Read and write better

On Thu, December 13, 2007 10:28 am, [person in charge of Eng Dept composition classes] wrote:
> Just a quick reminder before your minds check out for the break, (or go
> into full on MLA conference mode), the Spring R&C Staff Meeting will
> take place on Wednesday, January 23rd from 5:00-7:00 pm....
> [We] would once again like to run the meeting as an open forum,
> so please be thinking about topics that you would like to see addressed.
> It would be great if you could email me with your thoughts anytime
> between now and the meeting

At the meeting, I'd like to put forth two items:

1. The infamous course descriptions. At least one quarter of my class was drawn in by the description, not the time-slot, etc; having students with vested interest in the course matter was a major part of building class discussion (in my case, theatre majors/minors in a course on dramatic literature). It also allowed a major sense of camaraderie to develop in class -- students attended each others' performances even as they worked together.

So my vote is to make the CDs even more readily available: I noticed that other departments post shortened CDs directly into the "notes" section of the entries on the schedule.berkeley.edu website. We should *totally* do this: I'm sure that a majority of R1B students only look at this site during registration...

2. As I handed out my evaluations, I noticed that R1 courses are reduced to "this course is supposed to teach you to read and write better," or something similar. I'd like to see a new version of the official material (here and elsewhere) that acknowledges that R1B courses are meant to be geared especially towards basic research skills as well as composition.

More importantly: these are courses in *critical thinking*, which forms the basis of "reading better" (not to mention writing better) -- and I think we should be overt about it, and include this on all CDs and official R1 material...

My two cents on plagiarism:

In an R&C course, it shouldn't be an issue. Our class sizes are small because these are writing and critical thinking *workshops*: through office hours, in-class thesis-building exercises, pre-exercises leading up to the assignment, and general discussions, instructors are part of the
development of each essay submitted.

In other words, we are present, in some cases with light hand-holding, through the developmental stages of each essay -- so an essay from outside this process would be an odd choice indeed.

But who knows? The other tip I have: teach non-canonical texts. Material for plagiarism is less plentiful that way.

My final student's final essay (late) just came in, so my grades will be
in in a matter of hours, woo hoo!

Best,
Matt