• Composition I is the study and practice of expository discourse to help students write more effectively. It emphasizes writing process, critical thinking, content development, organization, and style. Students will select their best work for their portfolio, which will be externally assessed.

The focus of this course is to help you improve as a writer of non-fiction prose for a college audience in an academic environment.

• Much of what we will study and practice can be used in many types of writing, from fiction to personal writing to business memos.

• But the primary focus will be on reading and writing for college.

• And the audience for your writing will be this writing community, the members of our class.

• Hence, note that we're working with very public discourse, not the place to deal with deeply held, dark secrets.

In brief, here's what we're going to do:

• Online activities/writing exercises--every week you will be writing short pieces about the writing and reading you're doing for the course. This is practice writing, to build your fluency, to help you discover what you think and to explore ideas with each other. These assignments will consequently help prepare for the essays you write and include active participation in Angel.

• Essays--you will write four expository essays. Each essay will be an analysis based on different articles, papers and discussions on American popular culture. Moreover, for each of these essays we will be exploring and evaluating the processes of writing. And sharing your writing with each other in Angel.

• Portfolio--near the end of the semester, you will choose the two essays that most exhibit your best writing. You will then get to apply what you've learned throughout the semester by revising and polishing these pieces till they shine. The majority of your grade will be based on this portfolio.

• For more detailed explanations of these aspects of the course, click on the links of each assignment category.

• Time--some of you may be tempted to squeeze in this class between the 60 hour a week job, the other 16 credits at LCC you're taking and the wedding plans you've got to have ready for December!

• Unless you're Herculean--or don't sleep--this won't work.

• Rule of thumb is that for every hour in class, you can expect to do two hours of study and preparation.

• This is a four credit course that meets four hours a week in face-to-face (f2f) classes.
  

  Thus, you should plan on spending 12-14 hours each week working for this class if you expect to succeed with an average 2.0 grade. Quite possibly more if you desire to earn a higher grade. By the way, this is not a suggestion. This is a requirement. You will not succeed in this course unless you have 12-14 hours each week to devote solely to the work in this class. See the attendance policy.

Not convinced yet? Here are some statistics from the last few years. Those who earned 70% or more in the semester's work--online activities/writing activities and essay process work--passed portfolio and earned a 2.0 or higher in the course at the rate of 96%. Those who earned less than 70% in the semester's work, passed portfolio and earned a 2.0 or higher at a rate of 43%.

Blinding flash of the obvious--you put in the time, and you'll have a much higher chance of passing (and earning high grades) than if you don't.

Recall that with any skill that you want to improve--playing the piano, catching a baseball, painting with watercolor--you have to spend hours every week for an extended time in order to get good at it. Same here with writing.

• According to the Course Schedule book, you need to establish a reading and writing level before registering. In order to enroll in WRIT 121, you must have the following levels:

• Reading: 5
• Writing: 6

• If you have any questions about how to establish a reading and writing level, call the Assessment Center at 267-5500.

• As I mentioned above, this is a transfer-level college course.

• Therefore, your reading abilities and strategies need to be strong.

• Although you have to have a reading level of 5 to get into this class, I would suggest for the online version of WRIT 121, you will need very high reading skills.

• Think of all the communication you get in a face-to-face (f2f) class:

• lecture
• question and answer sessions
• small group discussions
• large group discussions
• facial expressions
• body language
• doodling

• Virtually all communication that you get from me and from other students will be text.

• And this includes

• extensive and detailed instructions for assignments each week that you need to be able to comprehend and follow,
• real time chats,
• discussion forum conversations that you will need to reply to,
• drafts of essays that you will need to respond to,
• virtual lectures,
• email notes, corrections, deletions, pleadings, and such from me and each other.

• In addition, you will still need to keep up with the reading from our assigned textbooks so that you can participate in online conversation, write your writing exercises, and write effective audience-directed essays.

• Therefore, your reading abilities and strategies need to be excellent.

You will need to use a computer with a connection to the Internet and a web browser for online activities, word processing and email communication.

We will have access to laptops for our f2f meetings.

And the computer lab in TLC is open seven days a week. Click on the link for their hours.

• If you use a computer at home, click here for the minimum equipment and software requirements that you will need. The following additional notes are specific to this class, and need to be followed carefully.

1. High speed Internet, DSL or cable broadband is very close to essential. You can do the class with dialup, but it will be a frustrating and likely time-consuming experience.

2. RAM--the college web site notes the need for at least 256 Mb of random access memory (RAM). I suggest a minimum of 500 Mb, even better 1 or 2 gigabytes (Gb), especially if you like to have more than one program running on your computer at a time. Keep your eyes open for sales at Best Buy. You can often get 1 or 2 Gb for under fifty bucks.

3. Full-featured word processing software, preferably Microsoft Word for Windows, is required for this course.

   • If you do not have MS Word, or WordPerfect, and cannot afford either, you can download for free OpenOffice at http://www.openoffice.org/. It should meet all of your needs for this class, though you may have to experiment to get the formatting right.

• Avoid Microsoft Works.

• Students have become very frustrated trying to format effectively with the program, and it often will not translate rich text format files (RTF) effectively.

• And don't even consider trying this class with WordPad.

4. Back up chat--we will be using Angel chat on a regular basis.

• This last year chat in Angel has been pretty stable; however, occasionally it was not available, or didn't work for some members of a group. Therefore,  you need to get AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) installed on your computer, if you don't already. Or use AIM Express through a browser. Either way, it's free, and available to anyone. That way you will still be able to chat even if Angel doesn't work. And you can ask me questions during my office hours with AIM.

5. Adobe Acrobat--some examples and samples will be in Portable Document Format files (PDF). Also, you may find some sources in your research that are in PDF. And my responses to essays will be in PDF. Therefore, you need to have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer.

6. Web 2.0 applications--be prepared to incorporate some newish web applications into our work this semester. I'm planning to include Twitter and Diigo, if you'd like to check them out. I'll have instructions for using when they become necessary.

7. Microphone and audio card--we will be posting audio files through Angel and WIMBA, so you will need to have a microphone, an audio card and speakers. You should be able to check out headphones for computers in the TLC computer lab if you're working on campus. And you should be able to find an inexpensive mike at Meijer, Best Buy, Circuit City or online.

8. Avoid America Online (AOL)--many students have become quite frustrated with using AOL services with learning management software such as Angel, especially with uploading files.  Use some other Internet service provider (ISP), such as Arialink, recommended by LCC, though again, get high speed Internet--DSL or cable--if at all possible.

• If you must use AOL, use another browser--Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Opera--rather than their browser.

9. Email: you will all need to use the LCC student email--a free Google email account--and you should plan to check it every day. See http://www.lcc.edu/helpdesk/student_email/.

   • Do note that Angel also has email, and you can email me any time through Angel's mail.

     • However, I have all Angel mail forwarded to my Internet email address (dholt@lcc.edu) and will be receiving and responding to email only through my Internet email.

     • In other words, if you email me through Angel mail, my response will show up in your student email, not in Angel.

     • Hence it's very important you use your student email or have it forwarded to the Internet email you check regularly.

10. Lacking the necessary equipment or software is not excusable.

Let me help you understand by comparing with a traditional f2f class.

Getting to a traditional f2f class	Getting to an online class
It's your responsibility to get to campus however you can--by car, bus, bike, thumb.	It's your responsibility to get to your online class through computer hardware and software, and a reliable Internet Service Provider (ISP).
An occasional car breakdown can be overlooked.	An occasional computer crash can be overlooked.
But missing more than a class or two because of car troubles will jeopardize your progress in a traditional class.	But missing more than one or two online activities will jeopardize your progress in this class.
Therefore, you have to find another way to get to class if you have car trouble.	Therefore, you have to find another way to get online if your computer crashes: there is a computer lab that you can use on campus, open every day (see hours at the link).

• We will meet once at Lansing Community College, face to face, in the fourteenth week when you submit your portfolios.

o If you are unable to come to campus, we will need to make arrangements to use a proctor for the day portfolios are submitted and you write the in-person reflection piece.

• Otherwise, all attendance will be online.

• The short of it is that if you don't fully participate in online activities every week, then I will drop you. Click here for a more detailed discussion about how this will work. And make sure you read the link at least once.

• I will also be available for online and/or f2f questions during my office hours.

• Keyboarding--not only will most communication from me and the other students be text, but virtually all of your expression will be through writing (rather fortuitous since this is a writing class?). Therefore you would do well to have adequate keyboarding skills of 20 words per minute or more. Not absolutely essential, but a real time saver.

•   Mauk, John, and John Metz. The Composition of Everyday Life: A Guide to Writing. Concise 3rd ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2010.

•   Hacker, Diana. A Pocket Style Manual. 5th ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008.

 The following abbreviations will be used throughout the course when referring to the texts:

• CEL--Composition of Everyday Life
• PSM--Pocket Style Manual

• Click here to find out about getting  your books. 

• To succeed in your academic experiences in higher education and as citizens of our ever-changing and multicultural society, you will be expected to demonstrate competence in the following three areas of composition.

1. CRITICAL THINKING: To evaluate the quality of ideas expressed, you will:

2. WRITING PROCESS: To improve your own writing process, you will:

3. WRITING: To produce coherent expository essays for an adult, college-level audience, you will base your decisions on critical thinking, the writing process, and the following four aspects of effective writing.

As you can tell, there are two types of assignments found under this category:

1. Online Activities

• Each week you will participate with each other in Angel discussion forum online conversations and real-time chat.

2. Writing Exercises

• A number of times throughout the semester, you will do writing exercises, practicing an aspect of our writing like prewriting and MLA style.

I will post assignment pages each Monday by 5:00 p.m., linked to the Course Calendar. And the work will be due by the following Saturday midnight.

Furthermore, all online activities and writing exercises will discuss the reading and writing assigned on the Course Calendar.

• Therefore, you should plan to have the reading for each week completed Monday afternoons, so the directions make sense and you can participate fully.

• These assignments will be based on the following:

• Your reading: First off, you will be writing about the selections that you and I choose from CEL, LCC library databases or the Web. You can expect to

• ponder puzzling passages,
• make connections between different readings,
• discuss why you liked or didn't like a selection,
• evaluate how effectively a piece was written,
• respond to something brought up in a chat, a discussion board posting, or e-mail,
• ask questions about passages--
• argue with me!

• Your writing: You also will be writing about your own writing. During the course of the semester you can expect to

• evaluate selections from the Composition of Everyday Life (CEL) or A Pocket Style Manual (PSM),
• explain how your own practices compare to their suggestions,
• discuss what is working in your process of writing and what is not,
• do writing exercises in CEL,
• think through an essay topic,
• discuss what other writers in the class are doing,
• bring in personal events happening in your life, as long as doing so helps in developing your writing or thinking through your essay topics.

• Although I expect you to write clearly and coherently, these should be, in essence, used for thinking out loud, not as polished writing.

• Thus plan to write these quickly.

• For your writing exercises and your online discussions, I will give credit with no eye towards grammar, spelling, punctuation or such.

• However, some thought and analysis of the article and rhetoric readings and/or your own writing should be evident.

• Some summarizing will be necessary, but I want more to see what you think, not what a piece is about--we've all read the text and articles already. In other words, you will want to advance the conversation with class members rather than simply reiterating what another has said.

• And, do use spell check and edit what you write.

• Obviously the online activities will take place in Angel. Usually initial postings will need to be completed by midweek; replies to others will be completed by Saturday midnight.

• Some exercises will be posted in the discussion forums. Others will be sent through an exercise drop box in Angel, sent by Saturday midnight. See Late Work below.

You will write four expository essays, each 800-1000 words. As I mentioned in the Course Overview, the essays will be responding to different articles, papers and discussions on American popular culture.

• Do realize that these writings will be for an audience, this class. Thus, anything you say in an essay will be public. You will be sharing drafts with each other, and I may be sharing sections of your writing via e-mail or in Angel. Therefore, any deeply held, dark secrets that you may carry are probably not topics you will want to write about.

• These essays are worth approximately 5% each and will be graded on the work you do in the process of generating a draft that you consider appropriate for your audience to read. So you will garner credit on the following categories:

• You will be trying out different prewriting techniques found in CEL that help you generate ideas, details and examples about the topics you write about. You will also have opportunity to evaluate these techniques to determine which ones work best for you.

• For each essay you will share a draft with several members of our class in Angel. I see giving and receiving feedback as crucial to your success in honing your skills to revise your writing and by seeing how your writing affects your readers.

• Therefore, you will receive credit for your essays and a response from me only after you have given substantial feedback to other students' drafts, and

• only essays that have been responded to by several members of our class, as well as by me, will be allowed in the portfolio.

• I will likely drop you from the class if you miss more than one audience response session.

I also encourage you to take frequent advantage of the Writing Center at A&S 251.

• On the due dates noted in the Course Calendar, you will be sending to me through an Angel drop box a revised draft of your essay which will be in rich text format (RTF), including a  reflective response that I ask for you to complete (noted below).

• I will upload responses to your essays the week after I receive them, and will note where I see your discussion as strong and where I see the need for further work, should you choose the essay for your portfolio.

• These comments are for your benefit to give you guidance about how to improve your writing.

• It's in your best interest to pay close attention to them--feel free to ask me any questions you might have about what I've said.

• I will also give you a revision level--high, medium or low--based on the Department of Communication Writing Standards and Giving Comments & Grades--that will tell you how much revision needs to be done in order for the essay to work well in the portfolio.

• High--your essay needs significant and substantial revision in order to be deemed competent writing (2.0 or higher).
• Medium--your essay needs a good amount of revision. It's borderline, likely competent, but needs work to be sure, and in order to get a higher grade (3.0-4.0).
• Low--your essay is in pretty good shape. As is, it would probably earn at least a 3.0. With some more work, you could likely earn even higher.

• The credit for the assignment will be based on all of the work you do--Prewriting, Audience Response, Draft, Reflection--not on the quality of the writing in the last draft.

• With each essay, I will have you think and write about how the process of writing the paper went.

• This will give you opportunity to assess what you've learned from the reading, writing, practicing and discussing you've been doing with each essay assignment.

• It will also help you to prepare for the final writing assignment, an on-campus reflective essay that you write when you submit your portfolio.

• Note that all writing generated through the above categories will be submitted with the essays in the portfolio.

As you can tell, the portfolio is the major assignment of the course. You will present in person your two best essays--word processed, double spaced and collected in a neat pocket folder, not as electronic communication.

You will choose which essays that you want to include--at least one must include three or more sources with internal references and a works cited page using MLA citation style. You can revise and edit as fully as necessary, using all that you've learned throughout the semester to show us your best efforts.

You will also submit with the portfolio everything that you wrote or gathered to create the essays--all notes, all prewriting, all drafts, all audience responses, and copies of all sources that you use outside of our texts.

 

• And I do mean everything--if you scribbled a note with a chartreuse crayon on a Denny's napkin, it should be submitted in the portfolio! I should be able to see how your writing processes led to your masterpiece.

• The in-person reflective essay will be written at a time and place that I will announce at some future date. I plan to have a computer classroom that you will be able to write the paper in.

• You will write these on the day you hand in your portfolio. This will be where you will reflect on why you chose the essays you did, what makes them effective--in other words, to show us what you consider to be effective writing.

• I will grade the portfolio based on WRIT 121 Writing Standards.

• In addition, two other instructors will read the portfolio and grade it to determine if it is 2.0 or higher--again, based on the Writing Standards.

  • If they consider the portfolio 2.0 or higher, you earn the grade I assign (which can be anywhere from 0.0-4.0), again, 70% of your course grade.
  • If they do not consider the portfolio 2.0, you earn no more than a 1.5 for the course.

Some in the past have thought that since only two essays are required for the portfolio, and the portfolio is worth 70% of the grade, why not simply write two essays?

The reason you write four essays is for you to become a better writer through practice. The processes you go through in reading, exploring, selecting and shaping for each essay add to your skill.

• And because the portfolio is 70% of your grade, you want the portfolio to be your best.

  • Just as one practices many hours on a piece of music for a performance, so you will need many hours of practice for your performance--the portfolio--to impress the readers.

Therefore, make every effort to complete each essay assignment--including prewriting, drafts, audience responses and reflections.

And if you miss one complete essay submission, I will likely drop you from the class.

1. Online activities must be completed before the deadline, usually Saturday midnight. The reason is that once the deadline passes, adding anything to the Angel Discussion forum would be like talking to an empty class.

2. Prewriting must be turned in by the deadline (though do note the grace period below). The reason is that I want to be able to give you feedback, especially on your thesis, before you upload a draft for me to evaluate.

3. All other work--writing exercises, essays, reflections--will be accepted late, but no later than one week past the due date.

4. Grace period --I will allow a 24-hour grace period on assignments submitted to me, and to drafts posted in the discussion forum for audience responses. Thus, if an essay, writing exercise, or prewriting assignment is due on Saturday midnight, you have until Sunday midnight to submit without  penalty. However, this grace period does not extend to online activities, whether Angel Discussion forum online conversations or chat.

Click here to review my standard warning I give to all of my classes.