This document is the syllabus for an English 102 college writing course taught online during the summer of 2017. The instructor is Shannon Dryden and the course focuses on community awareness, critical thinking about one's environment and place within it, and effective written communication. Over the course of the semester, students will complete four major assignments exploring these themes, including an essay on sense of place, an annotated bibliography, a research-based response essay, and a public service announcement. Students will also participate in weekly discussion boards, maintain a writing journal, and provide peer reviews of classmates' work. The goal is for students to improve their skills in persuasive and expository writing across disciplines and beyond college.

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Syllabus English 102 Summer 2017
College Writing and Rhetoric
Instructor: Shannon Dryden
Email: sdryden@uidaho.edu
Prompt Email Reply Hours: Monday through Thursday after 3:00 pm; Fridays before 5:00pm
Course Goals and Learning Outcomes
English 102 is an introductory composition course, designed to improve your skills in persuasive,
expository writing, the sort you will be doing in other courses in college and in many jobs.
Sometimes this kind of writing is called transactional writing; it is used to transact something—
persuade and inform a reasonably well-educated audience, conduct business, evaluate, review, or
explain a complex process, procedure, or event.
Your section of English 102 will be focusing on community awareness and thinking rhetorically
about the interactions and situations we experience daily, perhaps without even thinking about
them. We will be using this framework for all of our major assignments and class discussions. This
class will be using research to more critically explore an issue you encounter in our community,
our campus, or your field of study and understand its connection to a broader issue confronting
society at large. This course is designed, first and foremost, to make you an effective writer across
the disciplines, throughout your academic career, and beyond the university. My goal is to guide
you toward thinking more critically about your environment and your place within it and help you
to communicate these ideas effectively and for a variety of audiences, purposes, and genres,
regardless of your background, interests, or academic goals. By the end of the course, a
successful student should be able to…
1. Accurately assess and effectively respond to a wide variety of audiences and rhetorical
situations.
2. Comprehend college-level and professional prose and analyze how authors present their
ideas in view of their probable purposes, audiences, and occasions.
3. Present ideas as related to, but clearly distinguished from, the ideas of others (including the
ability to paraphrase, summarize, and correctly cite and document borrowed material).
4. Focus on, articulate, and sustain a purpose that meets the needs of specific writing
situations.
5. Explicitly articulate why they are writing, who they are writing for, and what they are
saying.
6. Write critical analyses and syntheses of college-level and professional prose.
7. Be able to make the connection between questions and problems in your life both within
and outside of college.
8. Gather and evaluate information and use it for a rhetorical purpose in writing a research
paper.
9. Attend to and productively incorporate a variety of perspectives.
10. Develop flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading.

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11. Understand writing as an open process that permits writers to use later invention and re-
thinking to revise their work.
12. Give and receive constructive feedback from peers.
13. Use conventions of format and structure appropriate to the rhetorical situation and
practice appropriate means of documenting their work.
14. Locate, evaluate, organize, and use research material collected from electronic sources,
including scholarly library databases; other official databases (e.g., federal government
databases); and informal electronic networks and internet sources.
Class Deadlines
The due dates for all homework assignments and drafts are listed on the master course schedule
posted on the class BbLearn site, as well as in the course folder for each unit. All homework
assignments are due by midnight on the date listed. If at any point these dates change, the course
schedule will be updated. You know the deadlines now, at the beginning of the term, so late work
will not be accepted without prior arrangement or communication.
Required Textbook
• Chapters from Jodie Nicotra’s Becoming Rhetorical. I will be providing you with PDF
versions of assigned readings.
• There will also be supplemental readings required throughout the course, which will be
available as PDFs on the BbLearn site.
Course Website
As this is an online course, all materials for the course can be found on the course BbLearn site. All
assignments will be submitted through BbLearn as well. Log on into BbLearn
(http://bblearn.uidaho.edu) using your University of Idaho NetID and password, and locate English
102. If you ask me a question that can be easily answered by reading the material provided online, I
will simply direct you to the corresponding assignment sheet, course folder, section on the
syllabus/course schedule, or informational powerpoint.
Participation
Writing is a collaborative venture, and all good writers engage with their community of peers for
suggestions and feedback on their writing process. In lieu of classroom participation, you will be
required to participate in the discussion board through in-depth responses to your classmates’
original posts (at least 100 words each). Prompts for each week’s responses are offered on each
week’s associated DB forum. Participation (50 points per unit) will be assessed on the following
scale: “C” – 1 reply each week; “B” – 2 replies each week; “A” – 3 replies each week.
Course Etiquette
Classroom citizenship: The online classroom is a learning community. Be respectful of your
fellow students and your instructor. If you have a problem with anything in the course,
speak to me about it privately after class or meet me during my office hours. Disruptive
behavior during class may result in expulsion from a class meeting or the entire course.

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Email etiquette: I welcome your emails and questions – if you have questions about the
course, your work, meeting times, etc., please contact me at the address listed above or on
the BbLearn home page. When you contact me, please treat it as a professional
correspondence—your message should have a greeting, be written in complete sentences,
and signed with your name at the bottom. If it is not formatted according to these
guidelines, do not expect a response.
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 online classroom interactions do not reflect an environment of civility
and respect, you are encouraged to meet with me during office hours to discuss your
concern. Additional resources for expression of concern or requesting support include
the Dean of Students office and staff (855-6757), the UI Counseling & Testing Center’s
confidential services (885-6716), or the UI Office of Human Rights, Access, & Inclusion (855-4258).
Course Requirements
Major Assignments
As discussed above, over the course of the semester, our class will be focused on the
theme of community awareness. The four course units will reflect this theme, beginning
with an initial reflection on the rhetorical properties of our environment and culminating in
the creation of a multimodal public service announcement designed to create awareness
of your chosen issue.
The bulk of your graded work in this course will consist of these four major writing
assignments within thematically-focused project units, varying in genre, format, and page
length. For more information on these assignments, including detailed instructions and
formatting guidelines, please refer to their respective folders on the course BbLearn site.
•Unit 1: Sense of Place and Visual Rhetoric
- Sense of Place Essay
•Unit 2: Researching a Community Issue
- Library Instruction Unit
- Annotated Bibliography
•Unit 3:
- Macro-Micro-Response Essay
•Unit 3: Rhetorical Remediation
- PSA Poster and Analysis Letter
Discussion Board Posts
Each week, you will be expected to post a well-articulated 250-word response to some
aspect of our reading or unit instruction. I have provided you with prompts to engage with
for each post. They will be graded on completion and your engagement with the assigned
reading and/or discussion prompt. See “Participation” for information on responses to your
classmates’ posts.

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Writing Journal
To accompany readings from Becoming Rhetorical and important information provided on
instructional slides, you will be expected to keep up with Writing Journal prompts. These
will be collected using the Writing Journal tool, which is only visible to you and the
instructor. The discussion questions are designed for you to process and engage with
concepts that are important to this unit’s instruction and assignments. Like participation,
Writing Journals are allotted points in each unit and will be evaluated based on effort and
engagement with discussion questions
Process Assignments
Process assignments are designed as building blocks to major assignment drafts, as well as
checkpoints to assess your understanding of each unit’s concepts. They are graded on
completeness and effort. For detailed instructions on completing and submitting individual
process assignments, please refer to unit folders.
Peer Review
With each rough draft due, you will also be required to submit a copy to the associated
Peer Review discussion board. The following week, you must provide feedback for an
assigned classmate – lists will be posted each unit. For each unit, follow the prompt and
provide feedback in the form of open-ended questions (Unit 1 and 4) or structured peer
review worksheet (Unit 3). You are also encouraged to provide any other local (sentence-
level) or global (full assignment) revision suggestions. Unit 2 (Annotated Bibliography) has no
official rough draft due and, thus, no official peer review session – DB Post #5 will serve as a
mock peer review.
Evaluation
Your grade in this course will be a combination of your work in the four formal writing units and
daily work completed in your writing journal and for the online discussion board.
Formal Writing Assignments
Rough drafts of major writing assignments – indicated below in bold – are worth 50 points.
They will be evaluated based on completeness (50%) and effort (50%). Your rough draft must
be submitted both to the assignment drop-box below the Unit header on the left-hand
panel of the BbLearn site and to the associated unit’s peer review session. Due to the added
workload of Library Week and the nature of the assignment, there is no official rough draft
due in Unit 2 for the Annotated Bibliography.
Final drafts of major writing assignments are worth 100 points and will be evaluated based
on rubrics. These rubrics are provided on the second page of each of the assignment
instruction sheets. You must complete each major assignment by the final due date in order
to pass the course.
Discussion Board Posts and Writing Journal
Weekly posts and journal entries will be evaluated less formally. A full score will be awarded
for work that fully and thoughtfully responds to the associated prompt or forum and is
turned in by midnight the day that it is assigned.

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Participation
Participation in responding to the online discussion board will be assessed based on
number of responses and in-depth engagement with the suggested response prompt.
Points (50 available per unit) will be awarded on the following scale:
•“C” – 1 reply each week
•“B” – 2 replies each week
•“A” – 3+ replies each week
You are not expected to respond to the introductory DB post.
Peer Review
Each peer review session (20 points each) will be graded for effort and engagement. If you
miss the number of replies to Discussion Board posts for the grade you would like for
participation, you may make up points by responding to more drafts than your assigned
classmate’s.
Final Grades
Final grades will be based on a 1,220-point scale. This means that to have a final grade of C,
the minimum grade required to pass the class, you must have earned at least 854 points over
the course of the summer session. A B will have earned 976 points, and so on. Points are
distributed as indicated below:
• Unit 1: Considering your Community – 210 points
- BbLearn/Syllabus Quiz – 20 points
- Process Assignment: Voice and Style – 20 points
- Sense of Place Essay: Rough Draft – 50 points
- Peer Review Questions – 20 points
- Sense of Place Essay: Final Draft – 100 points
• Unit 2: Researching a Social Issue - 140 points
- Library Instruction Unit – 40 points
- Annotated Bibliography: 100 points
• Unit 3: Discussing a Social Issue – 200 points
- Process Assignment: Outline your Essay – 20 points
- Macro-Micro-Response Essay: Rough Draft – 50 points
- Process Assignment: Synthesis Paragraph – 20 points
- Peer Review Worksheet – 20 points
- Macro-Micro-Response Essay: Final Draft – 100 points
• Unit 4: Rhetorical Remediation Unit – 190 points
- Process Assignment: Poster Analysis – 20 points
- PSA Concept Draft – 50 points
- Peer Review Questions – 20 points
- Unit 4 Project: PSA Poster and Analysis Letter – 100 points
• Discussion Board Posts (8) – 80 points
• Writing Journal (50 points per unit) – 200 points
• Participation (50 points per unit) – 200 points
In order to pass the course, you also must complete the entire Library Instruction Unit and hand in all
major assignments.

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Final Grades are assigned as follows:
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 1/25 but on or before 3/31. 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
Friday, 3/31 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.
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 you accumulate more than five
unexcused absences, 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 or you exceeded
the maximum number of unexcused absences, 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 or fail to come to class.
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.
10.) Disability Support Services Reasonable Accommodations Statement
Reasonable accommodations are available for students who have documented temporary or
permanent disabilities. All accommodations must be approved through Disability Support
Services located in the Idaho Commons Building, Room 306 in order to notify your instructor(s)
as soon as possible regarding accommodation(s) needed for the course.
Disability Support Services
Phone: 208-885-6307
Email: dss@uidaho.edu
Web: http://www.uidaho.edu/studentaffairs/asap/dss
11.) Policy on Plagiarism in English 102
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. You must be aware, however, that if a paper
involves plagiarism of any kind, I am empowered by Regulation 0-2 of the general catalog to assign
a grade of F for the course. In most cases of plagiarism, I will also make a complaint to the Dean of
Students Office, which can result in suspension or expulsion from the university.

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I am aware, however, that many students, even beyond First Year Composition classes, struggle to
properly accredit the work of others within papers, and I recognize two basic kinds of plagiarism,
as outlined with the Modern Language Association of America:
1. Malicious or intentional plagiarism. This is the most serious kind of academic theft. It
involves using someone else’s work as your own without citing the source, including direct
copying, rephrasing, and summarizing, submitting someone else’s paper as your own, or
submitting your own work from a different semester or different course. It also involves
taking someone else’s idea and putting it in different words. Even if several different
sources were copied, it is still plagiarism.
2. “Plagia-phrasing” or mosaic plagiarism. Not indicating directly quoted passages or ideas even
while citing the work as a general source.
If a paper involves plagiarism of the second kind, I will ask you to rewrite the paper using correct
forms of documentation. However, if you persist in committing this kind of plagiarism, you could
be subjected to a more severe penalty of the type described above. 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!