Instructor Resources

Overview of our courses

ENGL 1004

Compared to ENGL 1007, ENGL 1004 allows students more time and instructor support and, in many cases, smaller classes to reach these learning objectives. Activities in ENGL 1004 help students build their confidence in writing at the college level and prepare them for the approaches to writing they will encounter in ENGL 1007. Additionally, students in ENGL 1004 are introduced to the writing habits of practice central to ENGL 1007, and they are given time to practice and reinforce each habit prior to enrolling in ENGL 1007. ENGL 1004 provides flexibility for instructors to focus on particular ENGL 1007 components and habits, and design their teaching according to the needs of their individual students. 

ENGL 1007

ENGL 1007 introduces students to the work of college writing, which includes posing questions, developing sustained intellectual projects, and generating knowledge that invites engagement with wide and varied audiences. Writing, here, is project-building—a practice of making something, composing—and the courses reflect this attention to purposeful engagement and meaningful contribution. As a prerequisite to many University courses and all Writing Competency courses, First-Year Writing seminars foreground collaborative, student-driven inquiry developed in the context of a shared course investigation. Students work on projects in which they select and define places where they might advance the class conversation across various media.

Downloadable ENGL 1007 Overview PDF

ECE English Guidelines

Program Description

Program Description

UConn Early College Experience (ECE) is a concurrent enrollment program that allows motivated high school students to take UConn courses at their high schools. Courses are offered in over twenty disciplines and specialize in general education. High school instructors who have been certified through the University of Connecticut teach UConn ECE courses. Approximately 10,000 students in over 180 high schools take advantage of this program. UConn ECE students have an official University transcript that can be sent to the college of their choice. Many colleges and universities across the country accept UConn credits.

For details on ECE Policies and Procedures, click here.

Student Registration

Each high school decides the criteria for admittance into UConn Early College Experience. Participants are typically academically motivated students who have a good chance of success in college courses. UConn ECE hosts an annual Site Representative Conference where student registration forms are distributed to each school and information on the student registration process is available. Incomplete or late registration forms are returned to the high school and are unable to be processed. Students are billed directly for all registered courses at a rate of $50 per credit, which means that most ECE English courses cost a total of $200.

Enrollment Caps In ECE English

UConn's FYW/ECE ENGL 1007 courses are capped at twenty students. This means that the total number of students in any section of ENGL 1007 cannot exceed twenty, including students who are enrolled in the same high school section but not the UConn component. That is, even if a school allows for combined enrollments (ECE students alongside non-ECE students), the total number of students in the course cannot exceed twenty. A certified ECE instructor can teach multiple sections of FYW/ECE within a given semester or academic year. The enrollment cap for FYW/ECE ENGL 1004 is seventeen students. 

University Credit

After successful completion of the course, ECE students receive university credit and a grade. This credit and grade is recorded on a University of Connecticut transcript and is available upon request. Upon entering the University, the credit automatically becomes a part of the student’s academic record. If the student matriculates at other institutions, the University will furnish an official transcript of the course work to be submitted for transfer credit. University of Connecticut transfer credits are accepted at many colleges and universities across the country.

Students should request a transcript online at registrar.uconn.edu. For additional details on credit transfer and to view the transfer credit database, visit the UConn ECE website at ece.uconn.edu.

ECE Guidelines

First-Year Writing Program

The first-year writing curriculum engages students with hands-on, collaborative experiences. Courses prioritize making and doing over passive absorption of knowledge. Students determine the direction their writing takes and contribute to the body of academic knowledge.
—UConn FYW's Philosophy

UConn's First-Year Writing (FYW) courses provide students with contexts, practices, and experiences designed to support their ongoing engagements with the world, both within and beyond the academic community. FYW courses prioritize production (making and doing), not passive absorption of inert knowledge or rote skills. Writing in FYW serves as a means for productive engagement, and, although readings and instructor-devised assignments set up the ecology for the course, the students themselves determine the directions the inquiry takes. Writing instruction, in this model, facilitates consideration of and reflection on the choices available to writers seeking to make a meaningful contribution to a question or issue. Throughout the course, the FYW instructor will encourage and illustrate ways for students to:

  • find a stake in an issue;
  • move a conversation productively forward;
  • challenge but also make use of the terms of ongoing conversations and conventions;
  • make new connections;
  • explore genres and consider the rhetorical dimensions of engaging an audience;
  • begin new research; and, most importantly,
  • explore different positions and practice new ways of writing and composing.

You can find a full articulation of the learning objectives for First-Year Writing courses here. You can learn more about UConn's First-Year Writing program by visiting their website.

FYW and ECE

All ECE English courses are part of UConn's FYW program. Although there may be a few minor differences in some of the practical elements of the course outside of university campuses, ECE English and FYW courses follow the same curriculum and have the same required components, learning outcomes, and expectations for student work. This is why these courses are often referred to as FYW/ECE in this handbook. The Early College Experience program is simply the context for certain FYW courses.

Course Context

FYW/ECE in General Education

UConn’s FYW/ECE courses are designed as key components of a student’s general education. This means that the FYW/ECE courses play an important role in a student’s overall curricular trajectory and are engaged with the university’s general education requirements. Although FYW/ECE courses are generally housed within English Departments, they are not introductions to the field of English. Rather, they are designed to help students practice and reflect on academic work and especially writing that can serve a diverse array of academic and personal goals. Specifically, FYW/ECE courses address general education goals by providing:

  • preparation for writing-intensive (“W”) courses;
  • a first component of the university’s Gen Ed Information Literacy Competency;
  • attention to digital literacy, including multimodal composition.

FYW/ECE in National Contexts

UConn FYW/ECE courses have a character that is specific to the tradition and history of this university, but they are also engaged with ongoing developments in the teaching of FYW/ECE courses throughout the nation, work supported by research and activity in the field of rhetoric and composition (known, too, as composition studies or writing studies). The WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition and Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing are two important articulations of the values and practices of FYW/ECE courses that are informed by this research.

Studio Pedagogy

Studio sessions are distinct from, although related to, seminar sessions and are heavily reliant on the active learning model. While instructors guide students through structured activities, there is no lecture component to these sessions. In studio, students are encouraged to explore lateral moves with their writing -- composing in different modalities and the exploring different technologies to facilitate this, revising their work in different genres, etc. Collaboration is also an important component of studio work, with students frequently working in groups to compose and troubleshoot. One credit of class time should be devoted to studio sessions.

Course Philosophy: Core Terms

Because all FYW/ECE courses are seminars in academic writing, exploring the courses through a closer examination of what FYW/ECE's core terms mean helps demonstrate the philosophical underpinnings of the courses.

Seminar

Although we often see higher education depicted as a space where experts deliver knowledge to novices, UConn’s FYW/ECE courses are seminars, which means that they are collaborative and open-ended spaces where the inquiry is driven by the students themselves. The instructor’s role in a seminar is to get the conversation started and to provide contexts (with readings, feedback, central questions, and directed discussion) for this ongoing work. A seminar needs a territory for inquiry, a point of focus for the discussion that follows. The instructor helps to curate and oversee the cycles of writing and reflection that culminate in each graded essay. In turn, students pursue writing projects that enable them to select and define places where they might add to or develop the discussion at hand. The learning in a seminar comes, then, from the experience of making and doing rather than from “lessons” provided by an expert. The seminar setting, with its shared, participatory activity, situates the writing that happens in the course as a communication between seminar members.

ECE English students might not have much experience with this kind of education. Many K-12 educational systems assume that students need to acquire certain kinds of knowledge that meet certain standards. These priorities tend to discourage the spirit of the seminar, which focuses on democratic and learner-directed inquiry. You may need to explicitly address this aspect of the course at its outset and explain how an ECE English course functions differently than other kinds of classes.

Academic

ECE English students may have only very limited experience with college or “the academy"; however, ECE English courses imagine all students as academic writers. Students have often been asked to reproduce knowledge they've been taught; they often have had little experience generating truly novel questions, formulating lines of inquiry, and developing projects. Yet, the work of the academy is devoted to making sense of the world and communicating that to others in meaningful ways. Part of the purpose of FYW/ECE courses is to introduce students to the work of the academy and what it means to be a scholar, even as they may continue to finish their secondary education.

FYW/ECE courses are cross-disciplinary spaces; they are not designed to teach students how to become scholars in English or literary studies. Because there is no universal model for the academic writing, we present the courses as places to experiment and practice intellectual work that is common to all fields. This work includes engaging with others' texts, working with and through evidence, and circulating writing to wider audiences. By semester’s end, the class itself functions something like a mini-discipline, with a cohesive, if also disparate, collection of projects developed around a common set of questions and texts.

Writing

There are three main areas of "content" in FYW/ECE courses:

  • The area of inquiry, provided by the assigned readings and whatever materials students assemble through research
  • The rhetorical terms, or the shared meta-language about writing, that the class develops (with the instructor’s help), including concepts like genre, audience, writing process, rhetorical situation, and so forth
  • The students’ writing itself, which should serve as a primary text for the work of the course and feature prominently in most class sessions; this is most vital content of the course, and the bridge between the first two

The core activities of the FYW/ECE seminars are writing and reflection on writing. In producing student-directed writing projects, a student gains experience in the local, specific contingencies and pressures of academic writing. In reflecting on and working with other students’ writing, a student has opportunities to consider more widely the problems and possibilities inherent in the choices writers make to communicate their ideas.

Other Important Terms

Literature

Neither ENGL 1004 or ENGL 1007 is a traditional literature course or an introduction to literary analysis. Whereas writing about literature makes the literary text the object of study, in 1004 and 1007, the literary texts (and the work of coming to terms with them) foster an outwardly directed energy. Writing through literature or writing with literature means making use of literary texts to generate and support projects that extend beyond the occasion of this particular literary text. In a 1004 or 1007 course, it is never enough to merely demonstrate productive reading of literary texts (although close, careful reading and exploration of texts is essential). Student essays should be directed toward a more specific contribution to a problem or question set up by the course readings. You can learn more about how the UConn FYW courses makes use of literary texts here.

Diversity

We might describe the work of academic writing as a commitment to making meaning within diversity—making connections between disparate entities. Academic writing, in this sense, is an offering to a reader of a particular insight or material that will complicate or extend that reader’s understanding of a topic. Diversity is an essential, constituting component of the course, something that is always active when one writer thoughtfully engages with other writers. In preparing the courses, we might ask how readings, including the work of all the students in the class, can serve as informing but not prescriptive resources for the ongoing work of each class member. How might writing be understood and used less as a mechanism for “solving” or controlling a topic than one that can enable better connections and deeper understandings? Our approach focuses on thoughtfulness, exploration, learning, and transformation—all the qualities (and methods) of a writer who understands the diversity of human experience. You can learn more about diversity in FYW courses in the FYW Instructor Resource Book.

Research

The University of Connecticut is a research site, and in this spirit we encourage instructors to experiment and try out various ways to enact the principles described here. In building the courses around inquiry, we ask students to pursue questions that do not have ready-made answers. Research in FYW courses is particularly important for helping students fulfill the University of Connecticut's information literacy competency, which is designed to make students more critical consumers and users of information. 

Technology

We live in a world where it is increasingly common to encounter and produce writing that is multimodal and mediated by diverse technologies. It is important for teachers of writing to help students strategize and think critically about the synergy that is created when they compose through multiple modes as well as the technologies they use to compose. Technology need not mean digital necessarily. All writing, even alphabetic writing with a pencil and paper, is still a technology, one that has diverse applications and relies on multiple modes. Instructors should ask students to consider the rhetorical implications of composing with a variety of other technologies as well: video, audio recording, photographs, body language, captioning,  hypertext, interactive interfaces, graphics, etc. Multimodal composition technologies have always affected the ways we write, the way we read, and the way we access texts. It is important for students to become aware of these changes through the practice of composing.

Reflection

To become stronger writers, students need to be able to reflect on the writing that they do. Reflective writing should ask students to consider what their writing does rhetorically, describing and examining the choices they made and the effects these choices have in their writing. Students should also be invited to reflect on the process of writing. Reflection can (and should) be related to the course inquiry and the ideas and questions that drive that work and can be done in the context of the other course readings. Ultimately, one of the main purposes of reflective writing is to help students develop metacognition, which the WPA Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing defines as “the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking as well as on the individual and cultural processes and systems used to structure knowledge.” Metacognition allows students to become self-aware of the processes and resources they use to compose, which can help them confront unfamiliar writing situations more flexibly in the future.

Course Components

Every ENGL 1007 course includes the following components:

    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. 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.

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)

IDML, an explicit component of UConn’s Common Curriculum requirements, addresses making, not just receiving, knowledge and includes direct instruction in some elements of library research. More detailed information can also be found the First-Year Writing website.

Reflective writing

Reflective writing—characterizing, reconsidering, or qualifying one’s work—fosters awareness and metacognition about writing and writing processes. Reflective writing in FYW seminars is an ongoing and need not be graded or end-of-term. Reflective forms include process notes, in-class reflections on (or presentations of) one’s project, other kinds of metatexts, including placing of one’s work within the context of others’ work, introductory texts, remixes, etc. (See the FYW website for more.)

 

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.

Glossary of Terms

  • Assignment. An assignment is a writing task instructors give to students. It is the sum of written instructions and scaffolding that communicates the parameters, instructions, and stakes of what students are being asked to do. At its core, an assignment is an opportunity to do something (write an essay, curate a portfolio, script a podcast) and then circulate and receive feedback on what they produce. See FYW assignment guidelines and examples here.
  • Course inquiry. Course inquiry refers to the specific focus of a semester-long course, which includes a rounded exploration of a particular topic or idea using various texts, sources, and methods. For example, a course might focus on questions concerning the way childhood is constructed rhetorically in contemporary discourse. Inquiry provides the occasions for certain kinds of projects, but it isn't "content" that students are supposed to learn. Instead, a course inquiry provides a stage on which students get to practice writing and composing.
  • Information literacy. According to the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy, “Information literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning.” You can learn more about FYW's information literacy requirement here.
  • Multimodal composition. Multimodal composition just means writing that uses multiple modes. There are five main modes: linguistic (words, text), aural (sound), gestural (embodied communication, interactivity), spatial (relationships between elements), and visual (images, graphics, color, etc.). Since even the most traditional print manuscripts use text (linguistic mode), fonts (visual mode), and spacing (spatial mode), all texts are actually multimodal. In the FYW/ECE program, multimodal is sometimes used to refer to assignments that explicitly foreground multimodal design. Often (but not always), instructors invite students to compose multimodal texts with digital tools, because of the diverse affordances these technologies offer.
  • Project. Projects are critical writing processes that foster discussion, challenge thinking, and create new sites for inquiry. Projects may be responses to an assignment (see above), but they also may be work that extends across multiple, sequenced assignments, culminating in a combined product. All projects are in some way a response to the course inquiry.
  • Reflection. The reflective portion of the course includes any time spent on characterizing, reconsidering, or qualifying one’s work. Often less evaluative than descriptive, reflective writing turns the critical, analytical activity that typifies academic writing back on the writing project itself. Reflective writing generally aims to help students develop metacognition toward writing. You can learn more about reflective writing here.
  • Revision. Much of the most significant work of a FYW/ECE seminar happens in revision after students have taken the first steps of drafting a specific writing project. Writing is a process that is complex and recursive, which is to say that it isn’t “done” after the initial draft or idea has been produced. 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.
  • Schedule. The timeline of when things happen in your course. The schedule includes assignment due dates, assigned readings, and sometimes class activities or events (such as workshop days).
  • Studio pedagogy. FYW/ECE 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 of digital and social texts, not just consumers. The studio component of FYW courses is a distinct part of the FYW courses specifically dedicated to a workshopping and production-driven model of writing and composing. In studio sessions, students produce prototypes, sketches, or models that often make use of digital technologies or tools.
  • Syllabus. The document that maps out the inquiry and structure of your course for students. Often includes a schedule (above) as well as course policies. Please follow our syllabus guidelines carefully.
  • Writing moves. The five "writing moves" of FYW—collecting and curating, engaging a conversation, contextualizing, theorizing, and circulating—provide a helpful shared vocabulary for students and teachers. See the FYW course moves chart to see more about how these course moves connect to learning objectives and the work of the course.

ECE Policy on AP English

  • UConn’s English 1010/1011 writing seminars and Advanced Placement courses have some
    common ground but can vary significantly in terms of assumptions, goals, and practices. For
    example, whereas AP courses (at the administrative level) could be said to prioritize testable
    knowledge, UConn FYW courses begin with the expectation that successful student writing will
    advance and in ways transform the terms and effects of the class conversation. FYW courses are
    intended to provide students with experience as academic writers, and they therefore emphasize
    the collaborative and interactive qualities of academic inquiry. The circulation of student work
    and the continued reflection on and revision of this work is essential in FYW courses.

    Despite differences, at many sites Advanced Placement courses are merged with UConn FYW
    courses. And many crafty teachers find ways to bring the two worlds together in meaningful
    ways. What follows is a policy supporting the productive coexistence of ECE and AP courses.
    We welcome any feedback or suggestions for revision.

    1. ECE and AP can co-exist in the same course.
    2. They should do so openly, with AP elements included on ECE syllabi.
    3. Because of the much greater amount of class time in most high school classes (compared to on
      campus courses), what is important is that ECE goals are met, not that every day or
      hour is spent on ECE activity. That is, AP activity may complement ECE. But even
      when it does not, it need not be prohibited.
    4. AP work can support ECE work in a number of specific ways. For example, AP Literature
      work can provide practice with close reading and analysis of texts, tools that are
      essential, too, in ECE courses. AP Language work can provide rhetorical frameworks
      and terms that can be helpful for student writers (although FYW courses rarely posit a
      completely stable or universal rhetorical schema).
    5. ECE/FYW courses depend on the development and revision of four to six major writing
      projects, with attention, too, on the Information Literacy, Reflective Writing, and Multimodal
      components. As long as these requirements are met, the course can have additional
      elements, including various AP activities.

    There are of course some significant differences between AP and ECE, and these differences
    need to be acknowledged (and understood) by teachers, students, and ECE administrators. If you
    feel that for whatever reason your AP and ECE elements are in tension, let us know. We can
    work with you to develop some plans for addressing AP and ECE coexistence.