style)

b. Low tech; actual reality—rough, intimate, messy, hungry, warm, real

c. Utopia / dystopia & ecotopia—perfectly planned worlds / dysfunctional worlds / + ecology

d. Alien contact—exploring and being explored

Length: 5-8 paragraphs of 4-5 sentences each.

Text requirements: at least 3-4 texts since midterm, but you may also refer to pre-midterm texts for examples.

Possible prompts: alternative terms for "visions and scenarios": thought-experiments, storyboards, outline, features, dimensions, aspects, possibilities, options.

What did you know or sense of your scenarios before? Refer to previous readings, films, or other media.

Why did you choose the scenarios you chose? Why do they matter to you, based on your previous knowledge, reading, or viewing? (Refer to specific examples from 3-4 course texts.)

What did you learn about how these scenarios are presented or their consequences? What appeals to readers? What downsides or repulsions? (Refer to specific examples from 3-4 course texts.)

What kind of future is modeled? Decline or progress? Utopian / Dystopian? Hope or fear? On what basis? (Refer to specific examples from 3-4 course texts.)

What kind of future do you want to live in or read about?

Advice for combining or relating scenarios:

compare / contrast High Tech & Low Tech

compare or combine High Tech, Low Tech, & Ecotopia; or Low Tech & Ecotopia

compare or combine Alien Contact & High Tech

compare / contrast Alien Contact & Ecotopia

Using "Entertain & Instruct" spectrum, compare / contrast frequently-escapist appeals of Alien Contact and High Tech with instructional appeals and social engagement of Ecotopia and Low Tech.

Discuss one or more of the scenarios and their stories as representatives of science fiction or speculative fiction style and appeals.

Connect scenarios to narratives, styles, and appeals of pre-midterm terms and themes; e.g. apocalypse, evolution, alternative futures, post-apocalyptic.

Essay 2: Research & Reading Essay Concluded (7-10 paragraphs total, including revised Essay 2 from midterm): Referring to course readings and outside sources, revise and extend the Essay 2 Personal / Professional research topic you started  in your pre-midterm and midterm. Explain your interest, your research, your learning, and its potential significance to self, career, society, etc. Review, rethink, and revise what you wrote for your midterm Essay 2 and connect to new paragraphs for final exam. Apply your research and learning to two or more texts since the midterm and integrate at least two additional outside sources.

Describe what you learned from outside sources regarding your research topic, and apply the significance of what you have learned to your personal / professional future or our collective future.

"personal" = what you've learned or thought before + personal future

"professional" = application to student career, teaching career, or other professional plans

"collective" = application to our common future, how we work and learn together (or not)

Text and Research requirements: Revise and extend the draft you wrote for your midterm, adding if possible at least two additional course texts since midterm and at least two additional outside sources. (If course texts can't apply, explain which texts come nearest or account for your attempts to fit your topic to our course readings. If outside primary reading works better, bring in those texts for discussion too.)

"Outside sources" may include some combination of primary, secondary, or background sources from our course website, the internet, library research, reading for other courses, and / or personal reading. The prestige and quality of these sources may have varying effects on the quality of your essay, but much depends on how well you identify and integrate the ideas that catch your interest.

Primary sources beyond our course readings can include fiction, films, video games, TV series, documentaries.

Secondary sources might include a course term-page (e.g. science fiction, millennialism) and / or a previous Essay 2 on a similar subject written for the 2011, 2013, or 2015 Model Assignments. Other impressive possibilities include scholarly articles and books accessed through UHCL's Neumann Library have the most prestige and bring the most credit. Film or video documentaries on your subject count for good credit.

Background sources might include interviews with teachers or other knowledgeable acquaintances; encyclopedias, and companions to literature that provide basic generic, biographical, or historical information. Background sources on the Web start with Wikipedia or other more or less specialized websites providing common knowledge or basic information on varied topics. Documentation at such sites can lead you to more specialized sources.

(You don't have to do all three—just detailing options.)

Essay 3: Web Highlights (5-7 paragraphs): Review at least 3 student contributions from course website's Model Assignments

Assignment: Review at least 3 submissions from previous semesters' submissions on the course webpage’s Model Assignments page and write 5-7 paragraphs (total) on what you found and learned.

Requirements & guidelines: Web Highlights essay must have a title.

Your selections for review may be from any final exam model assignments, but final exam Essay 1's may be the most helpful to your own Essay 1's content.

  “Review”: describe what interested you, where, why you chose it, what you learned. You may criticize what you found, but not required.

To identify passages, copy and paste brief selections into your web review or refer to them using names, locations, paraphrases, summaries, and brief quotes. (Both options in models.) Either way, highlight and discuss language used in the passages as part of your commentary. Critique what you learn.

What did you learn from reviewing model assignments that you didn't learn from in-class instruction?

Note on organization and grading: Some students fulfill assignment by going through 3 assignments individually, one at a time until finished, with few or no connections between the separate models.

Better submissions unify the three reviews into a whole, purposeful essay in which the learning experience of one review connects to the learning experience of another, and your entire learning experience is previewed and summarized in the essay's introduction and conclusion.

Successful submissions sometimes start by identifying a subject of special interest, then choosing Model Assignments that meet this interest.

Sample Web Highlights from LITR 4368 2017 midterms & from other courses: