Course Requirements

Attendance:

This online section of ENGL 110 makes use of online writing activities, one-one-one conferences, and peer review. Consistent participation will be very important to your success in this class. There will be reading and writing requirements each week–as well as a series of required individual virtual or in-person meetings with the instructor. While some of these activities are informal and low-stakes, they carry real weight in terms of your final grade.

Class Participation:

This class seeks to create a collaborative and engaging virtual space.

Your grade will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

• Demonstrating engagement with course materials by posting–consistently and on time–complete and thoughtful responses to frequent discussion posts on OAKS
• Attending required our one-on-one conferences prepared to discuss your work.
• Thoughtfully and thoroughly commenting on your peers’ writing assignments during online peer review sessions as assigned
• And successfully completing all of the four major projects in the course.

Class Climate & Netiquette

In any class, the student is not simply a learner; students also play a large role–often as much as the teacher–in helping to encourage the learning of others. As students, we do this by being respectful and open-minded in our response to the work and ideas of others.  This applies equally to activities that occur online. Your thoughtful comments in on OAKS mean a lot. Please take your role as a facilitator of learning seriously.

To maintain a respectful and supportive environment, please uphold these rules of etiquette / netiquette:

• Be kind and ethical.  Avoid using sexist, racist, and homophobic language in your writing and speaking; it will not be tolerated.  Ask yourself, “Would I say this to the person’s face?” If the answer is no, rewrite.
• Be aware of how your digital communication may be perceived by others.  For example, if you use ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, will folks feel like you are angry or shouting?  Or, if you have a dry sense of humor, will your sarcasm be evident or might folks misinterpret your message?
• Be forgiving.  We all make communication faux pas, so ask clarifying questions rather than attacking.  But if you experience any questionable or outright inappropriate behavior from your peers, please let me know.
• Respect disagreement.  I expect everyone in the class to respect others’ rights to speak, to listen attentively to what is said, and to use discretion and sensitivity when speaking.  This does not mean you have to agree with everything said. Debate is a valuable component of a learning community. However, I expect you to be respectful of me and of your peers.
• Share your knowledge.  As Bill Nye says, “everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.”  You are an expert in something (perhaps many things), so if that expertise becomes relevant, share your knowledge!

Technology:

Our official course website and blog will be hosted on WordPress. We will also be using OAKS for less formal discussion posts, to host protected readings, and and for the gradebook. On our course website in WordPress, you can find the detailed course schedule, relevant policies related to class participation and grading, links to resources, and all of our assignment sheets. Most importantly, the course website is where we will publish the final drafts of our major projects.

• • Wait, do I have to pay for WordPress? No, it’s free!
  • How do I set up a user account? The instructor will create your account for you when needed and provide relevant instructions to set up your access to the posting feature..
• Google Docs: I will use Google Docs as a way to schedule one-on-one conferences and as a way to review and comment on rough drafts. You will need to familiarize yourself with how to share access permissions to your work in Google Docs, including adding editing and commenting permissions to specific groups.
• OAKS: Oaks will house a link to our syllabus, our discussion posts where we will respond to readings and perform our peer review tasks, and the Gradebook.
  • All my professors keep talking about OAKS and I have no idea what they mean! Help? OAKS is our campus’s learning management system where many courses are housed. I am always here to help answer questions. In general, though, it’s pretty easy.
• In addition to these tools, you will be tasked with a final multimodal “remix” presentation in which you are invited to explore a range of digital tools, from website builders, to social media outlets, to mapping and timeline programs, to infographic creators. Creating in digital environments always involves learning and risk, and I look forward to working through these explorations together.

Staying in Touch: 

In any course, predictable and timely communication between students and the instructor is essential. You are responsible for checking your CofC email on a daily basis. You can expect me to reply to your e-mails within 24 hours with any questions you might have.  You will regularly receive important information and updates via e-mail. I do not use the OAKS “announcement” feature frequently.

Virtual Office Hours: 

In this class, I tend to work most closely with students in our required one-on-one meetings, but I will also hold office hours by appointment and have broad availability to meet with you in person or virtually on Zoom. Just send me an email with a meeting request and we can like find a time to meet within 24 hours.

Conferences:

Conferences are one-on-one meetings that present an opportunity for a more focused dialogue about your writing and your goals.  Conference sign-up sheets will be linked on the course schedule and distributed via e-mail.

Assignments:

For this course, you will complete four major projects in addition to a number of preparatory assignments, reflective activities, and blog posts.  I will distribute specific guidelines for each assignment well in advance of the final due date.

• Sustainability Literacy Narrative (SLN), 750-1,000 words. Literacy can be defined more broadly as a fundamental knowledge base that allow us to navigate a range of sectors relevant to life and work. What, for example, does emotional literacy, or technological literacy, or financial literacy mean to you? What about sustainability literacy? In this assignment, you will explore this last question by composing an original sustainability literacy narrative. This assignment will help you think about your relationship to sustainability, writing, and complex ideas related to sponsorship.
• Rhetorical Situation Analysis (RSA), 1,250-1,500 words.  In this assignment your knowledge of classical rhetorical principles and grounding concepts in the field of sustainability will inform your argument as you analyze an artifact of your own choosing, commenting specifically on its argumentative structure, rhetorical appeals, and overall effectiveness.  In this assignment, will also begin to consider the ways in which context impacts an argument.
• Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Academic Conversations (EAC), 1,500-1,750 words. In this assignment, you will write a source dialogue (also called a “literature review” in many fields) the engages a minimum of four sources.  You will choose a range of sources–at least three of which must be academic, peer-reviewed sources–that together offer a focused disciplinary or interdisciplinary conversation. Working with these sources, you will orchestrate a research conversation, noting points of agreement and disagreement, insight and oversight, as you focus on skills including transitioning, paraphrase, summary, analysis, and quote integration.
• Genre Remix (GR) (variable length): The previous project (EAC) was already something of a re-mix: you took an academic conversation and “translated” it to a broader audience. In this final major project of the course you will be using your knowledge of genres within and beyond academic contexts to address a new audience. In order to do this, you will remediate your EAC project into a new genre of your choice. For example, you might produce a video, create a website, design a twitter campaign, compose a photo essay or a song, write an op-ed, create an academic poster, or work in any other number of genres.

GRADES:

ENGL 110 Evaluation Criteria:

For each major assignment, we will discuss evaluation criteria as related to a dedicated grading and feedback rubric. These rubrics are intended to award your hard work and improvement as well as the overall quality of the project.

Final Grade Distribution: There are 100 possible points in this course. 

• Discussion Posts (1x or 2x per week, including peer review posts) 20 total: 300 points or 30% of your grade. 
  • The final number of discussion posts will vary, but grades will be distributed equally among them. Discussion posts will have a simple rubric an you will receive full credit for posts that are clear, largely error-free, and address all of the requirements for th post. You will receive half credit if there are requirements missing. You will receive a zero if you do not participate.
• Sustainability Literacy Narrative (SLN): 150 points of 15% of your grade
• Rhetorical Situation Analysis (RSA): 200 points or 20% of your grade
• Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Academic Conversations: 20% of your grade
• Genre Re-mix (GR): 150 points or 15% of your grade
• Commenting Bonus: up to to points or 5% of your grade. Each time you offer an earnest and substantial (4-5 sentence +) reply to someone else’s discussion post–or a reply to someone else’s reply–you earn a point. Once you post 10 replies (not including your peer review replies), you will receive a 5% bonus for the course, which would raise your grade, for example, from an 85% 5o a 90%. This bonus section of the grade rewards consistent engagement with and attention to the work of your peers.

Grading Scale:

• A-Range: 97-100 = A+, 930-969 = A, 90-92.9 = A-
• B-Range: 87-89.9 = B+, 840-869 = B, 80-83.9 = B-
• C-Range: 77-79.9 = C+, 740-769 = C, 70-73.9 = C-
• D-Range: 67-69.9 = D+, 640-669 = D, 60-63.9 = D-
• <600 = F

Academic Integrity Statement 

What follows is CofC’s academic integrity policy. For this class, this relates to how you cite the work of others. Plagiarism of any kind will not be tolerated. Please ask questions if you’re unsure how or when to cite the words and ideas of others.

As members of the College of Charleston community, we affirm, embrace and hold ourselves accountable to the core values of integrity, academic excellence, liberal arts education, respect for the individual student, diversity, equity and inclusion, student centeredness, innovation and public mission.  Congruent with these core values, the College of Charleston expects that every student and community member has a responsibility to uphold the standards of the honor code, as outlined in the Student Handbook, In pursuit of academic learning, you are expected to reference the work of other scholars, and complete your own academic work, while utilizing appropriate resources for assistance.  Any acts of suspected academic dishonesty will be reported to the Office of the Dean of Students and addressed through the conduct process.  Your adherence to these practices and expectations plays a vital role in fostering a campus culture that balances trust and the pursuit of knowledge while producing a strong foundation of academic excellence at the College of Charleston.  Any questions regarding these expectations can be clarified by your instructor.