ENG 111 — Composition and Rhetoric
Summer 2013
Instructor: Ryan Ireland
Section: UC
Day/Time: Online class
Contact: Feel free to email anytime; I will have my Google
chat open on Fridays from 7:30-11 am and 1-5 pm. If you see I am on Google+ at
any other times, you can still contact me! If you are a Twitter user, you can follow me at @bryangreenland (use #eng111 for class-related issues).
Email: irelanrp@muohio.edu
Description
ENG 111, Composition and Rhetoric, is a writing course
focused on principles and practices of rhetoric and composition useful for
producing writing that is effective for its purpose, audience, and context. ENG
111 focuses especially on helping students learn and apply rhetorical
knowledge, methods, and strategies; analyze and construct arguments using
techniques for rhetorical analysis and inquiry; understand, refine, and improve
their composing practices; and develop the intellectual and analytical skills
necessary to produce effective writing at the college level. The course
emphasizes rhetorical inquiry and invention, promoting critical questioning,
exploring, and researching, and teaching skills for planning, analysis,
research, and development of ideas for a particular academic or public
audience. It also teaches principles of effective organization and style and
strategies for revision, editing, and proofreading. A key purpose of the course
is to teach students to deliver writing in a variety of contexts, including
digitally networked environments.
As a Miami Plan Foundation course, ENG 111 meets the broad
goals of a liberal education: to nurture your intellectual capabilities to
think critically, to understand diverse contexts, to engage with other
learners, and to apply knowledge and skills learned through effective
reflection and action. The intellectual skills developed in this course will
help you in your academic writing at the university but also in your future
civic, social, and professional endeavors.
Course Goals and Outcomes
• Rhetorical Knowledge. Students demonstrate an
ability to write effectively for different contexts, audiences, purposes, and
genres (particularly academic contexts, audiences, purposes, and genres) and
demonstrate their awareness of audiences’ multiple perspectives.
• Composing process. Students engage the
composing process using effective strategies for developing ideas; researching
topics; producing drafts; revising, peer responding, editing, and proofreading
their writing; and delivering their writing via print and electronic media.
• Inquiry, invention, and research. Students ask
good questions, conduct research-based inquiries, and use invention techniques
effectively to explore their own ideas, to engage different perspectives, and
to develop findings into sustained arguments or narratives. Students can
locate, evaluate, integrate, and cite secondary sources of information
effectively and ethically, using appropriate academic citation methods.
• Organization, style, editing. Students produce
effectively organized writing that is stylistically appropriate and that meets
conventional expectations for particular audiences in specific contexts.
Student writing shows evidence of careful proofreading and attention to
mechanics, appropriate to audience and context.
• Digital and multimodal rhetoric. Students
effectively produce, share, and publish their writing using appropriate
technologies for production, editing, commenting, delivery, and sharing of
files. Students demonstrate critical awareness of the unique affordances and
limitations of diverse writing technologies and modalities of communication,
both digital and non-digital.
• Reflection, meta-cognitive awareness. Students
apply concepts and terms from the field of rhetoric/composition to reflect
critically on their own composing practices and rhetorical decisions, including
decisions about the technologies used in the production and reception of their
writing.
A Chalk & Wire e-portfolio account (to be provided; paid for already out of your technology fee}
Required Texts and Materials
College Composition at Miami (Volume 66). 2013. Plymouth, MI:
Hayden-McNeil. ISBN 978-073804440-8 —> will be available online through
Coursesmart
Companion website for College Composition at Miami (Volume 65) —> http://ccm.miamiu.haydenmcneil.com/
Everything's An Argument (Fifth Edition). 2010. Bedford St. Martin's. ISBN 978-0312538620
Available through Amazon.
A Chalk & Wire e-portfolio account (to be provided; paid for already out of your technology fee}
See Technology
requirements, click here
Major Projects and Course Requirements
ENG 111 will be centered on five major writing inquiries —
as listed in the table below. Each inquiry is comprised of a number of
components, including online class activities, shorter blog assignments,
drafts, peer responses in Google Hangout, proposals, research notes, a
reflective writer’s letter, and a major final paper/blog post (or the
equivalent) for each inquiry. The major final paper for each inquiry will vary
in length. Inquiry #1 will result in a shorter paper (~1200-1500 words). The
other inquiries will result in longer papers (~1500-2100 words or the
equivalent). At least two of the papers will require that you integrate
secondary sources of research. Each of these major projects will require an
accompanying a reflective writer’s letter that asks you to explain your purpose
and audience for each assignment; to explain your rhetorical choices and
strategies; to reflect on your writing process; to describe what you did in
revision, etc. Most importantly the letter gives you, as a writer, a jumping off
point for the next assignment. The major assignment for Inquiry #5, the
e-portfolio project, is actually an extended projective writer’s letter asking
you to collect, analyze, and reflect on your writing and rhetoric through the
entire semester and give the reader some critical context for where your
rhetorical knowledge will help in the future.
Primary Inquiry
|
Focus
|
Percentage of Final Grade
|
Reflection on Community
|
Analyzing and reflecting on your rhetorical practices in
order to gain access to a
particular community.
|
10%
|
Rhetorical Inquiry
|
Rhetorical Analysis /
Using rhetorical analysis as a
method to analyze discourse in communities.
|
20%
|
Issue Inquiry/
Public Issue Argument
|
Researching and making a rhetorical argument about a
public issue.
|
20%
|
Media Inquiry/
Remediation
|
Understanding how the medium of discourse affects the
message. Looking at how rhetorical velocity and notions of community work
together in new media.
|
20%
|
E-Portfolio Inquiry/
Final Projective statement
|
Reflecting on your writing and rhetoric through analysis
of your coursework collected in an e-portfolio. Applying rhetorical
skills to future classes/work.
|
10%
|
**Participation
|
Participation includes online activities and workshops,
short blog posts, discussion groups through Google Hangout, etc.
|
20%
|
Grading Scale and Policies
A 100-94%
A- 93-90%
B+ 89-87%
B 86-84%
B- 83-80%
C+ 79-77%
C 76-74%
C- 73-70%
D+ 69-67%
D 66-64%
D- 63-60%
F 59% and
below
• Specific criteria for each major assignment will be
explained and developed in class. However, all writing you produce in ENG 111
should meet the following general criteria: (a) The writing meets the
requirements and parameters for the assignment; (b) the writing is intelligent,
well-informed, respectful of others, grammatically competent and stylistically
fluent, well organized, and, most importantly, rhetorically effective for its
purpose, audience, and context.
Late Assignments: Completing your work, meeting deadlines,
turning your written assignments in on time, and keeping up with assigned
activities are crucial in this class, both to your own individual learning and
development as a writer but also to the smooth functioning of the class
overall. It is in your best interest to keep up with assignment due dates and
to not fall behind on submitting required work. The policy regarding late
assignments is this: All assignments must be completed and submitted by the designated
deadline (due dates and times are listed in the course schedule). Any
assignment that is late will be downgraded by ½ letter grade for each day late
(counting weekends and holidays). An assignment that is more than three days
late will not be accepted and will receive a grade of 0 (or F). If you have
a conflict with a due date or time, remember that you can always submit an
assignment early in order to meet a deadline.
• Participation is a vitally important component of online ENG
111, constituting a significant portion of your grade for the course. There are
a number of ways that you will be expected to participate and/or collaborate in
ENG 111: You will be asked to blog and respond to others’ Google posts in a thoughtful
manner. Likewise, you will be asked to participate in small group discussions
via Google Hangout. The most crucial aspect to participation though is consistent
engagement with the class. Put simply, you need to log on and communicate every
day listed on the syllabus. Additionally, weekends should also be used to
complete readings and post about them. A lack of engagement in a 6-week online
course usually makes itself evident rather quickly since it is easy to fall
behind schedule. So plan on being “in-class” Monday-Thursday. As with everything
in English, there is an exception: If you are observing a religious holiday as
defined by the university, you are excused.
Other Course Policies
Attendance
The Miami Bulletin Student Handbook, Chapter 9,
“Class Attendance,” Section 1.9.A, states: “Every student is expected to attend
every class session for which the student is duly registered.” For further
details about the University’s attendance policies, see http://www.units.muohio.edu/reg/bulletins/GeneralBulletin2012-2013/class-attendance.htm.
Because acquiring and developing writing abilities requires
a different kind of instruction and learning than in other types of courses at
the university, attendance policies for composition courses are often very
stringent. Much of the learning in composition classes happens through “engaged
learning” in class: via in-class inquiry activities, in-class writing
assignments, and group interaction that cannot be easily made up or replicated
outside of class. Thus, regular attendance and participation are extremely
important to your success and learning in any composition class.
An online composition course is no different — even though
“online attendance” is defined differently than attendance in a traditional
face-to-face class. For an online class, you “attend” by being actively
involved — by writing essentially: e.g., by posting questions, by responding to
classmates’ work, by submitting your work on time, by reading and responding to
email in a timely manner, by interacting with the instructor and with the other
students in the class through the various tools and applications we will be
using. You will be attending and participating in class via Google Hangout,
discussion board postings, virtual conversations, peer review, reading
responses, email, and other class venues. The online attendance policy is
this: You must be present and active online for every defined class period of
the summer term — and that means 4 days per week for the 6-week summer term. In
addition, you will be required to attend 5 synchronous class meetings (for
purposes of class discussion and peer review) to be scheduled in the Google
Hangout space. Once you commit to a time for these meetings, it will count as
an absence if you are not present. You are permitted a maximum of two (2)
unexcused absences for this class. If you miss more than two your final grade
will be lowered by 1/3 for each day over two that you have missed. If you miss
five (5) or more classes during the summer term, you will receive a grade of F.
Tuition Refunds
In this compressed online course, the window for a full tuition refund is significantly smaller than that of a traditional semester-long class. Consult http://www.units.muohio.edu/bur/refund/#SummerRefund for more details
Tuition Refunds
In this compressed online course, the window for a full tuition refund is significantly smaller than that of a traditional semester-long class. Consult http://www.units.muohio.edu/bur/refund/#SummerRefund for more details
Academic Integrity/Plagiarism
Two key features of academic integrity are honesty and
truthful representation of self. The assumption in ENG 111 is that the writing
you submit is your own original writing — that is, produced originally for this
class. The expectation is that you will appropriately identify that portion of
your work which is collaborative with others, or which is borrowed from others,
or which is your own work from other contexts. In other words, you should
credit others’ contributions to your work. You should not claim, as your own,
writing that is not your own. To do so is considered plagiarism, a serious
violation of the principle of academic integrity.
To copy someone else’s writing without acknowledging that
use is an act of academic as well as professional dishonesty, whether you
borrow an entire report or a single sentence. The most serious forms of
academic dishonesty are to “buy” an entire paper; or to have someone else write
an assignment for you; or to turn in someone else’s entire paper (or
significant portions of an existing piece of writing) and call it your own.
These forms of dishonesty constitute serious breaches of academic integrity. If
you have doubts about whether or not you are using your own or others’ writing
ethically, ask the instructor.
For further details about Academic Integrity at Miami
University — including a detailed list of examples of academic dishonesty and
procedures and penalties for dealing with instances of academic dishonesty —
see http://www.muohio.edu/integrity/undergrads.cfm.
Backing Up Your Work/File Formats
You are responsible for keeping copies of your written
course work — at least two copies in two different locations — so that if you
should have an MSF (massive system failure), you can recover your work. I
recommend storing your work on Dropbox or Google docs so they can be accessed
from a computer at your public library, local Kinko’s or a friend’s house. Platform
compatibility, file transfer, and e-mail attachments are sometimes irritating,
though rarely unsolvable, problems. In short, “My computer broke” is the 21st
century equivalent to “My dog ate my homework.” It is not a valid excuse. It is
your responsibility as sender/writer to submit files to your instructor and to
your classmates in an accessible, readable format. Most of your papers will be
submitted to me through Google Docs.
Help Resources
• Your classmates. Rely on one another for the
questions you have regarding the readings, the work we’re doing in class,
software we may be using, etc. You all, both individually and as a collective,
embody a vast bank of knowledge and experiences. Feel free to use Google
Hangout amongst yourselves to organize study sessions if needed.
• Your Instructor. I will do all I can to assist
you in succeeding in this course. Feel free to meet with me during my online office
hours or another scheduled time. Email is a reliable way to contact me and I
will try my best to respond in a timely manner. Keep this in mind: office hours
are not to make up for missed classes. I will instruct during class time; your
job is to be present and engaged. Office hours are reserved for additional help
and clarification.
• IT Support Desk (http://www.units.muohio.edu/mcs/suppctr/suppdesk/).
The support desk is the main point of contact for technology questions at
Miami.
• Equipment checkout at the library. The King
Library Circulation Desk checks out digital cameras and laptops to students.
The digital cameras can be checked out for a 24-hour period and students are allowed
to leave the library with the camera. Laptops can be checked out for a
three-hour period and they must be used inside the library. The Circulation
Desk also offers for sale flash drives, digital camera memory cards, blank
DVDs, and blank CDs.
• Howe (King Library) and Windate (18 Peabody) Writing
Centers. The Howe Writing Center is located on the main floor of King
Library. The Center is staffed with writing consultants from many different
academic areas. In a one-on-one workshop, a staff member will consult with you
concerning work-in-progress, final drafts, research style, and many other
aspects of writing. It is best to schedule an appointment ahead of time, but
you may also walk in on days when they have consultants available. For further
information, visit the student resources site at http://www.units.muohio.edu/cwe/studentresources/.
• If you have a learning disability, please speak to me
early in the semester so we can discuss your learning style. I am willing to
work with you to establish a plan for academic success and life learning. You
can also obtain additional information and support from the Office of Learning
Disabilities Services 513-529-8741 or The Office of Disability Resources
513-529-1541.
• The Learning Assistance Center. Provides tutoring
and other academic services, and a Learning Disabilities Program. It is located
in the Campus Avenue Building. For more information, contact the Office of
Learning Assistance at 513-529-8741 or Disability Resources at 513-529-1541.
• The Student Counseling Service. Adjusting to
college life is hard and it helps to talk to a professional. Do not be offended
if you come to me with a personal problem and I refer you to this service. While
I know quite a bit about English composition and writing, I am not a counselor.
Personal problems should be treated by the people who can help you the most
just as your English class is taught by an English professional. Located in the
Health Services Center, this office provides a wide range of counseling
services. For more information, call 513-529-4634.
• Your Own Web Site/Server. Every Miami student has a
web space (called Universal Disk Space, UDS) for storing files and for
designing and publishing a website. To publish web pages on the Internet,
follow the instructions at http://www.muohio.edu/wwwsetup.
Your web page address will be http://www.users.muohio.edu/UniqueID/
(UniqueID should be replaced with your own unique ID).
• Miami University Technology Guide (http://www.units.muohio.edu/mcs/information/policies/shtml).
This is a list of MU’s policies on such matters as computer security,
responsible use of computing resources, and MU Net account policies.
