Weigh of Showing

"Weigh of Showing" is a zine originally written for an Interactive Technology and Pedagogy class taught by Steve Brier and Michael Mandiberg at the CUNY Graduate Center. Through introspection, exploration, and engagement with education readings, the author considers the education process, research papers, and alternative methods of showing scholarly mastery. In Weigh of Showing,Jenna Freedman challenges the assumption that writing traditional research papers is the only valuable way for students to demonstrate their mastery and understanding of a subject. This zine, published in the Journal of interactive Technology and Pedagogy, outlines a new framework for teaching and learning that acknowledges the diverse set of ways in which students digest and communicate information. Freedman includes anecdotes from her childhood and college years that reveal her relationship to different forms of academic and practical knowledge. They encompass everything from taking a biology course as a depressed junior high student to working as a theater technician directly after college. Freedman ends with a DIY teaching manifesto, encouraging professors to develop their own strategies and techniques for assessing performance and imparting information in non-traditional ways. – Alekhya