Policies and Procedures

Common Policies

In Class Activities

As a class about writing and communication, you will be expected to communicate and participate in a variety of ways. You should expect to engage regularly in a variety of in-class activities and exercises—oral, visual, and written, and individual and collaborative.

In class activities may include:

• Discussions about readings, assignments, and artifacts where you share your insights, answer questions offered to the class, and positively engage with classmates in these discussions.

• Free writing activities and occasional low- to no-stakes quizzes

• Workshops, including collaborative planning, in-class designing/writing, feedback on works in progress, peer reviewing, and peer editing.

• Various kinds of oral presentations and improvisation lessons for verbal and non-verbal communication

• Listening to and asking questions of guest speakers

• Watching and responding to videos, examples, demonstrations

Grading

I use the numerical percentage in the grading of final projects or artifacts, along with a brief explanation of my justification for that grade. Other items, like journal assignments, peer review, etc. are more completionary—did you do it or not—unless the work fails to engage with the given prompts, in which case I may deduct points at my discretion or award an incomplete.

For the Final Course Grade, Georgia Tech stipulates that for all intents and purposes, a 92 is equal to a 98, which translates to an A and a 4.0 on the GPA. See the 'grade graph' below. Additionally, I round to the nearest whole number for the final grade, e.g., a 79.50 becomes an 80 (B) and a 79.49 becomes a 79 (C).

How do I grade?

I do not grade from the perspective of “you begin with 100 then I penalize as I go.” I consider the artifact holistically—do all the parts work and fit together towards the main, rhetorical goal of the work?—rather than, for example, taking off five points for a relatively arbitrary comma splice error. Your work must prove its own worth, stakes, value, and argumentative validity.

Additionally, I have organized the grades for your main artifacts in ways that award for deep, process-driven work balanced against the heavier hand used for the main, final artifact itself. For example, Artifact 1 is worth 30% of the grade, but the actual final product, Artifact 1, may be worth 40% of that grade, while collaboration, in-class participation, and journal assignments take up the remaining 60%. The final product of each artifact is graded based around the Common Feedback Chart's scales. This scale is tied to the ...

Rhetorical situation of the assignment.

Here's an example: for the Artifact 2 poster project, I set it as a 'contest' calling for posters for monuments. The contest calls for specific things to be addressed in the poster, with an eye for general audience appeal (rhetorical awareness), informational depth and analysis (development of ideas), and overall design (design for medium and conventions).

In the contest flier, I write, "We in the Public Museum will reply promptly to your submission. We will let you know whether 'we will immediately publish your work' (36-40), 'we want to publish it with some edits' (30-35), 'we appreciate your submission, but it does not meet several of the requirements or our design standards' (20-29), or 'we thank you for your submission, but find that it meets few, if any, of our requests for the project' (0-20)." Think of the award committee--do they have time to give deep feedback? Nope!

But, I do! (Grading Feedback)

I provide detailed feedback that invites you to consider how your work succeeded or failed to (1) meet that group's request, (2) appeal to their values, and (3) meet the generic requirements and expectations of posters or infographics, foregrounding rhetorical awareness, development of ideas, and design of the medium and conventions. Often, this feedback takes the form of video of your work that I dub over with my impressions and commentary. Studies show advantages to this method in terms of student-instructor relations and understanding and internalizing feedback.

Grade Weights

Incorporated within these Artifacts are in-class participation grades, collaboration grades, grades given to process documents like proposals, article approval, drafts, and peer review, so the final artifact itself that you or y'all present is never 100% of that final grade.

Artifact 0: First Week Diagnostic Video: 5%

Artifact 1: Collaborative Memoir Project: 25%

Artifact 2: Individual Monument Project: 25%

Artifact 3: Collaborative Podcast Project: 30%

Final Portfolio: 15%

Descriptions of these projects may be found in the Artifacts Page.

A Quick Note: I am very intentional with the work I plan for you. I estimate that a full time student taking 15 credit hours will work 40 hours a week on a full-time education. This means that, a 3-credit hour class would take 8 hours of work per week. Class time takes 3 hours of that weekly time, leaving a remainder of 5 hours outside of class per week. My daily homework assignments are designed such that you shouldn’t do more than 1-2 hours of focused work per week. This remaining 4-5 hours should be spent working on major artifacts and projects either by brainstorming, drafting, pre-writing, writing, getting to know the materials, researching, asking me questions, working with your peers, or revising.

Accessibility

Any student who may require accommodation for a documented disability should inform me during the first week of class or when you become aware of your disability. Students who anticipate difficulties with the content or format of the course due to a documented disability should arrange a meeting with me at the beginning of the semester so we can create a workable plan for your success in the course. The Office of Disability Services serves any Georgia Tech student who has a documented, qualified disability.

Official documentation of the disability is required to determine the eligibility for accommodation or adaptations that may be helpful for this course.

Academic Misconduct

One serious kind of academic misconduct is plagiarism, which occurs when a writer, speaker, or designer deliberately uses someone else’s language, ideas, images, or other original material or code without fully acknowledging its source by quotation marks as appropriate, in footnotes or endnotes, in works cited, and in other ways as appropriate (modified from WPA Statement on “Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism”). If you engage in plagiarism or any other form of academic misconduct, you will fail the assignment (with a 0%) in which you have engaged in academic misconduct and be referred to the Office of Student Integrity, as required by Georgia Tech policy. We strongly urge you to be familiar with these Georgia Tech sites:

• Honor Challenge — http://osi.gatech.edu/content/honor-code

• Office of Student Integrity — http://www.osi.gatech.edu/index.php/

Copyright and Attribution: When incorporating images or video into your work be sure to properly cite the source, even if it’s in the public domain. You should not use material for which the copyright holder reserves all rights. You can adjust your search settings to account for attribution in your search engine. It may be useful to search for media through Creative Commons.

The Final Portfolio: Any editing of the portfolio after the submission deadline will be considered a violation of the Georgia Tech Honor Code and may be referred to the Office of Student Integrity.

Non Discrimination

The Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts supports the Georgia Institute of Technology’s commitment to creating a campus free of discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or veteran status. We further affirm the importance of cultivating an intellectual climate that allows us to better understand the similarities and differences of those who constitute the Georgia Tech community, as well as the necessity of working against inequalities that may also manifest here as they do in the broader society.

Alternative viewpoints are welcome in this class; however, statements that are racist, sexist, homophobic, classist, or otherwise discriminatory toward others in the class or outside the class will not be tolerated. For more information and specific details about all other policies, please see the Office of the Dean of Students.

Syllabus Modifications

This syllabus—especially the required reading and assignment schedule—may be modified as the semester progresses to meet course outcomes and address the needs of members of the class.

Other Resources and Policies

Grading Common Feedback Chart

See the link here.

Student Success

Attending college can be stressful. Don’t hesitate to ask for help if you’re feeling overly anxious, overwhelmed, or depressed. You can reach out to myself, but often I will redirect to folks that may be better able to assist you. That may be the Division of Student Life or making an appointment at the Counseling Center.

Additionally, here are other resources that might support your health and well-being, especially related to extreme situations:

• CARE—Center for Assessment, Referral, and Education (walk-in mental health services/resources: https://care.gatech.edu

• Crisis (24/7) mental health counselors: https://counseling.gatech.edu/content/students-crisis

• Distress: https://counseling.gatech.edu/content/distressed-students-guide

• Sexual Assault: https://counseling.gatech.edu/content/sexual-assault-response

• Suicide Prevention: https://endsuicide.gatech.edu/

• Help with food, shelter, clothing, and other necessary resources: https://studentlife.gatech.edu/services/academic-financial-personal-assistance

Communication Center

Bring your projects, at any stage of the writing process, to the Naugle CommLab. The CommLab is an excellent resource for all students working on papers, oral presentations, storyboards, videos, poster designs, podcasts, or professional materials. Make your appointment online to meet with a tutor in Clough Commons, Suite 447.

More on the Multimodal Reflection Portfolio

The portfolio assignment information and technical instructions can be found here. Please note that your instructor may have more specific instructions or requirements related to the portfolio; these instructions or requirements will be specified prior to the withdrawal deadline. You will develop your portfolio throughout the semester and work on finalizing it during the final two class sessions of the semester.

Submission Policy: If you submit the portfolio incorrectly so that your instructor is unable to access it, or have incorrect settings on your portfolio so that your instructor is unable to access it, your instructor may penalize you according to the policies listed in the syllabus, including assigning a zero for the assignment.

While Canvas allows you to continue updating your portfolio after submitting the link, please note that any editing of the portfolio after the submission deadline will be considered a violation of the Georgia Tech Honor Code and may be referred to the Office of Student Integrity.

Safety

Classroom and campus safety are of paramount importance at Georgia Tech. Safety is the shared responsibility of all of us. The Writing and Communication Program urges faculty and students to follow the ALERT, ASSESS, ACT protocol for all types of emergencies and the RUN, HIDE, FIGHT response for active shooter incidents. Please consult the full policy and available resources, including how to register with GTENS (Georgia Tech’s Emergency Notification System).

Technical Support

Canvas Support:

Phone (24/7): 1-877-259-8498

Chat (24/7): Chat with Canvas Support (Students)

Email: canvas@gatech.edu

WOVENText (VitalSource) Support:

Call/text/chat/email: https://support.vitalsource.com/hc/en-us/requests/new