Course Syllabus

WR 39C: ARGUMENT & RESEARCH

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33313 SYLLABUS, Academic Year 2015-2016

 

REQUIRED TEXT & RESOURCES 

1. How To Do Things With Videogames, by Ian Bogost (Book)
2. The Anteater Guide to Writing and Rhetoric, 5th Edition (AGWR) (Book)
3. MLA Formatting and Style Guide from OWL (OWL) and/or
4. The Norton Field Guide to Writing (NFG)
5. Canvas (Course site available through EEE)

 

COURSE DESCRIPTION

 

Writing 39C, Argument and Research, is the second of UCI‘s two required writing courses that together fulfill the Lower Division Writing Requirement. Like WR 39B, 39C focuses on critical reading and rhetoric and teaches you intellectual strategies for identifying, understanding, and then using various genres and rhetorical situations for important communicative purposes. 39C deepens your understanding of rhetoric and communication by teaching you how to conduct research and to evaluate and use various types of evidence. The reading, composing, and researching practices you will learn in this course and the various intellectual strategies you develop will help you to succeed in your other courses, prepare you to engage in the university community and in your chosen discipline, and deepen your perspective on current issues and problems and the idea of social justice itself.  

 

Your section of WR 39C will use a central text as the foundation for classroom discussion and for research topics. This text will motivate analysis of current and pressing issues and present us with opportunities to study the rhetorical and argumentative strategies of an established intellectual engaging political problems that challenge us to evaluate both our personal ethics and the broad values that define perspectives on social justice. As you read this material, you may agree with the author or you may vehemently disagree. Either way your critical evaluation is expected, and your teacher and your peers will challenge you to deepen your arguments and claims through discussions and constructive feedback. Your WR39C teacher will not tell you what to think, but your instructor will teach you how to communicate, how to deliver your arguments and arrange your evidence so that your thoughts are clear and persuasive and capably anticipate the expectations and possible reactions of various audiences—scholars, public intellectuals, your peers and people in the UCI community—who are already discussing the same issues. Our hope is that you leave 39C feeling empowered and confident as a college-level researcher and impassioned by the issues you’ve engaged.

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Guiding Ideals & Outcomes

 

• Guiding Ideals, For Teachers

• Motivate and support intellectual commitments to experimentation, curiosity, and discovery through reading, writing, researching, communicating and composing in and across a variety of genres.
• Provide opportunities to address timely and engaging contemporary issues.
• Develop rhetorical knowledge through critical analysis of texts and contexts and the study of audiences, compositional arrangements, deliveries, and varieties of persuasion.
• Cultivate analytical self-reflection and the habits of mind to analyze compositional choices, methods of analysis, rhetorical positions and persuasive perspectives, and the use of genres, contexts, and appropriate conventions.
• Define information literacy and develop the ability to assess the credibility of sources, databases, archives, and other repositories of source material.
• Explain clearly the pedagogical purposes of all assignments, in-class exercises, and course outcomes.
• Teach to each student individually, both in class and while conferencing, and work diligently to develop a productive and effective working relationship with each student.

 

• Outcomes, For Students

 

Rhetoric & Composition:

• Recognize forms of rhetorical persuasion and understand the functions of generic forms, both academic and non-academic.
• Craft substantive, motivated, and balanced arguments.
• Plan, draft, and revise effectively; develop and skillfully employ a variety of revision strategies that attend to structure, arrangement, pacing, and transitions.
• Read with understanding and engagement across a variety of genres, mediated forms, and discourses.
• Write clear, correct, coherent prose.
• Evaluate and improve reading, writing, and organizing processes.
• Respond productively and constructively to the writing of others and learn to become a fair and rigorous critic.
• Attend to and control surface features and conventions including grammar, punctuation, syntax, and spelling.

 

Multimodal Composition & Communication:

• Understand the distinctive rhetorical properties and effects of delivering arguments in written forms, orally, and visually, with particular attention to audience/community, discourses/genres/contexts, and occasions/warrants.
• Arrange, display, and deliver arguments and evidence clearly and coherently.
• Create substantive, polished, persuasive, richly textured, and deeply researched multi-modal compositions.

 

Research Methods and Ethics:

• Comprehend the importance of Information Literacy, seen as both the act of researching and the skillful evaluation and use of evidence.
• Understand the definition of Information Literacy as the ability to discern and critically evaluate source materials of different types, in different media, genres, and discourses.
• Comprehend the communicative and rhetorical intentions of a source and use such understanding to determine a source’s value as evidence.
• Learn to locate sources using a variety of tools, methods, and databases.
• Understand the purposes and methods of common citation systems.
• Learn research ethics and avoid plagiarism.

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GENERAL INFORMATION

 

PREREQUISITES 

You must have satisfied all Academic English and Entry Level Writing Requirements and passed WR 39B with a grade of "C" or better in order to enroll in WR 39C. 

DROPPING / ADDING 

If you want to add, drop, or change your grade option for this class, it is your responsibility to obtain an authorization code from your instructor (issued by the Composition Office). You will not be dropped automatically if you simply stop attending class. You must use the Composition Office authorization codes for all drops/adds/changes. During the first week of class, you can get help finding a class to add in the Composition Office (HIB 420: 824-6717). You must be attending a 39C class by the end of the 1st week in order to add the class, and your authorization code must be processed via WebReg by the end of 3rd week of classes.

Students who wish to drop this course must complete the drop in WebReg by the end of the 2nd week of classes. These deadlines are strictly enforced. An exception to the above policies will only be considered for extenuating and documented circumstances outside the student's control; see http://www.humanities.uci.edu/undergrad/students/add_drop.php.  

Students who wish to change their grade option to P/NP should first check with their academic counselors to make sure this choice is available to them. The Composition Office can assist students wishing to change their grade option between weeks 2 and 7. After week 7, students must see the Humanities Office staff.

REQUIREMENTS / COURSE POLICIES 

1. For all UCI writing courses, final grades of C or above satisfy the writing requirement. If you earn a final grade of C- or lower in any writing course, you must repeat that course and you must drop your enrollment in the next course in the sequence.
2. If you are repeating WR 39C, you may NOT resubmit the same papers. Resubmitted papers from a previous WR 39C will receive a non-passing grade.
3. All assigned work must be completed to qualify for a final grade. In other words, you may not omit an assignment.
4. Draft(s) must be submitted in order to receive a grade on the final paper.
5. Final submissions of all major projects—final versions of the HCP, AP, and ePort Reflective Introduction—must be submitted to Turn It In (via the Canvas course website).
6. Your instructor may move choose to lower your grade on an assignment by 1/3 of a letter grade for each day an assignment late. If you are having trouble making deadlines, please see your instructor who will help you with organization and strategy.  
7. Excessive absence from class is grounds for failure. Most WR 39C instructors consider more than 10% unexcused absences from class to be "excessive." Your instructor may choose to lower your participation grade, your grade on an individual assignment or your overall course grade by 1/3 for each unexcused absence beyond 10%.

PLAGIARISM

Please read the university policy on Academic Honesty in the Registrar Website (www.reg.uci.edu). You might also consult the plagiarism links found on the website of Campus Writing Coordinator. Submitting a paper that is based on the words and/or structure of another student's work or submitting a paper that includes researched information that is not properly cited is plagiarism, and thus, grounds for failure in the course. All information borrowed from print or electronic sources must be identified. Failure to do so is theft. Copying a sentence and changing a word or two does not make the ideas or the information yours. Deliberately altering data to fit your thesis is also a form of cheating. Plagiarists fail the course and have their offense recorded in their School and in the School of Humanities. Violations of academic honesty can affect a student's graduation, financial aid, and eligibility for honors. The Composition Program deals with plagiarism cases every quarter, even though most people do not hear about them. No matter how pressured you feel, do not plagiarize; it is not worth it. Note: submitting the same work for more than one class without notifying the instructor is considered plagiarism at UCI.

 

IMPORTANT FORMS FOR WR 39C

There are some important forms that you need to fill out for this class that are available online: 

Consent to Reproduce and Publish / Academic Honesty, Plagiarism, TurnitIn

Please make sure you complete these forms by the end of the first week of class.

 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES 

• UCI Libraries Guide for WR39C
• Researching from off campus? Set up your access to UCI’s Databases and Resources
• Need to submit your work to TurnItIn?
• Need help from a UCI Librarian with a research question? Go to Ask a Librarian.
• Want in-depth feedback and an additional perspective on your work? Consult a Writing Specialist or a Peer Tutor from the Center for Excellence in Writing and Communication either in person or online.

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OVERVIEW OF ASSIGNMENTS & GRADING

 

1. Participation (5%)*
2. The Historical Conversations Project (25%)  [Includes process work: annotations & source evaluations, pre-writing, drafts, etc.]
3. The Advocacy Project (40%) [Includes process work: annotations & source evaluations, pre-writing, research proposals, drafts, etc. Advocacy Presentation: Oral Component & Visual Component counts for 10% of the 40%]
4. My ePortfolio (30%) 

*This element of the final grade may be given to various assignments: quizzes, peer reviews, short presentations, etc.

**Excessive absence from class, including repeated lateness to class, may be grounds for failure or grade reduction. The Composition Program considers more than 10% unexcused absences from class to be "excessive." Your instructor may choose to lower your participation grade, your grade on an individual assignment, or your overall course grade by 1/3 for each unexcused absence beyond 10% or for excessive lateness.

 

Table of Assignments, Due Dates, and Grade Distribution:

 

Major Assignments	Assignment Details (Instructors: See the GDrive for Assignment Prompts.)	Due Date	% of Final Grade
Self Assessment		Week 1
The Historical Conversations Project (HCP): -Prewriting/Prospectus -Annotations/source evaluations -Reading responses -etc.	-Instructor defines topics -Instructor provides some source material -Some original research required by student -Multi-modal -Written component of final version: (1700 words minimum) -Published in a student’s ePortfolio	Week 2
HCP: Draft 1		Week 3
HCP: Graded Submission	-Multi-modal -At least 2 artifacts -Written component of final version: 1700 words minimum -Published in ePortfolio	End of Week 4	25%
The Advocacy Project (AP): Prewriting/Prospectus/ Research Proposal	-Students define topic in consultation with instructor. -Students locate research material -Should build on previous submission -Multi-modal -Written component of final version: (2500 words min) -Published in a student’s ePortfolio	Week 6
AP: Draft 1		Week 7
AP:  Draft 2		Week 8
AP:  Graded Submission		End of Week 9	30%
AP: Presentation, Oral & Visual Components	-Multi-modal composition privileging oral delivery -Must articulate a clearly defined and strongly argued position about an important contemporary social/cultural/political issue -Tightly organized -Richly textured & evidence based -At least 5 minutes for the presentation. Maximum 10 minutes of time. The instructor should feel free to determine what do to with the full 10 minutes. For example: 5min presentation + 5 min Q&A; 7 min presentation + 3 min Q&A. -Visual/aural component accompanying the Oral Component -Multi-modal composition -Richly-textured & evidence-based -Can include written text	Weeks 6-10 (Schedule as you see fit!)	10% Oral & Visual Components
My ePortfolio	-See assignment prompt on GDrive -Reflective Introduction -Artifacts & Captions: the most important artifacts of learning must be captioned -Meta-cognition -Must include process work: reading responses, prospectus, source evaluations/ annotations, critical responses to the work of other students, reflective responses to own work, drafts, etc. -Required Assignments & Artifacts	Week 11	30%
Participation	-Attendance & Lateness		5%
Final Grade			100%

 

 

 

Fall 2015, WR39C: Overview of the Quarter

 

Assignments

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Week 8

Week 9

Week 10

Exam Week

Project I: Historical Conversations Project

Assigned

Due: Prewriting/ Prospectus 

Due: Draft 1 

Due: Final  Submission 

Library Consults

Library* Visits

Library* Visits

Library Follow ups

Library Follow ups

Library Follow ups

Library Follow ups

Project II: Advocacy Project

Assigned



Due: Proposal/ Prospectus/ 

Due: Draft 1 

Due: Draft 2 

Due: Final  Submission 

Project II Presentations: Oral  & Visual Components

Assigned











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ePortfolio

Assigned Due: Self Assessment





Checkpoint 1

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Checkpoint 2

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Checkpoint 3 Due: Drafts of Reflective Introduction

Last Deadline: Friday of Exam Week

Conferencing

 

 

You have three videogame lives to get you through this class: 

 

 

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Attendance, participation in class, coming to conferences and the like all count toward keeping your class lives healthy. If you miss too many classes, fail to come to at least one conference per major assignment, miss too many reading responses or habitually come to workshop days unprepared you will lose a life. If you lose all three lives you will have to repeat the class.
If you fail to turn in any draft you will lose a life, but any honest attempt to fulfill the prompt will prevent that loss and you can revise that draft until the final, Boss Level draft is due.