A writing course Self-reflection essay
Interdisciplinary Advanced Writing in the Disciplines (Online)
Lesley Dill, Rush
Course Texts
AWD Toolkit (Blackboard>Course Material)
Select Readings (PDFs and links on Blackboard)
Recommended Materials
A citation manual appropriate to your disciplines (e. g. APA, MLA, CBE, Chicago). Our library site has citation guidelines, and many online sites are good, such as Purdue University’s OWL: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/
Course Description
The catalog description of ENGW 3315 says the course: Offers students the opportunity to explore how writing works to create disciplinary identity and how writing works in interdisciplinary problem solving. Students explore the theories, assumptions, and knowledge-making practices of writing in their particular fields and then work with students in other fields to solve an interdisciplinary problem. The course is based on a workshop model with extensive practice in writing, research, peer review, and revision.
Our section of 3315 is animated by the idea that the writing members of disciplines do is shaped by those disciplines, and in turn, the writing shapes the disciplines. What defines particular disciplines then, is the relationship between disciplinary knowledge making and the ways that knowledge is created and communicated. Writing, of course, plays a key role in that communication. This notion of what defines disciplines is particularly important in an era of interdisciplinarity, when a single, disciplinary approach may not be adequate to solve complex problems.
In this section of 3315, you will explore disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity by individual work (exploring practices in your field) and collaborative tasks (you explore disciplinary practices to discover similarities and differences across various disciplines). As you do this work, peer review—a practice common in all disciplines—will be a key component of your writing process.
You will begin by identifying problems or questions that interest you in your current or intended disciplinary field, and explore how these questions are addressed and in what form those questions are communicated. With this work you will be exploring the discourse community of your discipline. This initial investigation will also involve fieldwork where you interview or contact members of the discipline. You will examine a key journal in the field and analyze the “public face” associated with the field. Next, you and a partner will collaborate to write a literature review exploring a topic from two different disciplinary perspectives. Next, in the third major project, you will collaborate with a classmate by exploring how a single question is answered in different fields and compare and contrast different disciplinary approaches to the question. In the final work of the course, you create a reflective portfolio that offers evidence of the extent to which your work has met the Writing Program Student Learning Goals.
Prerequisites
To fulfill your AWD requirement with this course, you must have completed your First-Year English requirement and have 64 academic credits, including the current semester you are enrolled in AWD.
Writing Program Student Learning Goals
The Writing Program comprises First-Year Writing courses, Advanced Writing in the Disciplines courses, and the Writing Center. The goals below apply to all three sites, but our expectations for how well and to what extent students will accomplish the goals vary in each.
1. Students write both to learn and to communicate what they learn.
2. Students negotiate their own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and situation.
3. Students formulate and articulate a stance through and in their writing.
4. Students revise their writing using responses from others, including peers, consultants, and teachers.
5. Students generate and pursue lines of inquiry and search, collect, and select sources appropriate to their writing projects.
6. Students effectively use and appropriately cite sources in their writing.
7. Students explore and represent their experiences, perspectives, and ideas in conversation with others.
8. Students use multiple forms of evidence to support their claims, ideas, and arguments.
9. Students practice critical reading strategies.
10. Students provide revision-based response to their peers.
11. Students reflect on their writing processes and self-assess as writers.
Workload
Expect to log into Blackboard (BB) several times a week, check email frequently, and allot 5-6 hours per week for reading, writing, researching, and online discussions. This course is as rigorous and demanding as an in-person advanced writing class would be. Please be aware of this time commitment, especially those of you on co-op. There is a lot more to a writing course than merely turning in papers, and it is important that you stay on top of your weekly work. This importance of staying current with the weekly workload is especially true in the truncated summer term.
Projects 2 and 3 are collaborative--you will be graded individually (I’ll explain later how that will work), but you will work with an assigned partner to write the project. It is essential to keep in regular contact with your partner; please understand you must have reliable, constant internet connectivity for the duration of the course.
The assignments/discussion prompts are specifically geared for online learning, and to foster online conversations based on content and analysis. They are critical to meeting the Learning Goals of this course.
Each week I will send the class a letter and module, typically on Sundays. The letter offers my explanations, thoughts, analysis, and reminders for the week and occasionally reflections on the previous week’s results. The modules give detailed instructions of work due for the week with due dates. The letters and modules complement each other, and you must read both carefully to function in the course.
Technology
You will need reliable, regular access to the internet to take this class. In addition to Blackboard, we will use Digication for creating portfolios for Projects 1-3 and the Final Reflective Portfolio. Resources for Digication are posted in BB>Course Material, and I will discuss Digication more in my Weekly Letters.
Grading
Grade breakdown: Word Count Percent of Final Grade
Project 1: Discourse Community Analysis 2000 20%
includes:
•review of journals
•public face of the discipline
•fieldwork
Project 2: Collaborative Literature Review 2000 25%
Project 3: Collaborative Exploration of Trans-
disciplinary Problem Solving 1500 25%
Reflective Essay/Final Portfolio 750 15%
Module Discussions/Assignments ------ 15%
Grade Scale
Grades will follow the standard scale listed below.
A: 94-100
A-: 90-93,
B+: 87-89,
B: 83-86
B-: 80-82
C+: 77-79
C: 73, etc
Discussion Guidelines and Expectations
As members of an online course, your ongoing participation in discussions and other types of communication is an integral part of your success, and the success of the course for all of us. Your contributions to the required discussions and related online collaboration will be graded on whether you:
Clearly and consistently link what you are learning in the course to your real life experiences—personal, co-op, academic, etc.
Contribute to the online discussions in a collegial fashion, beginning your contributions by addressing your peers, maintaining a kind and collegial tone, and closing with your signature. Proper netiquette also means not typing in all CAPS or using offensive language.
Demonstrate good “listening” skills and active inquiry skills. This means that you are open to the ideas of others and you offer constructive responses, whether in the form of questions or statements. You might provide your own experiences, challenge ideas of others, or expand an idea further.
Connect to the course on a regular basis. This is not an independent study course, but a paced online group learning experience.
Post your responses to Discussion Questions in BB as required by the Weekly Module; due dates are structured so others will have a chance to respond to your work, if that is a requirement of the assignment.
Fulfill length requirements for initial posts as specified, and post responses to peers of at least 3-4 sentences. Simply saying “I agree/disagree” is not enough; please engage with their content and explain why. The substance of your responses is important to me when I give credit for this component of the course, and the fact that 15% of your grade comes from these assignments shows how important they are to the larger process of writing, and to the class dynamic.
