Course Descriptions

Embry Riddle Aeronautical University

 

User Experience Writing

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Rhetorics of social Justice Movements

This section of HU 112 surveys theories of rhetoric to make sense of the ways symbolic expression is put to work to mobilize change. Students will engage in questions of ethics, responsibility, agency, and advocacy by examining evolving social justice movements that continue into the present. To student social justice movements and public advocacy, students will examine a wide range of “texts.” Such texts invite students to investigate how diverse media and space can harness the power of rhetoric to intervene on behalf of those who remain on the margins of society. How might everyday citizens step into the role of advocates for social change? Finding an answer to this question invites reflection on the ways social justice movements of the past continue to hold meaning for the present.

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Digital Publics & Rhetorical Theory

This course surveys rhetorical histories and theories to understand how the self and the digital realms become interconnected. Students will seek out a variety of digital platforms (e.g., blogs, vlogs, websites, podcasts, forums, video games, social media, etc.) to study how shared behaviors, technologies, values, spaces, and knowledge-making practices enable publics to emerge and transform across digital spaces. Since digital platforms are never simply neutral or a-rhetorical spaces, these digital publics afford insight into the ways issues of gender, race, ethnicity, dis/ability, and class show up in interesting and powerful ways. This course takes a thematic focus on the platforms, software, and code as both rhetorical texts and the underlying infrastructure for digital publics. Drawing from rhetorical history and theories, the class will examine scholarship in platform, software, and code studies to explore how the affordances and constraints of software and multimedia platforms work rhetorically. 

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Technical Report Writing

COM 221 equips students to become skilled technical communicators in the professional workplace. Students learn genre conventions to compose and design professional written and digital “texts” in the form of reports, memos, portfolios, proposals, and reflections. Across all assignment sequences, students will engage all stages of the writing process—inventing, prewriting, drafting, revising, editing—to compose original technical documents that are responsive to instructor feedback and peer review feedback. Students are also invited to hone their oral communication skills by delivering formal classroom presentations that are attuned to audience expectations. Additionally, students will be introduced to various technological tools to compose and design technical documents for diverse audiences and rhetorical purposes. The classroom lectures, discussions, and assignments are informed by current theoretical conversations in writing studies that engage the role of the professional communicator in ethical and professional contexts.

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First Year Writing

COM 122 is an introductory writing course that teaches all stages of the writing process to help students develop critical thinking and information literacy skills to communicate effectively in academic contexts. Since this is a writing-intensive course, students will compose across all stages of the writing process (inventing, prewriting, drafting, revising, editing) and will incorporate instructor and peer feedback to craft compositions for a specific rhetorical purpose and audience. Assignments are designed to cultivate students’ abilities to evaluate, analyze and critically assess how diverse texts (written, visual, and performative rhetorics) remain responsive to larger rhetorical situations. Through classroom discussions, collaborative activities, research projects, and writing assignments, students are expected to gain information literacy skills to ethically conduct and evaluate research while also demonstrating an understanding of current citation styles to responsibly document research findings in academic writing.

 

Penn State University

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Composition Pedagogy (Graduate Class)

The second semester of ENGL 602 moves beyond the day-to-day specifics of the English 015 syllabus in order to prepare instructors for creating and directing their own composition courses in the future. The aim of 602 is to introduce PWR instructors to a variety of pedagogical practices and concepts through assigned readings, discussions, and guest speaker panels assessing issues of pedagogy and course design. Spring 602 will also provide instructors opportunities to develop their own courses, units, assignments, and lessons.

 

Technical Writing

ENGL 202C: Technical Writing is designed to teach the writing strategies and tactics that scientists and engineers will need in order to write successfully on the job. ENGL 202C is an advanced course in writing which will familiarize you with the discourse practices prized in your disciplinary and institutional communities – and helps you manage those practices effectively in your own written work. In this course, you can expect to discover and understand the discourse features that distinguish your disciplinary and institutional communities from others, develop a range of writing processes appropriate to various writing tasks, arrange material to raise and satisfy readers’ expectations, using both conventional and rhetorical patterns of organization, and design and use tables, graphs, and technical illustrations.

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Rhetoric and Composition 

The goal of ENGL 15 is to help students to become “critical citizens” inside and outside the university, people who engage actively and influentially with the communities they belong to because they have an awareness of how communities are created and influenced through language and other symbols. Acquiring skill in rhetoric and argument means learning to write (and speak) with a coherent sense of audience and purpose, and with a strategic sense of argument and design. It also means learning to read (and listen) rhetorically, with a critical yet open-minded attention to the methods of persuasion employed by others. Such methods may be used to teach, explain, create knowledge, alter beliefs, protect the innocent, recommend actions, or reform society.

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Florida State University

 

Research, Genre, and Context 

English 2135 fulfills the second of two required composition courses at Florida State University. While continuing to stress the importance of critical reading, writing, and thinking skills emphasized in ENC 1101, as well as the importance of using writing as a recursive process involving invention, drafting, collaboration, revision, rereading, and editing to clearly and effectively communicate ideas for specific purposes, occasions, and audiences, ENC 2135 focuses on teaching students research skills that allow them to effectively incorporate outside sources in their writing and to compose in a variety of genres for specific contexts. 

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