Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/University of California, Santa Barbara/Writing 2 (Sp15)/Course description

This course promises to introduce you to the foundations of academic writing. However, there are many kinds of writing in the university: reports, articles, books, poems, songs, magazines… In addition, there are many kinds of academics who write: scientists, engineers, teachers, scholars, poets, artists, performers, and activists. Academic writing also changes depending on our audiences, disciplines, and purposes.

All quarter, we will define and redefine writing. What is writing? What does writing do? Throughout the quarter, I will introduce you to two main answers to these questions: First, writing is a social practice. Just as societies change with new people, ideas, technologies, and knowledges, the writing practices within those societies change. Second, academia is a particular kind of community whose goal is to compose, shape, and share knowledge. Put together, academic writing is a social practice that composes, shapes, and shares knowledge.

Writing is always done by writers. With this in mind, we will also explore ourselves as writers. What do we do? What are our processes? How do we define ourselves as writers differently with different writing tasks?


 * By the end of this course, the most accomplished writing will demonstrate:
 * Rhetorical Flexibility, which is the ability to adapt composing strategies to best suit the audience and purpose of your composition.
 * Genre Awareness, which is the ability to identify, analyze, and even critique writing conventions within particular discourse communities as well as understand how writing conventions reveal insights regarding the values, culture, and needs of a discourse community.
 * Writing-focused Inquiry, which is the ability to use appropriate research, methods, and reasoning in order to produce new knowledge about writing.
 * Reflective Writing Processes, which includes effective processes for brainstorming, drafting, conversing, collecting, revising, and editing, including comments from class colleagues and me.
 * Confidence to Engage, which is my hope that you will not only learn to write but also learn to join ongoing conversations.


 * Writing in the Course
 * Writing for readers: The major Writing Projects are all designed with specific readers in mind. You will refine these assignments so that they may persuade, inform, delight, and even surprise a reader. These assignments are designed for specific, real audiences. We will spend the majority of class developing ideas, strategies, and practices that will help you learn to really make the writing projects shine.
 * Writing for writing: The smaller daily writing assignments are designed to help you complete the Writing Projects. These are primarily to improve your writing process. Be sure to spend enough time on these so that you are able to share with the class. These are the smaller stepping stones along the way to completing the Writing Projects. These are less formal and more experimental. But they are still really important. After all, why would you want to try to leap across a river in one jump when you can take smaller safer steps?
 * Writing for yourself: In this class, you will craft your writing. To do so, you have to figure out how to craft yourself as a writer. Writers need to practice, reflect, resist, and lean in. On your blog, you will write about your processes, your experiences, your feelings, your failures and successes as a writer. You will not only learn about writing, you’ll also learn about yourself along the way. To do this, you need a safe space to write. I will not evaluate this writing. I will read and may comment. But this writing is a place for you to experience writing for yourself.


 * Required course materials:
 * Access to Gaucho Space for readings and to submit projects
 * Graff and Birkenstein, They Say/I Say
 * The Little Seagull Writing Handbook
 * Personal blog set up on wordpress.com
 * Access to a computer with an internet connection
 * Assessment

I’m deeply committed to your development as writers. When assessing your writing I will do so out of this commitment. I will first discuss what I see/understand about what you are trying to compose. Then I’ll comment on how you may revise to best meet your goals and best persuade your audience. For each of the Writing Projects, you will submit a draft that represents your very best possible work at that time. I will give you comments and a grade on that work. You will have the opportunity to improve each Writing Project before you submit the final version for final portfolio, which will carry 20% of your grade.


 * Final grade percentages
 * Portfolio (revised WPs + cover letter) – 20%
 * WP 1: Writing Project– 20%
 * WP 2: Writing project– 20%
 * WP3: Writing Project– 20%
 * Blog assignments – 10%
 * Group feedback – 5%
 * Quizzes – 5%


 * Wikipedia resources:
 * Online student training
 * Editing Wikipedia brochure
 * Evaluating Wikipedia brochure
 * Using talk pages handout
 * How to get help handout
 * Avoiding plagiarism handout
 * Citing sources handout
 * Advice for choosing articles

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