Policies and Procedures

Common Policies

Required Texts

Writer / Designer, purchase here
WOVEN Text (digital, free, access here)
All other reading materials are hosted on Canvas

Computer Usage

Only at points in the class where I explicitly say, "get out your computers" will you need computers. This classroom has a zero-tolerance policy for computer use. Unfortunately, your peers' abuse of my previously laissez-faire approach has resulted in this ban. I have observed that its distractive capacities outweigh any real pedagogical utility during in-class time. If use remains an issue I will ask you to leave with an absence.

However, we need computers for many forms of composition, writing, and revision in this course. So, you should bring your computers with you to each class for in-class work, reflections, or to follow along with submission or how-to instruction on some projects, while they should be stored until I instruct you to use them.

As far as note taking, please use a pen and paper and know that I will post any presentations on the course site following class.

Phone and Headphone Usage

Phones, Headphones, and Airpods should never be used in this class. Phones should be silent and put away. If you need to use it, please step outside. If the use of these becomes an issue, I will ask you to leave class with an absence.

Submission Deadlines

All work is due on Canvas (unless otherwise noted) by the beginning of class the day it is due. For example, if a project, journal, discussion forum, etc. is due on Monday, and if your class begins that day at 8:00 AM, then it must be submitted by 8:00 AM.

Absences

Writing and Communication Program courses require students to be active and engaged to meet course and University goals and outcomes. However, there may be times when you cannot or should not attend class. Please let me know ahead of time and make an effort to get the make-up work.

Your first five absences are automatically excused. This means that the first five times that you miss class, you do not need to email me to have it excused. For Student-Athletes, please see what this means below. Consider this policy alongside the Late Work policy below.

Exceeding the allowed five class absences will result in an immediate withdrawal or failure from the course if before or after the Withdrawal Deadline, respectively.

Should there be a medical or personal emergency, please contact the Dean of Students Office for assistance and for proper documentation so that I might excuse it should it fall outside of the allowed five. No, I do not accept pictures of doctor's notes or thermometers. Certified medical professionals and their office will need to email me with confirmation, which you can usually get through the health center if you make an appointment and visit them.

Draft Work

I am always willing to work with you in any draft stage, but I only do so in peer-to-peer settings! Just come meet with me in office hours or set up a meeting via a Zoom appointment. Discussions, I have found, are more productive to our time than me just writing a bit of feedback. Send me an email!

Communication Policy

All of my emails to you will be professional in form and content. Communications with me should keep that same style. If you need to reach me, the best strategy is through my email. I will respond to emails between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM MTWHF and within 8 business hours of receipt and during days in which GIT classes are in session.

Students are expected to check their email at least once a day. Any emails I send to you individually should be responded to timely. Emails in reference to team projects should CC all team members.

Course Completion

In all sections of ENGL 1102, not completing any component of the course, including projects, assignments, or workshops, may result in failure of the course, as determined by the instructor in consultation with the Director and Associate Director of the Writing and Communication Program.

In this course, not completing Artifacts 0, 1, 2, 3 or the final ePortfolio will result in a F. The first four must be in my proverbial hand by the final instructional day and the ePortfolio by the deadline listed at the bottom in the Calendar Page.

Tardiness

Tardiness is distracting, so please try not to do it. If it’s too much for you to get across campus to arrive on time, try to find a section that will fit your schedule better. If you are tardy, assume I have not marked you as present. Talk to me after class and let me know you arrived to avoid being marked absent.

Late Work

Late work for small journal or reading assignments is never automatically excused even if attendance might be automatically excused. However, for those small journal assignments and reflections, you may make up three of them. They must be completed by the final day of class and you must email me that they have been completed to receive full credit.

At some point, maybe you submit work late. My first grade will be "incomplete." This is because I have not yet received an email from you. So, make sure to email me to receive credit.

For major projects and artifacts, please see the information below (linked here). And, for the Extension Log policy, please see below (linked here).

COVID-19

If you are sick with symptoms of COVID-19 or have tested positive, have a fever, etc. do not come to class. This is what the generous attendance policy is for. If you ‘only have allergies’ or a ‘just a cold’ you should wear a mask out of a sense of politeness.

Bathroom Policy

You don't need to ask me to go and use the restroom. Please, silently slip out and do your business.

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 comma splice error. Your work must prove its worth, stakes, value, and argumentative validity to succeed.

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.

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.

Let's get into some limitations...

Statistically speaking, I have 75 students per semester with 25 per class. Experts and researchers in writing and communication instruction agree that this is too much [1]. This is a major flaw in your academic experience. "Appropriate class sizes and workloads allow for attention to individual students, which improves student outcomes. Student success, in turn, increases both retention rates and degree completions" (ADE "Guidelines for Class Sizes").

Outside of these guidelines, we're in a temporally tough position. Let's do some math. Teaching takes up about 60% of my 40-hour workweek and research, writing, publication, and committee work take up the remaining 40%. Thus, 24 hours per week is devoted to instruction. Every class is 1.25 hours, totaling 7.5 hours. This means that 16.5 hours remain to grade. This 16.5 hours, though, includes lesson planning, course organization, grading journal assignments, taking attendance, and answering student emails. Let's say that takes 3 hours a week (it takes more). So, when I am grading, I am left, within a week, 13.5 hours to grade.

This leaves 10.8 minutes per student per major artifact if I want to complete it within a week. This math is flawed, too, as it assumes I work with perfect, unbroken efficiency all the time.

That said, two weeks is the maximum amount of time I give myself to complete grading final artifacts, which translates to more like 15-20 minutes per student. That's the reality. It is unfair. I would give more if I chronologically could.

Note: If you are someone stressed about grades or anxious when an "ungraded" sits there for too long, please email me and let me know and I'll bump you to the top of the list.

Grade Graph

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: Memoir Project: 20%

Artifact 2: Individual Monument Project: 25%

Artifact 3: Collaborative Podcast Project: 40%

Final Portfolio: 10%

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, Youtuber, artist, or designer deliberately uses someone else’s language, ideas, images, or other original material or code without fully acknowledging the source of that content via quotes, footnotes or endnotes, in works cited pages, and/or 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.

My Feedback Chart

I do not begin from the point of view of 100 and then penalize as I go. I consider the work holistically and in terms of overall goals, modalities, and their synergistic harmony as they achieve those goals. With that in mind, I utilize a specific rubric that is based around 'gates' of success. The more successful in 'high order' components, achieving goals or argumentative validity and focus, will allow me to move into more 'low order' components like spelling or aesthetics of design or syntax. So that means if you wrote a paper with an excellent argument, with valid lines of thought and reasoning and plenty of evidence, but it was full of typos and difficult syntax, you'd get a B-range paper. However, if you have a paper with perfect polish, no typos, perfect grammar, etc. but no discernable argument, no focus, no evidence, etc., then you wouldn't have achieved the goals of the project, and would be in the D to F range. These terminologies are specific to each paper and will be discussed in class.

Late Submission Policy

The late submission of final, major artifacts will incur an automatic 7.5% point reduction in that artifact's grade for each 24-hour period the artifact is late. So, if I give your artifact a 100% but it was received 15 minutes late, then I apply a 7.5% penalty. This would result in a 92.5% grade. If it's late by 25 hours, it would be penalized 15%, and so on.

However, this Late Work penalty can be avoided if you complete the Extension Log. For more information, see the Extension Log policy.

Extension Log Policy

You will receive a pool of hours that allow you to extend the due date for any formally submitted artifact as you see fit, as long as you remain within the guidelines below. The breakdown within each unit is as follows:

First Week Video: 24 hours

Artifact One: 72 hours

Artifact Two: 72 hours

Artifact Three: 48 hours

To receive an extension for an artifact using these hours, simply submit an extension log (see template) to Canvas in place of the assignment. (So, you would submit the log instead of Artifact X.) Your logs should set a new deadline by noting how many extension hours will be used and briefly documenting how you will use those hours. You may divide your extension pool into 24-hour “blocks.” The extension is considered automatically granted as long as you submit your log by the artifact’s original due date, as your hours cannot be assigned retroactively. You may submit one additional extension log for a previously extended assignment if you meet your own revised deadline and have the requisite hours in your pool. Since Unit Three is a collaborative project, the group as a whole will receive 48 hours of extension time in total, rather than individual members. Note: the final portfolio is not eligible for using your extension hours.

Personal circumstances, emergencies, or necessary accommodations may require extensions beyond the time granted by this policy. If you anticipate a reason why you may need consideration beyond the extension hours outlined here—or if something unexpected happens during the semester—please do not hesitate to reach out.

Student-Athletes and Attendance Policies

I understand that you all have assigned days that you will be attending meets or games. The days for traveling for meets, games, tournaments, etc. count as an absence. And they are automatically excused as per University policy. However, these traveling days, are counted toward your total number of absences you are allowed.

For example, let's imagine you are at the end of the semester and you missed three classes due to meets and two due to sleeping in. That means that per my attendance record, you have reached the limit of five days. That's fine. But, let's consider what happens in some scenarios:

You just decide not to go to class. You have no real, valid excuse, you were just not feeling up to it. Unfortunately, that is unexcused and you will, unfortunately, fail the class.
You have a meet on the second-to-last day of class. That's fine, it's technically excused, so you will not fail the class due to violating the attendance policy. Just don't miss any other class days.
You got really ill the night before and legitimately are sick. Go to the doctor and have them send me a doctor's note. That's fine, I excuse medical situations, so you will not fail the class due to violating the attendance policy.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

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

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