Dr. Virginia Crank
Fall 2000

Office: CLI-154   Office Phone: 654-4395  E-mail: VirginiaC@ednet.rvc.cc.il.us 
Office Hours: MWF 2:00-2:50 a.m. or by appointment.

Required Texts and Materials: 
--Rich, Susanna.  The Flexible Writer: A Basic Guide, 3rd Ed. Boston: Allyn Bacon, 1998.
--White, lined 8 2" x 11" paper (loose-leaf)
--Blue or black pen
--Two 3.5" computer discs (high density)
--One manila folder for your writing portfolio
--A folder for keeping handouts and class work
--A good, college-level dictionary
--An EdNet account 

Course Description:
Eng 098 is designed to help students improve their basic writing skills to the college level.  The emphasis is on learning to write an effective paragraph containing a clearly expressed central idea supported by relevant, well-organized, specific details and examples.  Weekly writing assignments are required.  A grade of "C" or better is required in order for students to enroll in Eng 101. Students may repeat Eng 098 only once.
All Eng 098 students are required to attend two PLC lab periods per week at the times listed in your schedule of classes.

Course Requirements:
Your grade in this course will reflect your ability to complete several different types of writing assignments.  You will be evaluated for both the product of your writing and the process, which means that part of your grade will reflect your daily effort and part will reflect your overall success in writing.  Evaluations will be based on:

   Homework and Classwork (40%):  In a two-pocket paper folder, you
   should collect all of the homework and in-class assignments 
   which will come from your textbook and our class discussions.  These
   assignments and their due dates will be clearly given on the course
   schedule.  Some of these will be online assignments, which you can do
   outside of class. Many of your writing pieces will be started in class but
   completed on your own time. For each unit of study, you will have several
   small writing assignments, and, often, you will have some choice about
   which assignments you want to do. WE WILL CONSIDER ALL OF THESE WRITINGS
   TO BE "IN PROGRESS" ALL SEMESTER; what that means is that you will be
   receiving lots of feedback on the writings as you write and revise them,
   and you will get points when you turn these pieces in based on your
   progress, but they will not be given a final grade until the end of the
   semester.   It is VERY IMPORTANT that you keep all of these
   "in-progress" pieces, because they will form the raw material for your
   final portfolio. You are required to do all of the pieces assigned
   throughout the semester; if you do not turn in all pieces, you will not
   pass the course; all of these pieces must be in your writing portfolio
   by the end of the semester, even if you did not complete them in time to
   earn homework points.

   Writing Portfolio (45%):  Your writing portfolio will contain
   all of the "in-progress" writing you did this semester. In the same folder,
   you must also have a 10-page "polished" portfolio of your best writings
   this semester, which I will grade very closely. The polished portfolio
   should contain a variety of short and long pieces which began with our
   “writing options” assignments but were then completed and polished:
   revised and edited for focus, organization, support, coherence, and
   correctness. These 10 pages should show the best of you as a writer. They
   must be typed, double-spaced, in proper MLA format.  
 

   Final Exam (10%):  Your final exam will be a short, in-class essay which
   tests your ability to compose a focused, organized, coherent, and correct
   essay. As a class, we will decide, in the last week, what topics to
   consider for this essay exam.

   Weekly E-mail Reports (5%): An important part of progressing as a writer is
   being able to reflect about what you've done and how you've done it. In
   order to help you develop that self-reflexive habit, I'm going to require
   you to write short, weekly progress reports to me (only me, at
   VirginiaC@ednet.rvc.cc.il.us) about your writing. In an e-mail message of
   at least 15 lines (in either 10 or 12 pt. font), you will just tell me what
   you've been writing, what problems you've been having with writing and
   class, what successes you've been having with our class, what you've been
   learning about writing, etc. Basically, it's like having a weekly face-to-
   face meeting, except you're writing me a note. These reports will be graded
   only on whether or not they were done and done thoughtfully, NOT on their
   grammar or spelling or style or thesis. I'll try to write back to as many
   of these reports as I have time for.  These weekly reports are due by
   Saturday at midnight each week. 

Your final grade, then, will be determined as follows:

Homework/Classwork       40
Writing Portfolio                 45
Weekly E-mail Reports        5
Final Exam                         10
                                        100

Attendance: Absences from either the class or the lab sessions will severely effect your grade. Please see attached attendance policy.  The one change in that policy for MY classes ONLY is that, starting Week Five, attendance on Mondays (the day we meet in the computer lab) will be optional. These will be "on-line" class days, meaning you will have an online assignment that you must post to our class EdNet conference by midnight on Monday instead of coming physically to class. These assignments will be given out by at least the previous Monday, so you could do them over the week, if you wished, although you have until midnight each Monday. If you do not post the assignment by midnight, FOR ANY REASON, you will be marked with another absence as well as losing the homework points for that assignment. For those of you with limited computer access outside of campus, you may of course still come to class and use the lab during our class time; I will be in my office to answer any questions or help with any problems.

Another note about absences: A truly tragic number of Eng 098 students fail to successfully complete the class solely because of excessive absences.  Please remember that any more than 3 absences (total, in both lab and class, including face-to-face and online meetings) will severely affect your grade!!! Indeed, no one who misses six or more class and lab meetings can pass this class!!! This policy has no exceptions and does not distinguish between “excused” and “unexcused” absences.
 

Late Work:
All written assignments are due on the dates indicated by the course schedule. Absence from class the day something is due does not excuse late work.  Late work will be given an F unless the student and the teacher have made prior arrangements for an extension.  However, since all assignments must be completed in order to pass the course, missing assignments should be turned in even though they will earn an F.

EdNet and Computer Usage: This class will have on online component using RVC's EdNet system, which offers you a free e-mail account and Internet access from anywhere on campus. You can also use EdNet from home, if you have a computer with a modem and an Internet Service Provider. EdNet doesn't work very well with AOL, because they are not a true Internet Service Provider, so, if you already have AOL, you might want to consider changing providers or doing your EdNet work on campus. Some people have had no problems using EdNet through AOL, but others have had MANY problems.  We will be training you in the use of EdNet at the first part of the semester; EdNet also has a reference manual and a CD-ROM tutorial, if you want more help and practice learning the system. We also have a very good Help Desk at RVC which will be glad to answer your questions and help solve your problems with EdNet, the WWW, or computers in general. 
In our class, you will be required to use the EdNet system for at least two things: weekly online assignments and weekly e-mail reports. I hope that you will also take advantage of the EdNet system for communicating with your classmates and fellow RVC students, asking questions, getting information, keeping up with assignments, and reading and responding to your classmates' writings. CHECK YOUR EDNET MAILBOX AND OUR CLASS CONFERENCE AT LEAST TWICE PER WEEK!!! If you find that you are having problems accessing EdNet, talk to me long before you begin to miss assignments.  

Plagiarism:
To plagiarize is to present someone else's ideas or work as your own.  Give credit to the source when:
1) You directly quote someone else;
2) You use someone else's ideas or opinions;
3) You use someone else's examples;
4) You cite statistics or facts gathered by someone else;
5) You present evidence or testimony taken from someone
   else's argument.
If you plagiarize, you will earn an "F" for the assignment.