Introduction
Now that you have completed English 1100, you have had an "introduction" to writing at college. Depending on what teacher you had for that course, you may have focused your writing in any number of ways: Perhaps you worked on "modes of discourse" like narration, exposition, argumentation, etc in something called "academic writing"; or maybe your instructor focused on revising for different audiences, moving knowledge beyond the university; or you may even have focused the entire course on a particular theme/topic and addressed it from various positions.

Because your experiences may have varied so much in English 1100, you may also have different expectations about what you'll do in English 1200. Ultimately, this course will focus on research, broadly defined and applied in different ways. The three key writing outcomes of this course are research, revision, and rhetoric, concepts which will become increasingly clear over the course of this semester. In the syllabus that follows, I outline my primary expectations of you and of myself vis-a-vis this particular course. I hope you have a good experience this semester and learn a great deal about other ways of thinking about research, revision, and rhetoric.

Goals of English 1200
This course builds on students' understanding of rhetoric and writing processes through an exploration of writings that require various types of research. Students who exit English 1200 with a grade of C or better will be expected to have performed competently in the following areas:

• Formulating significant research questions,
• Locating, evaluating, and synthesizing primary, print, and electronic bibliographic sources
• Integrating source materials into original arguments/cases/writings
• Citing sources accurately and responsibly
• Applying researched writings to problem-solving in both the academy and the community
• Conveying the results of research to a variety of audiences that will learn from and potentially act on those findings.

To meet these goals, you will write and read extensively, both formally and informally, often for every class meeting. You must be prepared to share your writing with your peers and instructor on a regular basis. You will complete a minimum of 20 typed, double-spaced pages of polished prose in an appropriate font face/size (Times 12 pt.).

Texts

• Sunstein, Bonnie Stone, and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater. FieldWorking: Reading and Writing Research, 2nd. Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002.
• Handbook of Your Choice (or use the online handbooks available at "Relevant Links")

Instructor Expectations
I expect the writers I'm working with to work with me, to be in class and on time each class meeting, to devote a minimum of six (6) hours per week outside of class to course-related work and not to wait until the end of the semester to try to do/revise all of their work. I expect writers NOT to complain about writing and research, but to try to have fun and enjoy the projects we will work on this semester. And I expect writers to feel that they can talk to me about their work, their concerns about their writing, and their goals for this course. I do NOT expect students to be expert writers, for if they were, they wouldn't need this course.

I do NOT believe in a "bell-curve" or in making the students' grades for this course fall along an A — F continuum. Every student who works at the A-level consistently (based on the Course Outcomes Rubric) should expect to receive an A in the course, keeping in mind that A-writers complete all work on time and at an exceptional level throughout the semester; they come to class everyday during the semester; they do not ask for extended deadlines more than once; they don't make excuses for poor or late performance; they are exceptional peer-responders to their class colleagues; they take a leadership role in the class, consistently going beyond the "minimum" requirements for assignments; and they seek the one-to-one help they need (from teachers, peers, or the Writing Studio) throughout the semester rather than procrastinating and expecting someone else (teacher, peer, writing consultant) to solve their problems for them. If you can be that sort of student, I look forward to awarding you the A you will have earned.

Projects
Although we will spend the first two months of the semester working on various research skills and writing various kinds of short and long texts, students will be expected to create three (3) significant projects of their own design, given certain broad guidelines/restraints, and a fourth project which consists of each student's reflective analysis of his/her work during the semester. All student work this semester should be "archived" and then turned in at the end in a portfolio. Groups should duplicate their research so that all members of the group have copies. ** All projects must be turned in on-time and complete for students to receive credit. Only projects turned in on-time and complete may be included in the portfolio. Incomplete portfolios may receive, at best, a D. Your portfolio grade IS your course grade, so consistent diligence is required to do well in this course. **

The first three projects should involve three different sorts of primary/secondary research: observation / interview, archival research, and print-based textual research. In discussing these kind of research, we'll use various terms from our textbook, like "ethnography" and "ethnographic research," which is the academic term for a close-reading of various artifacts from a chosen "site"; those artifacts may take the form of print texts (brochures, advertisements, programs, schedules, pamphlets, web pages, etc.), visual texts (ads, artwork, web pages, etc.), and audio-texts (speeches, conversations, audio-recordings, etc.). The two large groups we will be focusing on this semester are "academics" and "net-heads" (for wont of a better term). These groups are so large that they may be refined and narrowed (and should be) for any number of researchers out to learn something and share that "something" with an audience. The three projects will take the following shapes:

• Project 1: Observation/Interview • Students will work in small groups to choose either a group of "academics" (college professors) OR an online community (probably a "blog" community) to interview/observe. Interviews will be face-to-face (f2f) where possible and through email where f2f isn't possible. Class time will be spent constructing appropriate questions for the interview, as well as methods for collecting and processing data. Students will be expected to meet outside of class, as well, to put together their data into a form for distribution to a specific audience.
• Project 2: Archival Research • Based on the groups that students worked with in Project 1, students may choose to continue working in the same group and conduct "archival research" on the same group OR they may switch to a different peer-group/different research-subject-group. Students will spend class time discussing appropriate methods for conducting archival research and will apply that knowledge, both during and outside class, to the texts they find in their respective archives. Students will be expected to put together their data into a form for distribution to a specific audience.
• Project 3: "Academic," Text-based Research & Problem Solving • Using knowledge gained from the previous two projects, students will address a particular "problem" associated with their research subject group(s) and construct an academic argument in order to address said problem. This project will have two parts: a) first, an annotated bibliography of at least eight (8) library and four (4) Internet sources, five (5) of which will be extensively annotated, while the others will be treated in a short annotation; and b) then, a longer, 8 - 10 page paper which demonstrates the complexity of the problem, treats various points of view on how to solve the problem, and makes a productive case for how best to address the problem under the writer's purview.
• Project 4: Analytical Portfolio Cover Letter • Following the assignment guidelines, students will turn their analytical lenses on themselves and their own "archives" of work during the semester, paying particular attention to the processes they went through in developing their projects, conducting research, and revising writing into various sorts of texts for distribution to larger audiences. This project will have been through several "rough drafts" throughout the semester as students write Project Memos at each stage during the course.

Attendance
Although students may choose to be absent from class as frequently as they’d like, these absences will adversely affect your grade by affecting your in-class performance. English 1200 is a workshop course; if students are not in class, then they didn't contribute to group projects, read a peer's paper, help a peer develop ideas, do any research during class, contribute to class conversations about writing and revising, revise any of their own work in class, etc.  Each unit we work on lasts roughly two weeks.  Missing a day of class during that time may result in your unit (advisory) grade dropping significantly. Students who miss NO days of class during the semester will receive a three (3) point bonus on their final portfolio grade.  It is your responsibility to sign-in to class each day.  ** If you were in class and forgot to sign-in, then you were absent. **

Late Work
Just like teachers, students have rich, full lives, and those lives sometimes have tragedies/extra-curricular commitments/etc. And sometimes, students (like teachers) will make decisions to prioritize something that isn't school and thus miss an important class deadline. It happens to us all. But that doesn't mean we don't have to work double-duty to catch up what we missed. When I miss class, I don't hold you responsible; when you miss class, likewise, do not hold me responsible. It wasn't my fault and I don't have to fix the problem — you do. Since only writing projects that I have responded to may be turned in for credit in the writing portfolio, missing a deadline could be bad news for you and your course grade. Therefore, if you miss a deadline and thus forfeit your right to get a written response from me to your project, you may schedule an office appointment with me to discuss your project. You have this option only once. In order to get credit for the meeting, you must complete all of the following steps:

1. Set up a meeting time that works for both of us, preferably during my posted office hours.
2. Before the meeting, you should prepare a short list of questions you have about the project that you need me to answer and you should bring those questions to the meeting. You should also bring your project, the cover memo, and any other information that might help us discuss your project more effectively.
3. You are responsible for leading the meeting, asking the questions, taking any notes, clarifying any responses I might offer.
4. After the meeting, you have three (3) days to draft a memo which summarizes what we discussed at the meeting, what specific changes you will be making to the paper as part of your revision, and why you will be making those changes.
5. I will then sign-off on the memo if it is specific enough and demonstrates that you have learned enough during the process to revise the project adequately. My signature will stand in lieu of my written comments on that particular project.

Students who fail to follow this procedure render this option null and void. ** Since all projects must be turned in on-time and complete for students to receive credit, late projects that do not go through the "late-work" process will be ineligible for inclusion in the portfolio, which will result in an incomplete portfolio. Incomplete portfolios may receive, at best, a D. Your portfolio grade IS your course grade, so consistent diligence is required to do well in this course. ** (I hope this is a Draconian as I have to get at any time in my teaching career!)

Conferences
Students should schedule conferences with me when they do not understand comments I've made on their projects. Likewise,I may require a certain number of individual and/or group conferences during the semester. Missing a scheduled conference means that your portfolio will be missing the work we discussed during said conference, resulting in an incomplete portfolio and a grade of D, at best. If you cannot make a scheduled conference, I need to know six (6) hours in advance so that we can reschedule and so that other students can make use of my office time.

One-to-One Writing Consulting
Free assistance with your writing is available in the First-Year Writing Studio, located in Bate 2005. The writing consultants in the center are trained to deal with a variety of academic issues, and most of them have extensive experience with helping other writers improve their drafts. The Writing Studio is NOT a place to get your papers proofread, however. The assistants will respond to your drafts, but you shouldn't expect them merely to change your grammatical and/or mechanical mishaps — that's your job! Rather, you should take all your work for a particular project to them, along with specific questions that they can try to address to help you improve your piece. Should you need help with grammar and mechanics, you should point that out at the start of the conference and expect help only on that topic, not also on structure, style, content, audience-awareness, rhetoric, etc. Writers in this course should be able to tell readers what sort of readers they need to be and why and recognize that writers need different sorts of readers at different stages in the development of a project.

Academic Integrity
Although several projects in this course are collaborative, students are expected to be honest about individual effort and responsible to peer/secondary source materials that are included in their projects. Both plagiarizing and turning in work written partially or completely by someone else are forms of academic dishonesty and carry serious penalties, the least serious of which is a grade of zero on the particular assignment (and thus a D, at best, in the course), but could also result in failure of the class and even expulsion from the university. Students who keep up with their work and consult with their peers and their professor have no reason or need to "cheat."

Computers in the Classroom
Because we meet in a computer-mediated classroom, we will make almost daily use of the machines.  However, certain computer-related behaviors will not be tolerated.  You may check your email or free-surf the web as you please before and after class, but after I announce the beginning of class by starting the roll, any student still using email, chat programs, or web browsers for non-class-related activities will loose points for participation or may even be considered absent from class for the day. **Likewise, students retain sole responsibility for keeping electronic copies of all their work.**  Lost or stolen disks, erased disks, home computer crashes, printer problems, etc. do NOT excuse you from turning in work or having copies of all your work on disk at the end of the semester.  Remember to make frequent back-up copies of files and keep copies on multiple disks.

Accommodations for Students with Special Needs
East Carolina University seeks to comply fully with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Students requesting accommodations based on a covered disability must go to the Department for Disability Services, located in Brewster A-114, to verify the disability before any accommodations can occur. The telephone number is 252-328-6799.