Spring 2024 Schedule

SCHEDULE

WEEK ONE__________________________________________

Introduction:

Welcome to your section of Academic Writing! My name is Professor Vander Zee. You can read a bit about me here. And free to address me as Prof. VZ if that’s easier. During this first brief week, we will familiarize ourselves with the course website,  get acquainted with the general arc of the course, cover basic policies and expectations, and review the technologies we will be using. You will also have the opportunity to ask questions you might have as we begin the semester.

Wednesday 1/10

• Read / View
  • Course Website: Read all of the information on the main home page as well as the information under the “Requirements” tab. You are also welcome to explore the important information related to campus resources that will help you succeed in this class and beyond. Everything you will need to know in terms of assignment sheets and schedule is available on the course website. OAKS will be used primarily for informal discussion posts and for uploading rough drafts of your assignments.
  • Sustainability Blog–AKA the “S-Blog”: Our major assignments this semester will be published to the course blog. On this blog, you can find examples of past student work for all major assignments. Work published to the blog will by default be public, though you can opt to change how your name appears and you can also opt to make your post “private.” I will cover these details related to privacy in a tutorial video before we publish our first major assignment. There is no need to worry about that at this early stage.
• Optional Assignment Due:
  • Please ask any questions you have about the course in the “Course Introduction” thread on OAKS

WEEK TWO__________________________________________

Introduction:

This week is dedicated to important introductory and reflective work: introducing ourselves; getting a broad overview of what “sustainability” means; thinking about writing; and thinking about ourselves as writers.

Tuesday 1/16

• Read / View:
  • Visualizing Sustainability
• Assignment Due:
  • Discussion Post 1–Due Tuesday 1/16 at Noon. As you learned when reading the course description and watching the intro video, this course is loosely themed around ideas of sustainability, which can relate to both personal and public matters, and which extends from environmental concerns to matters of equity and economics. All of us can relate some aspect of our academic, personal, or community-based interests back to sustainability. This first post is both analytical and reflective.
  • For this post, choose one of the representations of sustainability from the link above. In a post of 300-400 words, first discuss its strengths and/or weaknesses. What does it teach you about what sustainability means? If the graphic has an “argument,” what would it be? Then, at the end of your post, spend some time writing about how your current academic, personal, or community-based interests relate to sustainability. This could relate to how you live your life in a way that is sustainable, how important issues related to your academic or career interests tie back to sustainability, or how the way you engage in your community through service or social-justice activities reflects certain sustainability-based values.
  • This is an important reflection, as you will be able to choose what to write about, analyze, and research in this course. The more fully you can align the work you do in this course with your actual, real-life interests and passions, the more relevant and meaningful it will be.

Friday 1/19

• Read / View: 
  • Mike Bunn, “How to Read like a Writer“
  • Ruxandra Guidi, “Real Men Drive Electric Trucks” (PDF if needed)
• Assignment Due: 
  • Discussion Post 2–Reading Like A Writer, due by noon on Friday 1/19. In a post of 300-400 words, share some of the ways that you applied the most helpful tips and tools in Bunn’s essay to some aspect of Guidi’s essay. In your post, be sure to do the following:
    • Use a dynamic title (e.g. not just “discussion post 1)
    • Cite quoted evidence from both Bunn and Guidi as you read Guidi’s article “like a writer,” paying attention matters of style and organization and audience and tone that you might otherwise just gloss over. Feel free to focus on what you felt was successful or less successful.
    • Conclude by reflecting on where you think you are in your own “writerly” approach to composition. What are your strengths as a writer? What do you feel less confident about? How do you hope to improve over the course of the semester?

Introduction

This week we will introduce the idea of literacy as a guiding concept. We often think about literacy as the ability to read. But literacy can be viewed more broadly as encompassing our knowledge about, and ability to act within, any given situation. Literacy relates not just to our ability to navigate, say, English, but also to how we navigate the any “languages” we engage with every day–the kind of language we speak among friends, among family, and in professional setting. Beyond literal speaking and writing, financial literacy extends to complex matters from budgeting and estate planning. Emotional literacy speaks to our deepest abilities to connect authentically with others–to understand the language of emotion. Various literacies are what allows us to successfully navigate life. But how do we become literate in all of these ways? What kinds of people and institutions have both inspired and at times thwarted our attempts to gain literacy (again, broadly considered) at key moments in our lives? And what might it mean to develop a kind of “sustainability literacy”?

Tuesday 1/23

• Read / View:
  • Deborah Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy” (available in OAKS) under the “Readings” module.
  • Jamila Lyiscott, “3 Ways to Speak English“

• Assignment Due: 
  • Discussion Post 3: Warning–this is a five-part prompt! Feel free to number your responses or just use a fresh paragraph for each of the five questions.
    • First: In your own words, take 2-3 sentences to describe what you think Brandt’s article is about.
    • Second: How would you describe the author’s research methodology? That is, what method did she use to study this topic and help her arrive at her conclusions?
    • Third: The article focuses on various constraints and tactics related to our ability to gain and wield various literacies: differential access to literacies (stratification); pace-of-change as new literacies replace old literacies (competition); and tactics of re-appropriation where we use tools gained in one context and apply them to another. These reflect the main sections of the article. Choose one of these sections that appealed to you most and take 4-5 sentences to describe the main point of the section, including how the central illustration (the human example offered) relates to the main point. Then, take another 2-3 sentences to come up with your own illustration taken from your own observations of the world.
    • Fourth: This is an academic article composed for an academic audience. Approaching this work as a non-specialist requires that we do our best to identify and translate jargon-heavy phrases and sentences to unpack their meaning. Select a particularly confusing idea or sentence, share it with the class, and do you best to unpack it.
    • Fifth: In addition to Brandt’s article, you also watched Lyiscott’s TED talk on code-switching. Please apply some key concepts from Brandt’s article to Lysicott’s talk.

Friday 1/26

• Read / View:
  • Andres Edwards, excerpts from The Heart of Sustainability (2015). Available in OAKS in the “Readings” module.
  • Writing an Effective Summary
• Assignment Due: 
  • Discussion Post 4–Due Friday 1/26 at Noon. Using the tips learned from looking through the linked resource on Writing an Effective Summary, compose a ~500-word summary of, and response to, the excerpts from Edwards’s book. The bulk of your post should be focused on summary, and you should do your best to cover the major points in each chapter.  There are many organizational possibilities for your blog post, but whatever you do, please make sure to use paragraphs to help structure your summary. And please focus on developing meaningful transitions between different parts of your summary rather than simply writing phrases such as “in the next chapter.” Finally, make sure you dedicate at least 1 paragraph in the conclusion for your own detailed critical or constructive response. 

WEEK FOUR_____________________________________

This week, we will begin work on our first major assignment–the Sustainability Literacy Narrative. We will familiarize ourselves with the assignment and analyze examples from past 110 students using the feedback rubric. By the end of the week, we will have submitted our rough drafts in preparation for next week’s one-on-one conferences and peer review assignments. Make sure you thoroughly read the assignment sheet and email me with any questions that you might have.

Tuesday 1/30

• Read / View:
  • Assignment Sheet for Project 1: Sustainability Literacy Narrative
  • Strategies and structures for the sustainability literacy narrative: Sustainability Literacy Narrative Feedback Tool
  • Select the SLN Sample Category Link on the main course website and review the sample literacy narratives, all of which were authored by former 110 students.
• Assignment Due:
  • Sign-up for SLN one-on-one conferences next week
  • Discussion Post 5–Due Tuesday 1/30 at Noon: This is a two-part post.
    • First, select one of the sample Sustainability Literacy Narratives and take 200-300 words to use 3 criteria from the Sustainability Literacy Narrative Feedback Tool to analyze the essay. You can focus on the essay’s strengths or weaknesses, but always be constructive in your criticism. Please be clear about the criteria you are applying, and quote from the essay you selected, providing evidence for your reflections along the way.
    • Second, reflect on some possibilities for your own narrative. Use the following thoughts and questions to to help brainstorm as you compose this part of your reflection.
      • What area of sustainability seems more relevant to your life story? These can relate to what Edwards would describe as the external landscape of sustainability–things like business, issues of equality and access, education, social justice issues, community service areas you’ve engaged in, environmental advocacy and awareness, experience with matters of equity and access. They can also related to the internal landscape of sustainability–things like creativity, consciousness, compassion, and connectedness. Often times, the extern landscape relates in important ways to these more internal elements–for example, the connection between education and consciousness, or compassion and service.
      • When you think about how you became to develop a certain knowledge or awareness of a certain area of sustainability–that is, when you became “literate” in that area–what helped you or hindered you in attaining that literacy? What helps or hinders can be individuals or groups, but also institutions like schools or political systems or churches or places of work.
      • Make sure you focus on something that you can tell a detailed story about–something that gives you, as the main “character” of your story, something to do that reflects the core values you hope the essay reveals.

Friday 2/2

• Assignment Due:
  • Sustainability Literacy Narrative (SLN) Draft: Due Friday 2/2 @ noon. Please compose your draft in Google Docs and use the “Share” button to create a link that gives editing access to me (vanderzeeal@cofc.edu) and commenting access to anyone with a link. Then, start a new thread under the SLN Peer Review and Feedback forum. Introduce your paper and provide a link to it. Please also describe three areas or aspects of your paper–related to the SLN feedback rubric–that you feel you could use feedback on.

WEEK FIVE______________________________________

Introduction: 

Congratulations on submitting the draft of your first major assignment! This week, you will offer feedback for one of your peers and receive some feedback in response. You will also meet with me individually (virtually or in person) to discuss your drafts. By the end of the week, you will submit your final SLN drafts to the course blog, just like our SLN samples that we read, focusing on composing as dynamically as possible for an external audience and incorporating images and links to achieve clear and compelling document design. The linked blogging instructions will help get you started and we can also go over some basics in our one-on-one conferences.

Once we make it through this week, we will have a clear sense of the process we will follow for each major major project: first, we engage with key background material for each assignment; then we explore examples of past student work in relation to the evaluation rubric; then we go through a process of drafting, review, and revision. Each project introduces a set of key concepts and skills that we will continue to build upon. The goal is to make things as clear and predictable as possible!

Tuesday 2/6:

• Read / View:
  • Richard Straub, “How To Respond–Really Respond–To Other Students’ Writing“
  • Writing Tips (note linked readings within page)
  • On “Good Writing”
  • Assigned Peer Review Partner SLN
  • Blogging Instructions
• Assignment Due: 
  • Discussion Post 6–Due Tuesday 2/6 @ Noon. After you submit your rough drafts on Friday 2/2, I will assign you a peer review partner. Please read their thread introducing their papers and identifying areas for potential feedback. Please leave comments on the google doc and also compose a reply to their thread that addresses the prompt under the relevant Topic in OAKS (where you submitted your draft). The things you write about in your response should relate to comments you make in the Google Doc.  Your feedback should be substantial–aim for around 500 words. You can’t cover everything in this space, but you can cover a substantial amount.

*** Final SLN project published to the blog by Sunday 2/11 at Midnight ***