ENGL 21007 Writing for Engineering Syllabus | City College of New York | Spring 2019

Classroom: NAC 1/301Y

Schedule: Tuesdays 5:00-6:15pm Hybrid

Instructor: Jesse Rice-Evans, Graduate Teaching Fellow

Contact: (646) 801-1462 | jriceevans@ccny.cuny.edu

Office Hours: By Appointment Only

Course Description: This Writing for Engineers course is two-fold: we are going to explore technical writing in your field as well as investigate your individual acts of writing and composing.  How does your individual approach fit within the formal expectations of the field?

Course Description: Writing for Engineering is a writing composition course that will explore technical writing in the field and also investigate individual acts of process and writing.  

Course Learning Outcomes:

• acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility
• enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment
• negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation
• develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes
• engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond
• formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing
• practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects
• strengthen your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources)

Required Texts:

Technical Communication by Mike Markel, 11th edition, Bedford/Saint Martin’s (book or electronic copy)
Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Noble (provided)
Other short reading provided on Readings and Resources page//Google Drive folder

Course Policies and Procedures

Accessibility Statement:  I take seriously the needs of my students. This includes making accommodations for neurodiversity, learning disabilities, mental/emotional health, and other situations not listed here. Please let me know how I can support your learning.

Accessibility and Inclusion: If you have a disability or a personal circumstance that will affect your learning in this course, or if you need a reasonable (or even unreasonable) accommodation, please let me know as soon as possible so that we can discuss the best ways to meet your needs. This goes triply for folks with non-visible disabilities or who pass or mask or compensate. No need to do that here. I am happy to meet with students to discuss ways of expanding access in the classroom that are not only mandated by law, but please feel no obligation to train me.

To arrange accommodations in other classrooms and at City College contact the AccessAbility Center Tutoring Services, NAC 1/218

Basic Needs: Any student who faces challenges securing their food or housing and believes this may affect their performance in the course is urged to contact the Dean of Students for support. Furthermore, please notify me if you are comfortable in doing so. This will enable me to provide any resources that I may possess.

Attendance:  This is a hybrid course so the expectation is that you are participating online and attending face-to-face (f2f) class sessions. Per CCNY policy, if you miss five classes you will be dropped from the course.

Electronics and Communication: One of the goals of this course is to understand how to use electronics respectfully. You will be expected to utilize electronics during class time and it is up to you to stay present–I will not repeat myself if you are texting and not paying attention. We will also use in class time to work on assignments involving computers–use the time wisely. We will only be in contact via your City College email address. All announcements will go through your CCNY email–not checking it is not an excuse.

Lateness and Absences: Please do your best to arrive on time and remain in our in-person classes until dismissed. I understand that train snafus are real #MTAproblems but it’s disruptive to the class to have folks coming and going throughout. That said, no need to ask permission from me to visit the washroom or take a breather—we will try to offer a brief respite for folks to hydrate and grab a snack during each class meeting.

Regarding absences, please note: Much of the learning in this course happens through your engagement with me and your peers in class via class discussion and group interaction. Your course projects will be sequential and in-class activities will build toward larger assignments. Class time and online discussions will be highly interactive, requiring frequent participation, discussion, composing in and outside of class, and responding to your classmates’ work. For this reason, I expect you to attend all class meetings and post by the due dates on the days we work outside of class. I will post all assignments on the “Schedule” page of our course blog, but it is up to you to keep up with your work for the class. Just because we only meet on Mondays does not mean that we don’t have “class” throughout the week—only that you will have work due instead of coming to a face-to-face class meeting.

Having established this policy, note that you can miss class up to 2 times, no questions asked. Only religious holidays constitute excused absences; beyond that I do not have excused or unexcused absences. Any absence, up to your second one, is excused with no questions asked. VERY IMPORTANT, per City College Department of English policy: at your 3rd absence, and for each absence beyond it (including 2 missed labor logs/text responses), your final course grade will be lowered by up to one letter grade (an A becomes a B and so on)—and your grade likely will be otherwise affected simply because of the activities and work you’ll miss.

If you must miss class, let me know ahead of time if possible to make sure you stay caught up. If you miss unexpectedly, check the schedule on our course website and reach out to your writing group or another colleague to see what you missed so you can stay up with your work. If you miss class, please do not email me asking what we did in class, or, worse, if we did anything in class you should know about. If an assignment is due on a day that you miss because of an unexcused absence, you are responsible for keeping up with the daily schedule and contacting someone in the class to see what you missed and for turning in your work at the same time it was due for those who were in class.

Electronics and Communication: One of the goals of this course is to understand how to use electronics respectfully.  You will be expected to use electronics during class time and it is up to you to stay present. All announcements will go through your CCNY email.

Food and Drinks: Only water in NAC 1/301Y. If you need to eat before class, let me know.

Student Support Services:

AccessAbility Center Tutoring Services, NAC 1/218

Provides one-on-one tutoring and workshops to all registered students with learning or physical disabilities.

The Writing Center: Should you find yourself in need of additional writing assistance, the Writing Center is available to you.  I am also happy to provide a list of additional support services if requested.

To set up an appointment or semester-long sessions, contact them in person at the Writing Center, which is located in the NAC, 3rd floor plaza or call (212) 650-8104.

Assignments:

Formal Requirements: All assignments will be submitted digitally. We will be using Google Drive, the CUNY Commons, and Blackboard.  All major assignments need to be submitted into your Google Drive folder.  All attendance and drafts belong in your Google Drive folder as well. We will also be using Google Drive/Docs and Blackboard for peer review and discussion board interactions.  All citations should follow APA or IEEE format. You may choose the layout of your essays (within reason) and you will be asked to explain your choices in your theory of writing portion of each assignment. I reserve the right to accept late work on a case by case basis; late work with no prior accommodation will receive a zero.

Drafts & Peer Review: You will be asked to complete a first and final draft for each assignment. The first drafts will receive feedback from both myself and your peers.  You will complete peer edits based on a form provided to you. Drafting with peers allows you to collaborate with other classmates while also accessing your internal editor.  Often times editing someone else’s work with suggestions will inform your own draft.

Participation: Or What I Expect From You and What You Can Expect From Me What I Expect From You

I expect that you will attend each class and complete the assignments due—which includes posting your online assignments by each Sunday evening. Not only will your weekly writing grade suffer if you do not, but you will not get as much out of this class as you otherwise could. Learning is a collaborative activity, and I expect that you will be attentive to, engaged with, and respectful of everyone in the class, both in face-to-face and online settings. I also want to remind you not to abuse our classroom space or our online space. You’re welcome and encouraged to bring devices, including smartphones, to class, but please refrain from checking your email, Facebook, and other personal interests that are available through the web while we are in class.

The web will be a great resource for our class, but make sure when you’re online that what you’re doing relates directly to what we’re doing in class. I expect that in online discussions you will be respectful of the other members of the class and treat them as you want to be treated. I ask that we all be respectful of one another and the wonderfully diverse opinions, racial identities, gender expressions and sexual orientations, social classes, abilities, religious beliefs, and ethnicities among us.

In the same spirit, written work in this course should employ inclusive language, which shows that the writer honors the diversity of the human race by not using language that would universalize one element of humanity to the exclusion of others. For example, use men and women or people instead of the generic man; use they or alternate he and she instead of the generic he.

What You Can Expect From Me

I will treat you with respect and will spend a good deal of time this semester giving you feedback on your writing for your major projects, commensurate to the amount of time you spend on your writing. I will read your weekly online posts, and while I may not respond to each one of them, I will assign each of them a participation/completion grade and will give you feedback on your posts at midterm and at the end of the semester.

Academic Integrity

Plagiarism and cheating will not be tolerated. Plagiarism is defined as word-for-word copying, paraphrasing, or summarizing, without explaining that the language or ideas have come from another writer. No passage of writing, no matter how short, can be copied, paraphrased, or summarized without acknowledge its original source. City College regards acts of academic dishonesty (e.g., plagiarism, cheating on examinations, obtaining unfair advantage, and falsification of records and official documents) as serious offenses against the values of intellectual honesty. The college is committed to enforcing the CUNY Policy on Academic Integrity and will pursue cases of academic dishonesty. If you ever have any questions or concerns about plagiarism, please ask me.

We will also discuss how remix and other strategies in digital writing complicate what we might traditionally think of as plagiarism, but also, ways to implement these strategies appropriately and preserve authorly integrity.

Academic integrity is an essential part of the pursuit of truth, and of your education.  If you plagiarize by using someone else’s work or ideas, you defeat the purpose of your education.  In addition, academic dishonesty is prohibited in the City University of New York.  Plagiarism, which is the act of presenting another person’s writing or ideas as your own, will result in automatic failure of this course.

Digital & F2F Participation:  The expectation for this hybrid course is that you participate in the various ways that we connect for class, whether that be in person, through Commons posts, with videos, etc. The most successful learning experience comes when students are engaged in the process.

Drafts & Peer Review: You will be asked to complete a first and final draft for each assignment. The first drafts will receive feedback from both myself and your peers.  You will complete peer edits based on a form provided to you. Drafting with peers allows you to collaborate with other classmates while also accessing your internal editor.  Often times editing someone else’s work with suggestions will inform your own draft.

Technical Report (Chp 19 Writing Lab Reports) 2000-2500 words

Depending on your field, you will write either a test, lab or engineering report.  This assignment is meant to build your fluency in scientific research and the way that these reports are expected in the field.

Based on your major and your academic interest or some past projects you have done with your engineering professors; choose the topic of your choice. Begin with a question that you want to answer, or a hypothesis/idea that you want to test. Begin some research about it. Find sources in credible journals and books. Use City College library database. Gather some information on the background of your topic and previous relevant research. You may re-experiment a past experiment for yourself, and you may get the same or different results. You want to add knowledge to the existing knowledge on your topic. Write about your methods, results, and limitations ethically. Use citation: both in-text and at the end in a bibliography.

In the past, students have created and distributed surveys, conducted a small-scale scientific experiment, etc. There is no assigned length for this assignment, as depending on your data and experiment, the report can vary widely in length. Essential components include: Hypothesis, Abstract, Introduction, Procedure, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion.

Lab Report guidelines – University of Sheffield

Technical Description (Chp 20 Writing Descriptions) 750-1500 words

Choose one artifact (technological item, entity, tool, object, process, mechanism, or principle) from any of our assigned videos, or an approved artifact from another multimedia source, and compose a detailed description of the artifact.

• A description will indicate clearly the nature and scope of said object, process, or mechanism
• A description assignment will introduce the object, process, or mechanism clearly
• A description assignment will provide appropriate detail
• A description assignment will end with a brief conclusion

Follow the sample descriptions listed on pg 548.  Include diagrams and photos if applicable.

RFP Response (Chapter 16) 2000-2500 Words

This is a group assignment.  You will find an RFP (Request for Proposal) in your field and respond to it as if you were going to submit a bid to the organization requesting it. As engineers, you will be required to convince potential clients that your strategy and idea is their best option.  In order to achieve this, a proposal must persuade its reader three things:

• A proposal will show that you understand the clients’ needs
• A proposal will show that you have already determined what you plan to do and that you are able to do it
• A proposal will show that you are a professional and are committed to fulfilling your promises

Most RFPs give a specific template for how they expect bidders to respond.

RFP Pitch (Chapter 21) 1000 word reflection due after the presentation

Imagine your RFP bid made it through the first round, and your client is inviting your group in to hear what you are planning to do in person. You will now give a group presentation based on the RFP Assignment, which will include some form of multimedia (PowerPoint, Prezi, etc).  This will be a formal presentation and the expectation is that you look the part. In addition to the oral presentation, each student will be required to write a 1000 word reflection on his/her contributions, involvement, and overall experience working in a group setting.  

Final Portfolio and Theory of Writing

The portfolio and theory of writing are in many ways the most important documents that you’ll create for this class.  Assembling the portfolio will help you to see your progress as a writer over the course of the semester; the self-assessment will give you the chance to evaluate that work based on your own criteria as well as the course learning outcomes.

The Self-Assessment will provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate that you’ve understood the rhetorical terms that we’ve been working with this semester and an introduction to your portfolio.  The portfolio should include, at a minimum, the technical description, the technical report, the RFP assignment, and the group presentation response.  You should also include freewrites, screenshots of group work, basically any and all proof of what you completed over the course of the semester.

The portfolio will be housed on a WordPress site. If you are concerned about privacy, consider creating an email account that you can use exclusively for course work.  It will be read by me, some members of this class, and other CCNY faculty and administrators.  You are, of course, free to share your portfolio with anyone else, but do not make it freely available. If you would like to opt out of creating a WordPress site, please let me know and we will arrange for you to make a portfolio elsewhere.  We will have one class time dedicated to creating your WordPress sites.

Grading

This course will focus on qualitative not quantitative assessment, something we’ll discuss during the class, both with reference to your own work and the works we’re studying. While you will get a final grade at the end of the term, I will not be grading individual assignments, but rather asking questions and making comments that engage your work rather than simply evaluate it. You will also be reflecting carefully on your own work and the work of your peers.

The intention here is to help you focus on working in a more organic way, as opposed to working as you think you’re expected to. If this process causes more anxiety than it alleviates, see me at any point to confer about your progress in the course to date. If you are worried about your grade, your best strategy should be to join the discussions, do the reading, and complete the assignments. You should consider this course a “busy-work-free zone.” If an assignment does not feel productive, we can find ways to modify, remix, or repurpose the instructions.

Here are a few readings about this policy:

“Why I Don’t Grade” by Jesse Stommel

“How to Ungrade” by Jesse Stommel

“(Un)Grading: It Can Be Done in College” by Laura Gibbs

“My Grading System FAQ” by Traci Gardner

“Labor Log” by Traci Gardner

“All Teachers Should Be Trained to Overcome Their Hidden Biases” by SORAYA CHEMALY

Grading

Grading

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