Syllabus, WRIT 209 Spring, 2011, UWSWRIT 209, Business & Professional WritingSection 2, which meets at 2:00 p.m. on MWF in the MWC Computer Lab, Room 1729

Instructor: Susie IsaksenOffice: Sundquist 158E-mail (preferred means of contact): sisaksen@uwsuper.edu Office telephone number: 715/394-8479. I check my telephone voice mail on M, W, and F afternoons.

Office Hours.  These are times set aside for students seeking help with class assignments  When. 2:10-3 p.m., Mondays and Wednesdays. Where. Sundquist 158. Additional times, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, are available by appointment.

Please use e-mail to make an appointment.

Required textbooks A guide to grammar so that you can effectively polish your work before turning it in. A good

one that is available on campus is Diana Hacker’s A Writer’s Reference, used in WRIT 101 and 102.

Successful Writing at Work, 9th. Edition, by Philip C. Kolin. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2010. This text is central to our course. You will have weekly reading assignments ranging from 21 to 57 pages, with an average of about 35 pages of text per week.

Course DescriptionA three credit course, WRIT 209 provides a sound foundation for business, professional, and technical communication, primarily in writing but including oral and nonverbal forms. The emphasizes are on rhetorical situations, professional contexts, and the cultural environments of domestic and international business, of the helping professions, and of technical/professional writing. Students plan, write, revise, and present materials on assigned topics as well as on subjects of individual, profession interest. Prerequisites: WRIT 102 and COMM 110.

Course GoalsThis course provides opportunities for understanding the following core concepts: business, technical, and professional writing and communications; analytic approaches to rhetorical situations and writing processes; effective group work principles; basic correspondence; research; oral presentations; employment communications; cross-cultural communication; and the word and sentence level mechanics of professional writing. Assignments are designed to develop proficiency in the forms and styles of communication necessary for upper division courses at UWS as well as for careers in various fields. Students successfully completing English 209 will . . .

1. Understand professional communication as a process that involves planning, shaping, drafting, collaboration, revision, and presentation;

2. Read, research, and respond thoughtfully; 3. Master a variety of rhetorical concepts;4. Work effectively in collaborative groups;5. Communicate clearly, concisely, and vigorously;6. Identify and address a variety of audiences; and

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7. Comprehend and effectively use the concepts and principles of effective professional communication.

Quizzes, discussions, and assignments are the principal means by which your success in achieving these objectives will be evaluated.

So what?! The National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) has researched what is essential to success in the modern American workplace. Not coincidentally, the findings name the same skills that are essential for success in this course. More specifically, in class, you will need to develop your skills at working with others, at understanding and using new ideas and concepts, and, as the NCEE says, at “developing the self-discipline and organizational skills needed to manage work and drive it through to a successful conclusion.”

Academic Service Learning (AS-L)To enhance achievement of course goals, to transform class assignments into real workplace experiences, and to provide students with opportunities to act on civic responsibility, many of the assignments for this class will engage students in community service work.

Grading SchemeOur class grading scheme is a weighted one consisting of 100 points that are mathematically managed as percentage points. With this type of grading scheme, it’s important to maintain your target course grade as your rolling class average, which is your class Grade-to-Date at our class online site / Grades. For each assignment, grades will be based on rubrics designed to measure how well the work does each of the following: meets assignment expectations, follows textbook and class concepts, and communicates clearly, adequately, and accurately.

Class Grading SchemePercentages indicate percent of final course grade.

15% Quizzes 1, 2, and 3.

10% Two co-curricular assignments.

5% 2-3 grammar assignments.

60% Major homework assignments. Because of our evolving Academic Service Learning (AS-L) projects, the following list of assignments and grade weights is tentative.

8% Job or grad school application packet

6% Three letters

3% A letter to a Chinese business person.

9% ASL-1. Workplace concept documents

9% ASL-2. Brochure in one or more formats.

8% ASL-3. Facebook page

14% ASL-4. HDC Rhetorical Analysis presentation.

3%

ASL-5. AS-L Class Presentation for Campus and Community. Each student will participate in creating and/or promoting our class-designed demonstration of what we have learned and/or what we have contributed to the community with our AS-L projects.

5 % Final Exam Project / Individual Linked-in site.

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5 % Daily class grade. For more information, see “Class Policies” below.

Converting class grades to letter gradesA = 93-100%A- = 90-92%B+= 87-89%B = 83-86%

B- = 80-82%C+= 77-79%C = 73-76%C- = 70-72%

D+= 67-69%D = 63-68%D- = 60-62%F = less t than 60

Learning activitiesMajor homework assignments. Written assignments will usually be documents of your own design in the formats/structures that are explained in our Kolin textbook. All should be written in Microsoft Word, should have gone through the writing processes of planning, drafting, writing, editing, and proofreading, and must be uploaded to the appropriate class online place as well as any other places named in the assignment. All major homework assignments will be graded. Because of the Academic Service Learning (AS-L) projects, being planned as this Syllabus is being put together, the following list of major homework assignments is tentative in the sense that some of the AS-L projects may be substituted for others.

o Job or grad school application packet, including a resumé and cover letter.

o Three letters, a sales letter, a “bad news” letter, and a “good news” letter.o Letter to a business person who is Chinese. o ASL-1. Workplace concept documents, including an organizational structure, position

descriptions, and one to three e-mailso ASL-2. Brochure in one or more formats.o ASL-3. Facebook page setup with some content from brochure. This project may include

showing HDC folks how to maintain the page.o ASL-4. A presentation consisting of a rhetorical analysis of the Human Development

Center / Project Reach Out communications, including their consistency within the program and within the larger HDC.

o ASL-5. Student Presentations for the campus and community. For the AS-L Expo, each student will participate in creating and/or promoting a class-designed demonstration of what we have learned and/or what we have contributed to the community with our AS-L projects.

Two co-curricular activity assignments require that you attend and write about two co-curricular events on campus or in the Twin Ports area. The events may be a job fair, lectures, plays, exhibits, readings, performances, films, etc. Assignment details are explained in the class online Content / Co-Curric Assigns and are the same for both events that you decide to attend. One of these assignments is due Febraury 25 and the other is due May 13, the last day of classes; both may be uploaded at the appropriate class online Discussion at any time prior to their deadlines.

Reading assignments: Most every week, you will have reading assignments from the textbook; these should be completed by class time on the day they are due. Be sure to annotate and to pay particular attention to the major headings within each chapter.

Three quizzes, announced ahead of time in class and in the class online Content / Class dates, will test your knowledge of information presented in class and in assigned readings.

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Grammar assignments. These two or three individualized assignments involve explaining and correcting grammar and source documentation errors made on major homework assignments.Final Exam. UWS policy requires that all students report for our the final exam activity at the designated time, which is Monday, May 16, from 1:00 until 3:00 p.m. This is a time to come, ask questions about, and finish your Linkedin page, which is our final exam project. This project calls for uploading a portfolio of professional documents; its purpose is to provide you with a high-profile, Internet-based portfolio that can be easily updated and shared with others.

Class PoliciesDaily in-class grade: attendance, preparedness, and participationRecorded each time the class meets, your Daily Class Grade is 5 percent of your final course grade. It consists of three components: 1) attendance, 2) participation, and 3) preparation. Each component contributes 33 percent to each of your daily in-class grades. Daily class grades are important not so much because they are grade items but because they consist of class components designed to generate clear understandings of how to proceed and succeed with class assignments.

Attend classes in their entirety. Students who arrive more than ten minutes late or leave more than five minutes early will receive a reduced daily class grade.

Students who cannot be in class can keep up with much of the learning that occurs in class by going to the class online Content to see what’s up and what’s due each time class meets.

Excused absences are provided ONLY for religious holidays, for military personnel with required and unusually timed service on class dates, for students who give birth, for major caregivers who provide care for a newborn child, and for athletes and others required to participate in official, university-sanctioned activities. Excused absences are provided only to those who, on or before the class day prior to the missed class, use E-MAIL to remind me of the upcoming absence, ask for an assignment in lieu of class, and meet the in-lieu-of-class assignment submission requirements and deadline. Late in-lieu-of-class work is not accepted.

Exceptions for athletes involved in official UWS-sanctioned competitions. Athletes who want excused absences must provide me with their team’s schedule of competitions, including transportation departure and return times for away games. Regarding deadlines for in-lieu-of-class work, see “Excused absences” above.

Exceptions for those involved in non-athletic, official, university-sanctioned activities, I need an e-mail from the instructor who is requiring attendance at the event. Regarding deadlines for in-lieu-of-class work, see “Excused absences” above.

Exceptions for military personnel. I need an e-mail or paper copy of your orders. Regarding deadlines for in-lieu-of-class work, see “Exceptions” above.

Exceptions for giving birth and for major caregivers of a newborn child, TALK to me about a schedule for completing in-lieu-of-class work; for this discussion, do not use e-mail.

Other situations and responsibilities do NOT provide excuses. If work, family, health, or other problems and responsibilities continuously demand that you be somewhere other than in class, you are NOT entitled to an exception to your daily class grade. Frequent absences will hurt your final course grade and might even make it impossible for you to pass this class.

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What to do if you must miss a class. Except for Major Homework Assignments and Quizzes, if you are absent on a day when work is collected for grading, such work will not be accepted for grading at a later date; get it in by 11:59 p.m. on the due date. On days when you are unable to attend class, homework submitted will provide a 33% Daily Class Grade—not a great grade but much better than a zero.

Class policies regarding late work

Grade deductions for failing to meet minimum length requirements are determined on a percentage basis. If, for instance, a document with a 1,000-word minimum length requirement is only 900 words long, 10 points will be deducted from the grade the essay would have otherwise received.

Grade deductions for late work. A late Major Homework Assignment or quiz loses three points for each late day until the work is successfully submitted to the appropriate class online place. Note, for example, that an assignment that is due in class on a Wednesday but turned in on a Friday will have 6 points taken off the grade it would have otherwise received.

Maximum number of late days. Major Homework Assignments and Quizzes may be accepted until 10 days after their final due dates. If such work is left unsubmitted or is submitted more than 10 days late, it will receive a grade of 0; on Major Homework Assignments and Quizzes, a grade of 0 results in an immediate and automatic F for this course.

Submission requirements for major assignments. Avoid losing substantial points for failing to meet submission requirements, which are listed on each major assignment’s Grade Sheet.

Do not use works that have been or will be submitted elsewhere. In this class, students may NOT submit a document or parts of an document that have been submitted or are being prepared for submission in another class, including at another college, technical college, or high school. Some leeway is provided for a pre-existing resumé, which should, nonetheless, be updated and carefully revised, edited, and proofread before submitting.

Completion of work requirement. All major homework and quiz assignments are required parts of this course. Failure to submit them within 10 days results in immediate failure of this class.

Put your name, date, and instructor’s name on all work submitted.

Save all class work frequently while working on it, and, before closing, save again in two places, on your computer or portable drive and, for backup of documents of less than 10 megabytes, in the class online Locker. Crashed computers and documents that cannot be found are NOT excuses for late work.

Microsoft Word, available on all campus computers, is our official, class word processing software. Use it to save, upload, and open most of our class online documents. If you use other software to create a class document, arrange for on-campus access to your documents. Then, using a campus machine, first open Microsoft Word and then use it to open and save your document. Be sure to do this before submitting work in the class Dropboxes and Discussions, which do not work well with other word processing software.

Consent to use students’ class works. Enrollment in this class means that . . .

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Your instructor may select one or more of your works, or parts thereof, to share for learning purposes during class. As in the workplace, your name will appear on work that is shared.

Assignments submitted to the class online Discussions, as well as blogs, WIKIs, etc., may be accessed by me, by other students in our class and perhaps, depending on where they are uploaded, by others globally. Assignments submitted in the class online Dropbox are simultaneously submitted to turnitin.com, where all submissions become part of an international database.

Academic honesty. All sources used in any manner in your written work, including pictures and graphs, must be accurately and completely cited according to either MLA or APA style. Be sure to follow class instructions for using and providing source documentation on Face Book, Linkedin, and any other Internet sites that you build as part of this class.

Plagiarism, a form of academic dishonesty

Definition. Plagiarism is using the words or ideas of another writer without full source documentation. “When you submit a paper that is wholly or partly plagiarized, you are taking credit—or asking your teacher to give you credit—for work done by someone else. This is fundamentally dishonest and therefore wrong. You commit plagiarism whenever you use a source in any way without precisely acknowledging what you have taken it from” (Heffernan, Lincoln, and Atwill, 571). At UWS, plagiarism is a form of academic misconduct further described at http://www.legis.state.wi.us/rsb/code/uws/uws014.pdf

Class policies regarding plagiarism and collaboration. Within our class, students are encouraged to consider one another's ideas and suggestions regarding how class work might be better in terms of such things as content, organization, structure, formatting, word choices, sentence structures, and punctuation. Your instructor believes that talking about writing fosters learning about writing. With regard to plagiarism, then, our class policy is that your work must originate with you; furthermore, it must be primarily YOUR WORK, though you may share and use ideas with and from classmates, Writing Center consultants, and your instructor. Sharing and using information and ideas from sources other than classmates, Writing Center Consultants, and your instructor require source documentation as a professional courtesy and to avoid plagiarism.

Submitted Major Homework Assignments are checked for plagiarism. Our class online Dropbox is set to run turnitin.com checks for plagiarism by comparing submitted works with millions of Internet and student documents. Nonetheless, a clean report at turnitin.com does NOT assure that your work is plagiarism-free. Remember, you must not only identify the source of another author’s words but also of another author’s ideas. Know and follow the class guidelines for avoiding plagiarism.

Consequences. If there is evidence of plagiarism or other academic misconduct in an assignment that you have prepared for this class, you will receive a reduced grade. In cases of extensive plagiarism, you will receive a 0 on the assignment, an F for the course, and, perhaps, more serious sanctions. In extreme cases of plagiarism, probation or expulsion from UWS may be the proposed sanction—in such cases, an investigating officer will be appointed to handle the matter. When it comes to plagiarism, it will be discovered; it’s just not worth it. DON’T DO IT!

Class cancellations. When I cannot make it to class, I will, prior to class if possible, e-mail you information about what to do in lieu of the missed class. When weather conditions are dangerous, students will be informed about class cancellations via the news media—do not call Campus Safety because phone lines may be needed for emergencies.

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Accommodation of Religious Beliefs. Students’ sincerely held religious beliefs shall be reasonably accommodated with respect to scheduling all examinations and other academic requirements. Students in need of these accommodations should inform me at the start of the semester.

Disabilities Accommodation. Adaptations of methods, materials, or testing must be made to accommodate educational participation. Students in need of these accommodations should inform me at the start of the semester.

Bloodborne Pathogens. Students who may be exposed to human blood and certain bodily fluids through classroom activities, practicums, or internships must be provided training and information. Contact Carol Lindberg, Campus Industrial Hygienist, 715/394-8073 for more information.

Major due dates (tentative)Continuously-updated, day-by-day class plans, including what’s due, class topics, and in-class activities, appear in our class online Content. Quizzes, not included in this schedule, will be announced at least five days ahead of time. Please note that this schedule is tentative; assignment due dates may change in response to the class’s pace and learning needs. Also note that, to be on time, assignments must be submitted by11:59 p.m. on their due dates.

Feb. 14 Job or grad school application packet, including a resumé and cover letter.

Feb. 16 Twin Ports Job Fair. No class. If you wish, take your updated resumé and go to the job fair, which will be on campus at the Yellow Jacket Union. And, yes, the job fair qualifies as a Co-Curricular Event, so you could write it up for your Co-Curric Assignment I.

Feb. 25 Co-Curric Assignment I.

Mar. 2 Three letters, a sales letter, a “bad news” letter, and a “good news” letter.

Mar. 4 Explanation of how to write a letter to a Chinese business person.

Mar. 6 Letter to a business person who is Chinese.

Mar. 21-25 Spring Break

Mar. 28 ASL-1. Workplace concept documents, including an organizational structure, position descriptions, and one to three e-mails.

Apr. 11 ASL-2. Brochure in one or more formats.

Apr. 22 No class. Campus furlough day.

Apr. 20 ASL-3. Facebook page setup with some content from AS-L 2 brochure.

May 2 ASL-4. Presentation of rhetorical analysis.

May 11 ASL-5. AS-L Expo class demonstration and promotion of class demonstration.

May 13 Co-Curric Assignment II.

May 16 Final exam activity. Come and ask questions about perfecting your Linkedin pageFrom 1:00 until 3:00 p.m. In MWC 1729, where class meets. Linkedin Page assignment due.