Every ENGL 1007 course includes the following components:

1. 1. Course Inquiry — drives the intellectual work of the writing/composing, linking:
      • assigned texts
      • field research/documentary elements
      • sequenced assignments
   2. Field Research/ Documentary Component — engagement with people, sites, artifacts
   3. Studio Pedagogy — at least one quarter of the course happens in a studio mode
   4. Multimodal Composition
   5. Information, Digital, & Media Literacy — a UConn Common Curriculum requirement (formerly Information Literacy)
   6. Reflective Writing

 And the following practices:

1. 1. Assignments, projects, and in-class work built around habits of practice (writing moves)
   2. Readings and assigned texts that foster engagement and model inquiry
   3. Substantial amounts of revised writing and composing in various modes and genres (3 or more major projects)
   4. Additional short and informal writing and composing (both in and out of class)
   5. Cycles of feedback, circulation, and revision with each project (including various forms of conferencing and workshopping); attention on audience, rhetorical context

Consult the Overview of ENGL 1007 for the most detailed and accurate listing of required elements. Some additional details provided below.

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Details for Essential Components

Course inquiry

A course inquiry includes questions that frame readings and assignments; it also provides enough specificity or focus to enable academic and perhaps public contributions to the questions, not just open-ended consideration or writing “about” topics. A course inquiry is cross-disciplinary—the readings and assignments invite inquiry and work that reflects concerns, approaches, and vocabulary from disciplines beyond just English. Course inquiries can have subtopics and digressions. There's room for experiment and play. (See Course Inquiry page.)

Field research/documentary component

A documentary component ensures that the course includes contact with the world, not just reading and writing. This field research requires sustained and meaningful engagement with a person, site, or artifact—e.g., an interview or profile. Documenting an encounter should inform a part of at least one major project and at least one studio session. The FYW courses help students develop language for these processes and support critical reflection on the tools and methods we can use in composition.

Studio pedagogy

The studio approach affords ways of teaching beyond the lecture, seminar, or discussion. In studio mode, the classroom becomes a workspace. Studio pedagogy, in our program, emphasizes active and accessible learning, play, design, and digital literacies. (See Studio Pedagogy page.)

Multimodal composition

Multimodal assignments develop functional digital literacy (knowing how to do things with certain technologies) and provide opportunities to compose in multiple modes (e.g., with combinations of images, sound, text, etc.) across diverse technologies as ways of writing. FYW courses strive to encourage critical digital literacy skills and rhetorical strategies for composing through a variety of means besides traditional alphabetic text. We want students to be makers and not just consumers of digital and social texts.

Information, digital, and media literacy (IDML)

Reflective writing

 

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Details for Practices

Assignments, projects and in-class work built around writing moves

The FYW habits of practice are collecting and curating, engaging, contextualizing, theorizing, circulating. These serve as a transferable framework that fosters contextually sensitive projects and enables students to address diverse audiences across disciplines and contexts. The moves position student work as purposeful contributions within an ecology of other compositions (not merely demonstration of competence or compliance with unexamined “rules” for writing). (See Writing Moves page.)

Readings and assigned texts that foster engagement and model inquiry

Students should interact with texts that are complex and nuanced, that offer different perspectives and can be put to use in different ways. Students should also practice and develop some familiarity with academic writing, both the forms that appear in academic journals and in public forums such as Science, Longreads, Nieman Storyboard, or even TED Talks and public lectures

A substantial amount of revised writing

Instructors should assign substantial writing throughout the course—typically across at least three major projects. Within these major projects, students produce writing of various modes and genres that goes through cycles of feedback and revision. Writing processes are complex and recursive, and students need to be able to return to projects (usually after receiving feedback) and rethink their claims, ideas, and rhetorical choices. This most often happens through multiple drafts for major assignments. Leave plenty of time between drafts and build class sessions around the sharing and discussion of in-process drafts. Instructors should be engaging student writing or composition in most class sessions. Please see our assignment guidelines for more on  assignment prompts.

Additional short and informal writing

Not all writing or composing in FYW/ECE courses needs to be high-stakes (graded). Sometimes the purpose of writing is simply to practice, brainstorm, or learn. We recommend that students do some writing or composing most days in class.

Feedback and circulation

Writing is social; that is, it’s an interaction between an author/composer and an audience. Student writing should therefore circulate to different audiences and receive feedback from those audiences (whenever possible). Feedback includes the comments an instructor makes on each draft as well as feedback and input students provide for each other and through collaborative work. Substantial class time is directed toward this reflection on the work that students have done and can include peer review, UX testing, various forms of conferencing, workshopping of specific examples, and so on.