Course Syllabus

ENG 101 Section 06: Course Syllabus

fall 2020

Identity and education: learning and unlearning through writing

Download and print a PDF of the full syllabus and course schedule here: Fall 2020 ENG 101-006 Syllabus.pdf

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Download the Word Document version of the full syllabus, and use the comments and highlight feature to mark it up: Fall 2020 ENG 101-006 Syllabus.docx

Course Meetings

This is a synchronous online course that meets on Zoom (links are provided on our course calendar). The set meetings times are Monday and Wednesday from 3:30PM to 4:50PM; however, you will see on the schedule that we will not always be meeting on both days. 

You will find all of our course meeting links in the Zoom tab on your Canvas course navigation, just below the "Home" tab. 

Instructor's Name and Contact Information

Dr. Molly Appel

Primary Contact: Please use the conversations tool within Canvas
Office Location: Sign up for a digital meeting with me through Calendly. 

Instructor's Office Hours

Office hours by appointment. Please sign up for an appointment through Calendly.

Email and Classroom Response Time

I will do my best to respond to emails within 24-48 hours (or slightly longer on weekends or holidays). Feedback for completed discussions, quizzes, and assignments is dependent upon the length and breadth of the activity and could take up to 10 days. For questions on the status of a completed assignment, discussion, please reach out to me. 

Required Text(s)

Title: Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez
Author: Richard Rodriguez
Edition: Any edition (or format) is acceptable.

Textbooks are available at the Nevada State Bookstore (Links to an external site.). Textbooks can be purchased online or at the Roger's Student Center Store. I also encourage you to use seek alternatives through other online sellers and through our library.

Required Supplementary Material

Any additional reading material will be provided for you on Canvas. I encourage you to always have some spare notebook / drawing paper and different colors of pens/pencils/crayons handy! (We'll be doing as much non-digital learning as we can.)

Course Description

This course is driven by following questions:

• Who are we as learners?
• How do the spaces and rhetorics of education shape our expectations of ourselves and the ways that we learn?
• How can we take ownership of our own learning, and become actors and impactors in the world of higher education?

You will explore these questions while you strengthen your college level composition skills, with particular attention to audience, purpose, and context for writing. In other words: through this course you’ll be learning how to succeed in college – whatever your pathway to your chosen degree!

Course Objectives

At the completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Develop a vocabulary for your identity, needs, and goals as a learner.
• Use self-reflection to determine academic action steps.
• Develop strategies for planning, drafting, and revising your writing, and for working collaboratively with colleagues to do so.
• Write an academic paragraph that is informative, focused, and effectively utilizes evidence.
• Use purposeful reading practices to improve your skills in dialogue and analysis.
• Analyze a scholarly conversation on an issue in education and determine a rhetorical intervention.
• Evaluate how a text’s author/creator, audience, and medium work together to shape what it communicates and how it makes an impact.

Class Schedule

Our regular, synchronous Zoom meeting times are Monday and Wednesday from 11:00AM to 12:20PM. However, after the first two weeks, we will not always meet synchronously on both days. Please refer to the full course syllabus for the dates of our synchronous meetings. 

Assignment Description and Due Dates

Your grade will be comprised of five components. Each component will contain smaller, supporting assignments along with the unit’s primary writing project.

Unit 1: Learning Story and Mission Statement

During this unit, you will be developing your ability to talk about your identity as a learner and to craft a mission statement for your education. You will complete a number of smaller tasks and readings that will prepare you to write a 3-4 page learning narrative. Details and a rubric will be provided on Canvas.

Unit 1 Supporting Assignments:

• Contribution to course policies
• Readings and discussion related to writing and education
• Descriptive writing practice (summaries and scenes)
• Peer review
• Live Grading session (this is where we meet one-on-one, read your narrative aloud together, and grade your work together!)

Unit 2: Architectures of Education and Rhetorical Analysis

In this unit, you will begin analyzing the ways that verbal and visual rhetoric impacts the perceptions, actions, and identities of others. For your core project, you will build on your Learning Story to design your ideal learning space, given your identity, needs, and mission as a learner. You will annotate your design and write an author’s statement that shows you can explain your design in rhetorical terms (length and format will vary).

Unit 2 Supporting Assignments:

• Readings related to education and learning spaces
• Short rhetorical analyses
• Short visual/spatial analyses
• Group learning space design: a “banking” vs “problem-posing” classroom

Unit 3: Issue in Education Collaborative Annotated Bibliography

In this unit, you will look closely at an issue in education related to your own identity, mission, and experiences of learning. You’ll do this by working collaboratively with a small team to develop an annotated bibliography related to your chosen issues. Your task is to help your classmates and colleagues understand the existing professional and scholarly conversation around that issue. The length of the bibliography itself will vary, but you will practice perfecting the academic paragraph addresses each of your sources. You will also work together to write a 1-2 page introduction that provides an overview of the bibliography and your own argument about the issue.

Unit 3 Supporting Assignments:

• Research question workshop
• Library research workshop
• Submit your research ideas
• Develop a collaborative work plan with your team
• Source evaluation worksheet
• Academic paragraphs – quiz and practice
• Precis drafts
• Peer Review
• Introduction drafting
• Full bibliography submission

Class Collegiality and Impact Self-Assessments

As one way of checking in with how things are going for our class and for you individually, you will write a self-assessment upon the completion of each unit. You will be provided with some guiding questions that your assessment should address. You can submit your self-assessment in any modality – video, voice, or written. Your submission will be graded not on what you’ve written, but on how thorough you have been in your examples, reflection, and next steps.

You will submit a final, overall self-assessment reflecting on your collegiality and impact as a whole (you can use your previous assessments as evidence). For this final one, you will also grade yourself on a rubric that we design as a class.

Reading and Analysis Groups / Annotation Journals

The secret to good writing is, in fact, good reading! We will be doing an experiment this semester by incorporating regular reading groups into our class sessions. In small groups, you will explore different kinds of reading practices to hone the skills that will help you become a better writer: rigorous analysis, contemplation, resilience, and conversation. You will utilize these practices with our course’s common text: Richard Rodriguez’s educational autobiography, Hunger of Memory.

In preparation for each Reading and Analysis Group session, you will complete an “annotation journal” that will help you contribute to and develop your group’s conversation. You will submit one annotation journal for each chapter (and one for the final two chapters). Example will be provided and you’ll have the opportunity to practice them before submitting your own.

Additional Features of the Course:

Accountability Groups!

At the beginning of the semester, I will be breaking you up into smaller accountability groups. You will be each others’ go-to people for the course – checking in with each other, helping each other when you’ve missed something or need to catch up, and letting me know when someone is missing or seems to be having a hard time. You will also often work together for synchronous or smaller classwork-related activities, and will do your Reading and Analysis Groups together.

Our Course Assistant!

We have good fortune of having Rebeca as our Course Assistant! The Course Assistance (CA) Program aims to support students in developing a sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and effective study strategies through embedded mentoring, tutoring, and supported study sessions in selected first-year Gateway courses (high enrollment and high DFWI rates). The vision of this program is to be the first touch in guiding students on 'how to college" and use other resources in order to be successful. The CA program draws on the SI model for conducting the supported study sessions but emphasizes one-on-one support through mentoring.  

Extra credit!

Lead a brief discussion on a “text” of your choosing that gets us to think about learning or education in an interesting way. These texts could be a song, image, podcast, story, poem, article, etc. More details instructions and sign-up options will be posted on Canvas. Successful facilitations can earn students up to 2 points per “text.” Students can earn up to 6 extra credit points and distribute them among category of their final grade.

Course Policies, Expectations, and Agreements

We will develop these policies together during the first week of class. 

Grading Scale

Letter and Point Range

A 93% or higher

A- 90%-92.99%

B+ 87%-89.99%

B 83%-86.99%

B- 80%-82.99%

C+ 77%-79.99%

C 73%-76.99%

C- 70%-72.99%

D+ 67%-69.99%

D 63%-66.99%

D- 60%-62.99%

F less than 60%

NSC Policies

Students are responsible for reading, understanding, and abiding by the policies set forth in the NSC policies page including the Academic Standards. 

Campus and community resources

EVERYONE needs support to be their best selves and to make it through college. Check the Campus and Community Resources page for mental health, victimization, immigration, and LGTBQ+ resources.

Student Success Concerns

If I, as your instructor, determine that your performance in this class is placing you at academic risk, you may be referred to a member of the Academic Advising Center.  An Academic Advisor will work with you to address issues and develop a student success strategy. If you would like to meet with an Advisor regarding any academic struggles you are experiencing, please contact Academic Advising at 702-992-2160 or at studentsuccess@nsc.edu

Learning Amidst a Global Pandemic 

We are currently living through a pandemic that impacts nearly every facet of our lives, from employment to housing, childcare, and both mental and physical health. This semester, we will prioritize community, care, and flexibility above all else as we attempt to learn amidst these unprecedented conditions. You should always feel free to reach out to me if you need anything or if anything impedes your ability to complete the assigned work. More likely than not, others in the class are facing similar situations, and we might need to adjust the course accordingly to accommodate all of our lived realities and experiences.