Dr. Mark Jordan ~ ENGL 1301: Composition & Rhetoric

Course Policies

General Course Description

In the Odessa College Catalog of Courses, ENGL 1301 is described as follows:

"Consists of essentials of correctness and effectiveness in writing skills.  Emphasizes reading and writing expository prose.  Requires expository essays and collateral readings.  Prerequisite:  ENGL 0370 passed with a 'C' or better or a satisfactory placement score."

The fundamental purpose of this course will not change at all because of the Web-based delivery method. As with my traditional sections of 1301, the specific goal of this course is to teach effective writing skills, but on a broader level, its goal is to teach critical thinking, a crucial key to problem-solving in every field. Both skills are increasingly important in today's rapidly changing world. You will also get valuable experience in networked computer discourse and other skills essential to use of the World Wide Web and the Internet. The major part of your grade, however, will be taken from formal pieces of writing. You will do from four to six of these, most of which will follow the traditional essay format, while some may not. They will all teach elements of classical rhetoric.

In my Syllabus you will find more detailed descriptions of this and other course requirements, while on the Assignments page you will find a table of specific assignments, such as essay topics, and their due dates.

Also, here are the official course competencies (learning outcomes) for ENGL 1301:

Policies on "Attendance" &Late Work

Obviously, "attending class" will not be similar to a traditional course. If anything, however, the danger of "absenteeism" is even greater than in a traditional course. You should be carefully on your guard to avoid the "out of sight, out of mind" pitfall regarding your participation in this course, and you should understand that, as stated in the "Welcome" page, this is not a self-paced course. In essence, then, your level of participation counts as your level of attendance. Here are my policies regarding your participation:

The minimum I expect to hear from you is once a week. My gradebook requires me to list absences for all my students each week, and if I do not hear from you in a given week, you will be counted absent for that week. Note that in my list of Course Requirements, participation in itself counts 10% of your course grade, based both on the quantity and quality of your participation (see Syllabus).

• Type of participation: I value both personal email to me (see Email)and your participation in class discussions within Blackboard.
• Late work: I realize that occasionally, circumstances tend to gang up on a person so that you might need a few extra days on an assignment. If you will discuss this with me via email rather than remaining silent (thus absent) on the due date, you will usually find that I am willing to be flexible to a certain extent. However, habitual lateness is another matter. If I feel that you are habitually late with either minor or major assignments, I may decide to penalize that assignment by five points per weekday (during shorter terms such as summer school, ten points per weekday). Additionally, I may, depending on the unique circumstances,  refuse to accept late assignments at all from students with more than two weeks of consecutive absences or more than three weeks of absences altogether.  (During summer terms, these time periods will be figured on a pro-rata basis wherein three weeks long term equals one week summer term.)  I am happy to discuss what you might feel are extenuating circumstances, but please understand that the final decision in such matters is at my sole discretion.  And whenever possible, such discussions need to take place before or during the extenuating circumstances, rather than after weeks of silence and missed assignments. 
• Failure to submit final exam on time:  Lastly, please realize that the most disastrous assignment to turn in late would be a final exam essay which you may be allowed to complete at home (which I often allow a class to do).  In this regard, please be mindful that no student may pass the course without completing the final exam, which must be submitted on time.  I do not automatically give an Incomplete as a grade if a student, without explanation, simply misses the final exam submission deadline.  Such behavior could easily cause a student to fail the entire course, regardless of the GPA to that point.

Collaboration versus Plagiarism

I strongly encourage student collaboration, but you must understand the difference between that and plagiarism, which is a form of cheating.  Put simply, collaboration involves working with others, while plagiarism means that someone else is doing your work for you, either knowingly or unknowingly. Generally, the difference is easy to see, but sometimes the boundary is hazy. A good rule of thumb is that even if you are working with someone with the best of intentions, make sure that in the end, you understand and can explain your work by yourself.   Otherwise, you may be guilty of plagiarism, even if that was not your intention. And even more obviously, even if you work closely with a classmate or someone else, you cannot submit anything which is essentially worded just like someone else's work. So your work must not be identical, or nearly so, so anyone else's, and even if you collaborate or get tutoring assistance, you must have a complete understanding of what you submit. Both these standards must be satisfied to call a document your own work.

A temptation certainly exists in a web-based course to recruit a friend or family member to do one's work, but then again the same danger exists in out-of-class assignments in a traditional course. I use the word "danger" purposely. The danger, however, is not to me, but to the student, in that anyone who yields to this temptation is learning nothing, and that will generally show up when that student later needs the skills he or she supposedly learned in class. And of course, if discovered, such a student will get a zero (not an "F") for the assignment, and may be given an "F" for the entire course, and/or may be expelled from my class and from Odessa College as well.

Plagiarism in your Research

Another type of plagiarism which is, unfortunately, increasingly common within web courses occurs when a student chooses to research a topic on the web, or even elsewhere.  Doing research on a topic is an excellent tool for learning, and I encourage that.  However, the student must handle those research findings correctly, or else plagiarism can result, either inadvertently or by yielding to the temptation to take a "short cut."

Two wrong ways to use research findings:  Sometimes a student finds useful information in research--statistics, other facts, or even stories to use as specific examples--and includes that information in an essay, without bothering to tell its source.  This is plagiarism!  You are passing off information as though it has come out of your own head, when it has not.  This may be due to ignorance of proper citation of research, but it is still plagiarism--theft of ideas. 

A second, and far more obvious and worse variation of this is when the student not only takes the ideas or information from some source without citing the source, but the student takes even the sentences, perhaps whole paragraphs, and uses this wording as though it were the student's own writing.  This is even more clearly a case of plagiarism, and such a student will have a hard time convincing the professor that this is inadvertent.  The usual form this takes is that the student gets lazy and simply copies and pastes whole sentences and even paragraphs from a web site into the student's essay.  The penalty for deliberate plagiarism is a zero for the assignment and a failing grade for the entire course.  Obviously, this is not a good choice to make as a student.  Furthermore, the student should realize that there are usually certain telltale signs that this is occurring, and there are even means of tracking the sources and demonstrating the plagiarism.  With these things in mind, the student should certainly be aware of the correct way to use research findings.

The correct way to use research findings:

• Until the student is actually taught formal citation methods, the way to tell the sources of information found in research is to simply include the author or title as part of the sentence which states the findings, like this:  According to the National Rifle Association website, there are many incidents in which home owners avoided theft or injury by defending themselves with their own weapons; specifically, in the year 2002,...  The key wording here begins with "According to..." and then states the title or author.  Complete bibliographical information is not needed in an informal citation.
• The above example assumes that the student is paraphrasing information, meaning to present it in the student's wording, not the exact wording of the source.  If the student wants to use the exact wording of some source, then that must be presented as a direct quote.  A direct quote should begin with a "lead-in," a few words of the student to indicate the source.  Again, the According to... wording works well.  Then the exact quote's beginning is signaled with double quotation marks, and ends with another set of double quotation marks.  Example:  According to John Doe, the 2004 President of the NRA, "These statistics clearly show the need for a normal citizen to maintain the right to keep and bear arms in his family's defense."
• A point to keep in mind when quoting directly is to do so sparingly.  The student's own wording should be used far more often than direct quotations.

Unforeseen Circumstances

I use this term in two ways. First, unforeseen circumstances may arise in your personal situation which make it difficult for you to continue this course successfully. If this occurs, please discuss the situation with me before discontinuing the course. I can't promise solutions, but on the other hand there have been times in the past when I have been able to help a responsible student overcome such barriers. You should also remember that the worst possible outcome in this course is to simply stop participating without even formally dropping the course, in which case I have no choice but to give a grade of "F."

The second way in which I use the term "unforeseen circumstances" is in the sense that conceivably, circumstances may arise which are not specifically covered in my written policies. I reserve the right in such circumstances to take actions consistent with the overall well-being of this course and its students as a whole.

Some Helpful Suggestions

• Follow instructions! In order to handle the heavy logistics of communicating with and fairly evaluating several dozen students via email, unfortunately things cannot be done in a dozen different ways by several dozen students. Things must be done my way. I have good reasons for my instructions, and I try to explain both instructions and reasons as best I can. You will discover that at first I politely reject submissions which do not follow my instructions, but fairly quickly I begin to subtract points as well as reject the submissions. So Read carefully!
• Make a habit of hitting "Refresh" or "Reload" when accessing my Assignments Calendar, or else your computer may show you an outdated, "cached" version which does not have the current assignment! Alternatively, you can set your browser history to zero, if you know how to do that.
• Check personal email at least three times per week, preferably daily; do the same for checking assignment due dates, announcements, etc.
• Read all my web pages and all email carefully. Sloppy reading will lead to missed due dates, assignments which don't meet my requirements, and other preventable problems.
• Save all email pertaining to the class; treat it as class notes.
• Learn how to copy and paste URLs instead of typing them. It is extremely easy to make a mistake when manually typing each character of a URL.
• Use the bookmark capabilities of your browser to make this and other useful websites easily accessible.
• Learn how to print out this and other websites, as well as email (but keep in mind that my pages may change even during the semester!).
• When possible, use the word count function of your word processor to verify that you are meeting the length requirements for assignments.
• Don't hesitate to ask questions! My best students ask questions all the time; my weak students almost never do. Neither is a coincidence. 

Suggested Links:

•  Click here to connect to the Odessa College Catalog for information about schedules and degree requirements:    http://www.odessa.edu/catalog/ 
• Click here for the Student Learning Center, where you may receive academic support services:   http://www.odessa.edu/dept/slc/
• Click here for information from the Financial Aid Office:   http://www.odessa.edu/dept/financial/