Dr. Dean Taciuch
George Mason University

Spring 2018

English 302: N13 & N13
Course Syllabus

Course Description

English 302 will help prepare you understand how knowledge is created and transmitted in your field or discipline; understand key methods and conventions of scholarly research in your field or discipline; articulate and refine your own question for scholarly inquiry; situate your investigation in an ongoing context or conversation in your field; and design a final project that adds new perspectives to the conversation. Advanced Composition will help you engage in scholarly inquiry as you work on narrowing a research question and engaging with your discipline or field of study.

Course Goals

This course participates in the Students as Scholars program. The goal of this course is to prepare you to conduct primary research in your discipline. As such, we will follow the Students as Scholars Course Goals

Prerequisites

Students must have completed or transferred in the equivalent of English 100/101. Students should also have completed 45 credit hours and the Mason Core literature requirement. Students should take a version of English 302 related to their major field.

Please note that the Volgenau School of Engineering requires students enrolled in the following majors to take ENGH 302N: applied computer science and computer science, electrical engineering, computer engineering, systems engineering, and statistics. The school also requires students in the following majors to be enrolled in either 302N or 302M: bioengineering, cyber security engineering, mechanical engineering and civil engineering. Information technology majors may enroll in 302N, 302M, or 302B.

General Education

This course is part of the Mason Core (General Education) Program, which is designed to help develop "a Mason Graduate [who is] an engaged citizen, a well-rounded scholar, and someone who is prepared to act for the world" (Mason Catalog). For more information on the mission of the Mason Core, visit http://masoncore.gmu.edu/.

Textbook and materials

There is no required textbook for this class. We will use several online texts, however.

Writing Commons Open Textbook
<http://writingcommons.org/>

GMU Writing Center Resources
<http://writingcenter.gmu.edu/writing-resources>

GMU Library Tutorials
<http://library.gmu.edu/tutorials>

UNC Writing Center Handouts
< http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/>

Perdue OWL
<https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/>

Students as Scholars
<http://oscar.gmu.edu>

Methods of Instruction

Sections N12 and N13 are hybrid courses: each section meets face-to-face once per week in Peterson 1106, with the second course meeting made up of online work.

Section N12 meets on Mondays from 9:00 – 10:15.
Section N13 meets on Wednesdays from 9:00 – 10:15.

All course assignments will be submitted via Blackboard.
Assignments for Section N 12 will be due on Fridays
Assignments for Section N 13 will be due on Sundays

In addition, the BlackBoard discussions should be posted each week before that week's face-to-face class. I expect everyone to post and comment on other students' posts each week (you can, of course, add comments after the week's face-to-face session).

Archived lectures and PowerPoint slides will be available in the Class Notes and Lectures folder on the Course Content Page.

Class time will be used for lectures, course work, and discussion

Assignments

The Major Assignments are described on BlackBoard

• Discipline Awareness I assignment (5%)
• Audience Assignment (5%)
• Plagiarism Policy Essay (10%)
• Research Proposal (5%)
• Library Research Assignment (5%)
• Summary (10%)
  
• Annotated Bibliography (15%)
• Peer Review (5%)
• Literature Review (20%)
• Wikipedia Edit (5%)
• Discipline Awareness II assignment (10%)

The Minor Assignments are the weekly Discussion posts on BlackBoard. These should be posted before the week's class meeting. The weekly responses will make up 5% of the final grade.

Important dates

Course and Grading Policies