Dr. Dean Taciuch
George Mason University

Spring 2020

English 302: N12 & 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

The goal of this course is to prepare you to conduct primary research in your discipline. As such, the course participates in the Students as Scholars and the Mason Impact programs

ENGH 302 Learning Outcomes

• Students will be able to analyze rhetorical situations–audience, purpose, and context–in order to recognize the expectations of readers and understand the main purposes of composing across multiple contexts relevant to their fields of study.
• Students will understand the conventions of academic and non-academic genres, to include usage, specialized vocabulary, format, and attribution/citation systems.
• Students will be able to apply critical reading strategies that are appropriate to advanced academic and non-academic texts of relevance to their fields of study.
• Students will identify and synthesize multiple perspectives in articulating and refining a research question relevant to their fields of study.
• Students will engage in a recursive process of inventing, investigating, shaping, drafting, revising, and editing to produce a range of academic and non-academic texts of relevance to their fields of study.
  

Prerequisites

Students must have completed or transferred in the equivalent of English 100 or ENGH101. Students must have completed 30 credit hours and the Mason Core literature requirement before enrolling in the class. The program recommends that students enroll in ENGH 302 after completing 45 credit hours. 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 Volgenau 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” (Mason Catalog). It fulfills the Mason Core Upper Division Written Communication requirement. For more information on the Mason Core, visit the Provost’s Mason Core page

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

SectionsN12 and N13 are hybrid courses: each section meets face-to-face once per week in Innovation 336, 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 N12 will be due on Fridays
Assignments for Section N13 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 course work, questions and answers, 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 (20%)
• Literature Review Thesis and Topics (10%)
• Literature Review (30%)

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