“If two people can fall in love online, they can learn American history online” (Liberman)
Course: Engl 110, Section NP3
Classroom: Virtual
Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30am-10:45am
Course Introduction
Our time spent in freshman composition will focus on the development of: the student’s skills surrounding the rhetorical situation, audience, purpose, the theory of writing, critical and analytical reading and listening, of essential steps in the writing process, effective writing, synthesizing material from various sources, the ability to locate and evaluate relevant library and online research. By the end of the course, students should not only have built upon their proficiency in these areas but also be confident in utilizing this knowledge in the construction and completion of a writing portfolio and self assessment.
First-Year Composition Mission Statement
First-year composition courses at CCNY teach writing as a recursive and frequently collaborative process of invention, drafting, and revising. Writing is both personal and social, and students should learn how to write for different purposes and audiences. Since writing is a process of making meaning and communicating, FYC teachers respond mainly to the content of students’ writing as well as to recurring surface errors. Students should expect frequent written and oral responses on the content of their writing from their teachers and peers. Classes rely heavily on a workshop format. Instruction emphasizes the connection between writing, reading, and critical thinking; students should give thoughtful, reasoned responses to the readings. Both reading and writing are the subjects of class discussions and workshops, and students are expected to be active participants in the classroom community. Learning from each other will be a large part of the classroom experience. There will be hybrid assignments which will require posting and discussion on Blackboard.
The fall 2023 semester will be conducted in an online synchronous modality. For students, this means that our class meetings will usually take place synchronously, or at the scheduled time in the “virtual classroom” on Zoom where attendance will be taken. There will also be days that the class will meet asynchronously, where there will be no “formal meeting,” but there will be an assignment due and that will count as both attendance and the classwork grade for the day. Students will be notified in advance of these meetings. This class will occasionally have group work, either for peer review exercises or mini presentations. Groups will be determined by the instructor and will largely remain throughout the semester (barring any unusual occurrences). Students will still be responsible for attending all scheduled classes on zoom and handing in all work ON TIME and properly done on Blackboard. Asynchronous assignments will also have time sensitive deadlines. These responses can transfer to discussions held in class, so they must be thought provoking and thorough. However, it is extremely important for students to attend all synchronous class meetings, as these meetings are largely when students will learn the required genre work for the class and discuss the assignments for the course.