This document outlines the syllabus for an online English 102 course titled "Writing About Place & Identity" taught during the summer of 2019. The course focuses on applying principles of expository and argumentative essay writing through exploring how one's environment shapes their life and identity. Major assignments include a personal narrative essay, annotated bibliography, exploratory research essay, and op-ed essay. The course aims to help students develop composition and research skills to communicate effectively for different audiences and contexts. It provides learning outcomes, assignment requirements and deadlines, grading policies, textbook information, and instructor contact details.

1. ENGLISH 102
College Writing and Rhetoric
Syllabus
Summer 2019 – Online
Writing About Place & Identity
Instructor
Clare Shearer
Email – clares@uidaho.edu
Office Hours
Tuesday & Thursday
11 AM – 1 PM
or by appointment
During my Office Hours, I will be available on email
or by Skype, if you prefer to speak face-to-face

2. COURSE GOALS & LEARNING OUTCOMES –
English 102 is an introductory composition course that focuses on applied principles of
expository and argumentative essay writing, including summaries, critiques, and syntheses of
texts, and the research essay. Emphasis is placed on clear, concise, and vigorous prose.
This semester, we will explore writing techniques through the lens of place: How does our
environment shape both our lives and the events around us? How do we write about such issues
across contexts and audiences? We will engage with issues of place and identity through a diverse
selection of voices, perspectives, and approaches. You will be expected to write from your own
personal experience as well as engage in traditional research assignments, blog writing, op-eds,
and social media—exploring new contexts, genres, and audiences.
As we interrogate issues of place, we will work to develop various composition skills, including
freewriting, reflection, revision, synthesis, and research. We will then apply these skills to an
array of rhetorical situations, asking you to consider how effectively you are communicating the
concepts and ideas you are working with. How might your writing reach an audience, and what
you would like the audience to feel, think, or do? With a focus on our environment and how we
are shaped by it, this course will allow us to identify how place influences our lives and how we
create and enact our own identities and ideologies around it.
By the end of this course, you should be able to:
1. Demonstrate awareness and application of rhetorical strategies in the writing
produced by others and yourself.
• How writers use rhetoric:
o Comprehend college-level and professional prose and analyze how authors
present their ideas in view of their probable purposes, audiences, genres,
modalities.
• Use rhetoric yourself:
o Accurately assess and effectively respond to a wide variety of audiences and
rhetorical situations and articulate your rhetorical purpose for writing, who
you are writing for, what you are saying, and how you’ve decided to present
it (genre and modality).
o Use evidence for a rhetorical purpose in writing a research paper.
2. Apply effective research skills appropriate for your rhetorical purpose.
• Locate, evaluate, organize, and use research material collected from a variety of
sources, including, but not limited to the following:
o scholarly library databases;
o other official databases (e.g., federal government databases);
o informal electronic networks and internet sources;
o print and online books and journals;
o and primary sources.
• Use evidence appropriately according to the rhetorical situation (e.g. paraphrase,
summary, quote, attributive tags, in-text citation, etc.).
• Correctly cite and document source material according to a current style manual.

3. 3. Demonstrate critical thinking.
• Productively incorporate a variety of perspectives when considering or composing an
argument.
• Present ideas as related to, but clearly distinguished from, the ideas of others.
• Write critical analyses and syntheses of college-level and professional prose.
4. Demonstrate your understanding that writing is a process.
• Apply a variety of strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading.
• Revise your writing using additional invention and re-thinking after initial draft is
produced.
• Give and receive constructive feedback from peers.
5. Compose arguments that meet college-level expectations for academic compositions.
• Compose a focused claim supported with logical and clear reasons and evidence.
• Synthesize arguments made by other rhetors to develop and support your own claim.
• Apply current citation rules in situations like paraphrasing, summarizing, citing and
documenting borrowed material.
DEADLINES –
Administrative Deadlines
The university has certain deadlines of which you need to be aware if you want to drop the course
at some point during the term.
June 12 – Last day to drop the course WITHOUT a grade of W.
June 28 – Last day to drop the course WITH a grade of W.
Class Deadlines
Each of the assignments in this course will have a deadline and it is your responsibility to speak
with me in advance of that deadline if you will be unable to submit your work on time. In the
event that you do submit your work late, I will take off five points per day for major
assignments. Deductions to minor assignments will be based on the circumstances.
Note on Extensions: I will only provide extensions in advance and in the case that you are
facing reasonable circumstances that will not allow for your work to be in on time. Life happens
to all of us. But you must demonstrate respect for my time (and for your classmates’ time). If you
communicate with me as soon as possible, I am happy to work with you to arrange an extension.
TEXTBOOK –
Nicotra, Jodie. Becoming Rhetorical. Cengage, 2018. ISBN 978-1-305-95677-3.

4. Outside Reading: You will be responsible for additional readings outside the textbook, all of
which will be available via BbLearn as PDF files or external links.
COURSE ETIQUETTE –
Online citizenship. The online classroom is a learning community. Any behavior that disrupts this
community will not be tolerated. This includes being rude or belligerent to the instructor or other
students, etc. Please be respectful of your fellow students and your instructor. If you have a
problem with anything in the course, you may speak to me about it privately.
Email etiquette. Feel free to email me any questions you might have about the course, your work,
meeting, etc. My address is clares@uidaho.edu and I’ll do my best to answer as soon as possible.
Note: Since this is a writing course, I ask that you please treat your emails as professional
correspondence. This means they should feature a greeting, complete sentences, and a sign-off
with your name at the bottom.
OFFICE HOURS –
I encourage you to contact me during my office hours via email or Skype (or during email
anytime). I’m happy to talk about our coursework, writing, or life in general. I will be available
from 11 AM – 1 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout the course, or you can email me to
schedule a meeting if you cannot contact me during those hours.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS –
Major Writing Projects
Throughout Semester:
● Reading Response Discussion Posts: 500 words each / published to BbLearn discussion
board
Unit 1:
● Personal Narrative Essay: At least 4 pages / MLA formatting
Unit 2:
● Annotated Bibliography: Three (3) sources / MLA formatting
Unit 3:
● Exploratory Research Essay: 5-7 pages / MLA formatting
Unit 4:
● Op-Ed Essay: 4-5 pages / MLA formatting

5. Each of the major assignments in this course will build on one another. In Unit One, we will be
reading personal narrative essays about place which will inform and inspire your own personal
narrative essay. The blog posts for this unit will give you the chance to reflect on these narratives
and how the writers use rhetorical techniques and place study in their own work. When you write
your personal narrative essay, then, you will be able to harness some of these techniques in your
writing. Unit Two will allow you to dive deep into research on a specific topic of place – perhaps
the same you wrote about in your personal narrative, perhaps another – and think critically about
that research in an annotated bibliography. Unit Three will put this research to use in an
exploratory research essay which will allow you to engage your issue and analyze each side of the
arguments around it. And, finally, in Unit Four you will take this issue of place and write an op-
ed that argues a solution to the problem you identified in that place.
GRADING –
All assignments, major and minor, will receive a grade in BbLearn, which you can check in the
My Grades tab (on the left side). If you fail to submit a major assignment, you are at risk of
failing the course. Smaller assignments, like blog posts or journal entries, are meant to help you
prepare for the larger projects, so please take them seriously. Furthermore, these points will add
up quickly, and will contribute to your passing grade in the class. Please note that you cannot
pass the course if you don’t do the assignments.
Throughout
Semester
8 Discussion Board
Posts:
25 points each
8 Discussion Board
Responses:
10 points per two
posts (5 points each)
Six Quizzes &
One Brainstorm
Prewrite:
10 points each
Total Points
Possible:
250
Unit One
Personal Essay
Rough Draft:
25 points
Final Draft:
100 points
Total Points
Possible:
125
Library Week
Research
Research Log:
30 points
Quiz #1:
10 points
Quiz #2:
10 points
Total Points
Possible: 50
Unit Two
Annotated
Bibliography
Rough Draft:
25 points
Final Draft:
75 points
Total Points
Possible:
100
Unit Three
Exploratory
Research Essay
Rough Draft:
25 Points
Final Draft:
125 points
Total Points
Possible:
150

6. Unit Four
Op-Ed Essay
Rough Draft:
25 Points
Final Draft:
100 points
Total Points
Possible:
125
Total 800 points
If you withdraw from this course on or before January 23, nothing will appear on your transcript.
If you stay registered for the course after that date, you will receive one of the following grades.
Only the first three are passing grades.
A Represents achievement that is outstanding or superior relative to the level necessary
to meet the requirements of the course.
B Represents achievement that is significantly above the level necessary to meet the
requirements of the course.
Grades of A or B are honors grades. You must do something beyond the minimum required in
order to earn an A or B.
C Represents achievement that meets the basic requirements in every respect. It signifies
that the work is average, but nothing more.
W Stands for Withdrawal. This is the grade you will receive if you withdraw from the
course after September 1 but on or before October 27. A W has no effect on your
GPA, but you can have only 20 W credits during your time as an undergraduate at UI
(about six courses. After October 27 you can no longer withdraw from the course.
N Stands for No Credit. A grade of N has no effect on your GPA, but it does mean that
you need to take the course again. You will earn a grade of N if your grade is an N and
you have done all the work for the course. You also must have made a good faith effort
to complete all the assignments. Handing in just any piece of writing just to avoid
getting an F will not work.

7. F
Stands for Failure. A grade of F has a negative effect on your GPA. If you fail to hand
in any major writing assignment or do not make a good-faith effort to succeed at a
major assignment, you will automatically earn an F. If your average grade is an N but
you did not complete one of the major components of the course (one of the major
papers of all of the homework assignments or drafts), you will automatically earn an F
in the course. There is no reason for receiving an F in this course, unless you simply
fail to submit the required work.
I Stands for Incomplete. Under very unusual circumstances you could be assigned an
Incomplete in the course if something happened to you within the last two weeks of the
semester that made it impossible to complete the course (a serious accident or illness
that left you hospitalized and very significant personal tragedy, etc.)
POLICY ON PLAGIARISM –
In keeping with the spirit of academic integrity, I will assume at all times that you are
doing honest, original work. That being said, plagiarism is a serious matter. With this in
mind, I feel that it is important to explain the definition and consequences of plagiarism,
intentional or otherwise.
At the University of Idaho, we assume you will do your own work and that you will work
with your instructor on improving writing that is your own. Plagiarism—using someone
else’s ideas or words as yours own without proper attribution—is a serious matter.
The Council of Writing Program Administrators defines plagiarism in the following way:
“In an instructional setting, plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone
else’s language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without
acknowledging its source. This definition applies to texts published in print or on-line, to
manuscripts, and to the work of other student writers.” (From “Defining and Avoiding
Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices,” http://wpacouncil.org/node/9).
The consequences of plagiarism:
If evidence of plagiarism is found in student work in English 101, the instructor is
empowered by Regulation 0-2 of the general catalog to assign a grade of F for the course,
a penalty that may be imposed in particularly serious cases. In most cases of plagiarism,
the instructor will also make a complaint to the Dean of Students Office, which is
responsible for enforcing the regulations in the Student Code of Conduct. So in addition
to the academic penalty of receiving an F in the course, you may also be subject to other
disciplinary penalties, which can include suspension of expulsion. Although such severe
penalties are rarely imposed for first-time offenders, the Dean of Students Office
maintains disciplinary records as part of a student’s overall academic record.

8. Instructors may demonstrate that a paper involves plagiarism in two ways:
1) By identifying the source.
2) By showing the discrepancy of style between previous papers and the paper in
question.
If a paper involves misuse of sources or other materials--which the CWPA defines as
when a writer “carelessly or inadequately [cites] ideas and words borrowed from another
source”-- the instructor may ask you to rewrite the paper, using correct forms of
documentation.
When you need to use words or ideas from another person—whether an idea, a picture, a
powerful statement, a set of facts, or an explanation—cite your source!
UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO CLASSROOM
LEARNING CIVILITY CLAUSE –
In any environment in which people gather to learn, it is essential that all members feel as
free and safe as possible in their participation. To this end, it is expected that everyone in
this course will be treated with mutual respect and civility, with an understanding that all
of us (students, instructors, professors, guests, and teaching assistants) will be respectful
and civil to one another in discussion, in action, in teaching, and in learning.
Should you feel our classroom interactions do not reflect an environment of civility and
respect, you are encouraged to meet with your instructor during office hours to discuss
your concern. Additional resources for expression of concern or requesting support
include the Dean of Students office and staff (208-885-6757), the UI Counseling &
Testing Center’s confidential services (208-885-6716), or the UI Office of Human Rights,
Access, & Inclusion (208-885-4285).
CENTER FOR DISABILITY ACCESS AND RESOURCES REASONABLE
ACCOMMODATIONS STATEMENT –
Reasonable accommodations are available for students who have documented temporary
or permanent disabilities. All accommodations must be approved through the Center for
Disability Access and Resources located in the Bruce M. Pitman Center, Suite 127 in
order to notify your instructor(s) as soon as possible regarding accommodation(s) needed
for the course.
Phone: 208-885‐6307
Email: cdar@uidaho.edu
Website: www.uidaho.edu/current-students/cdar