This course is built around a semester long project that starts two texts that begin at the same time. Starting with the first day of class, you’ll complete a short report called “Taking Stock”. This is completed by the third week of class and enables you to reflect on your skills, abilities and knowledge and tell me about your experience with writing, reading, technology, and presentations.

At the same time, we’ll begin the Collection with Introduction. This first project investigates a topic area– an issue or dispute drawn from contemporary civic life. These Collections will allow you to learn several skills at once. Some are research skills, such as how to frame a problem, find sources, and evaluate them. You’ll learn to use technology such as refworks to help you keep track of your sources. You’ll practice academic craft, like paraphrase, summary and quotation. Additionally, you’ll need to analyze your sources, synthesize them, and present a clear point of view on them through the final text, which informs a reader of information that can them understand the issue or dispute.

These collections will become the basis the other projects you complete, each of which will help you learn how to take a clear stand on an issue, support the issue with credible evidence, and persuade an audience. Following the Collection with an Introduction, you’ll produce a short piece of approximately 200 words, a problem statement, that articulates an issue and a position, along with an infographic that represents data, concepts or other information you’ve discovered in you research. Following that, you’ll create a short digital essay that combines voiceover and images to introduce readers to a dispute and offer solutions and resolutions.

Your final text of the term will be policy paper. At this point in the semester, you will have a clear point of view on an issue you’ve researched and written about throughout the term. Your policy paper will attempt to persuade an audience to adopt your point of view. The paper will be evidence based and claim driven and include how you’d address objections to your point of view.