Syllabus

Poring over syllabi and assignment prompts in preparation for this sequence design, it occurred to me that they rarely look like something the average student will ever actually want to read. The best of them are tightly packed, text heavy, and/or use only tangentially related whimsical artifacts like memes or bitmojis to add spice—attempts which may look disingenuous to students, or equally frightening, like we are out of touch. And this is what students read before they get to all the administrative jargon and general ass-covering. In fact, it’s often the very first thing students read in any given course.

The syllabus is our first written impression. I had to ask myself how I can expect my students to respect me as an authority on writing if my very first text isn’t something my audience would be curious enough to read of their own free will? After considering the compartmental nature of the most effective prompts and syllabi I've studied, I decided to try this comic-book theme.

Contributing to the accessible design of my sequence are active hyperlinks to in-document locations and outside resources, clear headings, text boxes to distinguish between data with different purposes, bold, underlined, and/or highlighted keywords, and a checklist in lieu of a table of contents on each assignment prompt (Womack, 2017, pp. 511-512).

I’ve also organized my syllabus in the manner I think best suits student learning, with items they may need to check regularly located near the top and institutional information filtered gradually toward the bottom. This format, plus thorough discussion, regular homework check-ins, and explicit and scaffolded small assignments, allow me to keep students engaged and make my materials “more accessible to readers accustomed to the tweet, the snippet, the photo” (Womack, 2017, p. 521).

Besides a heavy focus on teaching threshold concepts of writing early in the semester, the overriding focus of my procedural pedagogy is to assign carefully orchestrated writing tasks so that, when big projects come due, they’ve already done much of the heavy labor. This allows them to focus of refining their process and their product reflectively without due-date anxiety as a primary motivational force. My syllabus defines 6 major assignments (or “literacy activities”) and several minor ones (“literacy tasks”). I begin with a Proposal Draft followed by the Annotated Bibliography & Synthesis, the Revised Proposal, the Scholarly Article, and finally, the Portfolio and Reflection which is the polished crowning achievement of the course in terms of both product and demonstrated learning.

My goal is to sequence not only the major assignments but nearly every activity in such a way that it builds procedural knowledge, declarative knowledge, and revisable product ready for upcoming assignments. I call this, "extreme scaffolding." To that end, I can’t consider any major assignment without also holistically considering the readings, activities, and assignments leading up to it.

Cumulative literacy tasks are also designed to develop students’ understanding of course outcomes through easy-to-accomplish, scaffolded activities over the course of the semester. Starting early on, students: Complete threshold-concept readings, summarizing and citing them in reading responses that will later be adapted for their "Bib & Synth"; complete “Outcome Reviews” after every major assignment relating each activity to ENC1102 course outcomes; identify literacy artifacts in their immediate surroundings and discuss features in small groups; develop interview questions and other practice research instruments to prepare for primary research; create a research timeline; provide peer-review feedback for classmates; complete CITI training; and practice IMRaD and CARS activities. The Portfolio and Reflection represents the students’ final opportunity to demonstrate how they have completed all of these activities, what they know about how to write effectively, and what they know about what writing is at its core.