1 Michael Morris Office: C-264, Eastfield College English 1302.4427 Phone: 972-860-7247 English 1302.9012 Fall 2011 E-mail: [email protected] Office hours: 8-9 a.m. (other times by appointment) The Writer’s Odyssey Dallas County Community College District Eastfield College Arts, Language and Literature Division Quick Links: Textbook and materials Attendance Academic Honesty Writing Hints Formatting Course Calendar ORIENTATION For you to be a success in this course, you are required to view the online orientation. After reading viewing this power point, working through the orientation checklist, and reading the syllabus, feel free to ask questions and get information about the best way to proceed through the course. STUDENT E-MAIL Legal privacy issues prevent your instructor from discussing your work or your grades on commercial e-mail accounts. If you wish to communicate with your professor, you must open a student e-mail account. The account is free. You must activate your account by going to www.dcccd.edu and by clicking on Student Services, Online Services, and Student NetMail. You must list an email account on the class website (see Personal Information section in Ecampus.) COURSE MATERIALS Textbook: Mauk, John and John Metz. Inventing Arguments. (Brief Second Edition) Boston, MA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2009. ISBN 13: 978-1-4390-8180-8 ISBN 10: 1-4390-8180-8 Dawson, George and Richard Glaubman. Life Is So Good ISBN-0014010.0168 Videos: The Writer’s Odyssey (streamed from website or available in Eastfield Library) WELCOME to The Writer’s Odyssey! You are about to embark on a journey into the fascinating world of writing. On your journey, you’ll meet two instructional gurus, five distance learning students (and a few of their friends), and a host of working writers who will be sharing their insights about the world of writing. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES2 1. Critically read and analyze college-level material, including library and Internet resources. 2. Compose academic prose that demonstrates clear purpose, logical organization, and relevant support through evaluation and synthesis. 3. Establish and maintain a clear, controlling idea that serves as a thesis/claim statement in an essay. 4. Revise, edit, and proofread and essay for grammatical accuracy. 5. Apply MLA style to essay format, in-text citations, and works cited documentation. COURSE OBJECTIVES Working in a spirit of inquiry and dialogue, upon successful completion of this course, you will: 1. Apply a variety of invention strategies that generate topics and ideas suitable for writing at an analytical level. 2. Apply a variety of organizational strategies that support a logical progression of ideas and supporting evidence. 3. Apply a variety of revision strategies that clarify and enhance the writer’s approach to the topic. COURSE EXPECTATIONS To complete this course successfully, you should do the following: ● Participate in the course orientation activities. ● View all the thirty-minute video lessons. ● Complete all the assignments in the week-by-week section under Assignments in eCampus (Blackboard) ● Prepare and submit all writing assignments. Remember that you must turn in all assignments to receive a passing grade in the course. Assignments should be turned in on the assigned due dates unless you have special permission from the instructor. You may not turn in a substantial amount of work at the same time. You may NOT turn in all assignments at the end of the semester. This is not a self-paced course. FORMATTING Please follow these instructions when writing your papers: ● Writing assignments must be typed. ● Use a standard font and font size of 12 pt. (Courier, Helvetica, Times, Arial). ● Double-space. (No extra spaces between paragraphs.) ● Essay Writing Assignments are to be three full pages in length. ● Reading Response Assignments must be one full page only. ● Research Paper must be seven to ten pages in length (not including the Works Cited) ● Pay attention to spelling, grammar, and punctuation. ● Due dates for all assignments are noted in the Course Calendar below. ● No late papers are accepted. - Follow MLA Format MAKE-UP POLICY No work may be made up.3 COURSE/ASSIGNMENTS GRADES Your final grade will be assessed using the following values: Four Essay Assignments 40% One Research Essay 30% Process 30% One Orientation Quiz Five Reading Responses Five Discussion Thread Responses Ten Video Quizzes COURSE GRADE A = 90-100 B = 80-89 C = 70-79 D = 60-69 F = 0-59 OR more than 5 absences You will find the Grading Standards for Essays below this syllabus. NOTE: if the surface problems in an essay are so numerous or so severe that they make it difficult for readers to focus on your meaning or understand what you are trying to say, an assignment may get a "flat F" (all other criteria irrelevant). Time permitting, you might be required to re-write an F paper. ATTENDANCE/PARTICIPATION POLICY Online Participation: To be considered present and earn the relevant process points, you need to be fully prepared, present (both mentally and physically) for all online activities, and a productive participant in all process activities. Examples of productive participation include behaviors such as listening carefully to others, making relevant comments, asking useful questions, responding thoughtfully. Participation and feedback: As a part of the attendance policy, you should note my guidelines on properly formatted writing assignments. After two warnings to format work correctly, I stop reading any writing assignments that do not adhere to the formatting guidelines provided for you on this syllabus and in the handout “Before and After,” available on the course website. This is because I believe the student may not be reading feedback, and thus not fully participating in the course. Discussion Board Participation: Because the Discussion Board is part of our college classroom and not a chat room or a form of IM, you will need to use Standard American English. Fortunately, the discussion board now includes Editing Tools, so correct and proofread your posts before hitting Submit or Publish. Although you cannot remove a post once you have Submitted or Published it, you can