Questions_Insights_Connections

When you finish a class’s readings you should be able to note a question, an insight, and a connection (a QIC). They are a consequence of active reading but quicker than a writing responses.

Keep each part to one to two sentences, anchored in a specific concept, example, or quotation. In class, you should be able to share and discuss each.

Question

A good question is:

• genuine: you want to know;
• specific: derived from a specific claim, passage, or example;
• higher-order: asks how and why rather than who or when (see higher-order questions);
• tractable: you can think about how the question might be answered.

Weak questions are predictable.

• “What is the Haber-Bosch process?” (recall)
• “How does this affect society?” (vague gesture)
• “How do we solve misinformation?” (sprawling)

Insight

An insight is your novel claim. Consider:

• naming a pattern the author leaves implicit;
• surfacing an assumption their argument depends on;
• identifying a tension between two of the author’s own claims;
• offering a counter-example, or a “screw-example” that sits on the boundary of a concept (see Making Sense of Concepts);
• applying the concept somewhere the author didn’t and considering what happens
• specifying a scope: “this holds when X, but presumably not when Y.”

Weak insights are mundane.

• “I found it interesting that corn is in everything.”
• “This shows how important food policy is.”
• “The author makes a good point.”

Connection

Make connections between the readings, previous readings, or things happening in the world or your life.

Weak: This connects to what we read about transportation policy.

Better: This food policy is akin to Robert Moses’ design for New York’s parkway overpasses: implicit decisions that affect the public unequally.