Spring 2008 Announcements

January Announcements

Program and course management:

Upcoming events and requests:

Information


WE NEED YOUR SYLLABUS!

All English 100, 101, and 302 instructors are required to have their syllabi on file.

Please email Stacey your syllabus, and CC Jessie: please send your document(s) by February 1 .

It will help us, btw, if you can NAME your syllabi files thusly:

LastnameCourseSectionSemester.doc

That is,

ReidEngl101080F07.doc

If you teach several sections with nearly identical syllabi, please just indicate all section numbers at the top of the syllabus document, and in the email message; you can send a single document for all like-sections.

If your syllabus is online (not WebCT, but public website), please send Stacey/Jessie the link as well.

 


AD HOC COMPUTER CLASSROOM REQUESTS

 

Sajid Mahmood and his staff began taking ad-hoc computer classroom requests on January 7 . To reserve a computer classroom, click here.

Please use the Comments box at the end of the online form to suggest one or more second-choice dates, if possible; this speeds up the process of confirming your reservations.

Schedule ad hoc classrooms early. Ad-hoc rooms during busy times of day (TWR 10:30-5:00) are increasingly scarce.  Please note the following restrictions we're already aware of for Spring '08:

See our Computer Classrooms page for more information about scheduling, and a way to check yourself to see what rooms are free on a particular date.

ENGLISH 101 & 302 LIBRARY SUPPORT

English 101: 

English 302:

CAREER SERVICES Visits to English 302

The only university-wide entity not directly related to writing-education to which the composition program currently grants some of our valuable time is the Career Services center.  Composition students don't take psych surveys, complete critical-thinking assessments, get visits from ROTC, fill out a library assessment, or attend programming from university life (all of which I've seen happen in other programs).  And believe me, it's not that people across the university don't look at a class like 302 and drool a bit thinking about the opportunity to reach 90%+ of Mason students.


A ten-minute visit from career services has at least the possibility of meshing with your own instruction, since a goal for English 302 is preparing students to write beyond college.  To actually practice what we're preaching, most of them probably will need a career.

You can help your students find this presentation useful by taking a minute or two before or after the presentation to suggest how writing and thinking about future employment might be related.  And as Julie says in her note below, CS is even more willing this year to adapt their presentation to address particular issues or questions your students may find interesting.

When you hear from the CS rep, please work with him/her to arrange a suitable time and create a good learning environment for your students.

Note from Career Services:

Each semester a representative from University Career Services visits each section of English 302 to do a brief, 10 minute presentation about Career Services. The goal of this visit is to introduce the students to our office and the services that we offer. Often this is the first time that students hear about us and these in-person class visits have been shown to be an effective way to get this information to students.

These visits typically occur during the second, third, or fourth week of the semester. Sometime in January, you will be receiving a message which will outline the date and time that a Career Services representative will be visiting your class. We hope that you will look out for this message, tell your students about it, and make time for us during your class. Of course, if the date and/or time that was chosen does not work for you, we will be happy to reschedule. In addition, should you want a more thorough presentation about a certain career-related topic, we would be happy to schedule that with you.

We look forward to working with both you and your students this semester and hope to continue to have a positive relationship with all of the English 302 classes.

Julie Lubochinski
Career Counselor and Outreach Coordinator
University Career Services
jlubochi@gmu.edu
703-993-4024


COMPUTER CLASSROOM REQUEST SURVEY

We are collecting data  this year to determine if more computer classroom resources are needed, and your input is crucial. After you have completed your ad-hoc computer classroom reservations, please click here to take the five-minute survey.

 

SPRING EVENTS & WORKSHOPS

Mini-conference, January 25

What do your colleagues do with their brains when they put down their red pen and rubrics (besides watching Project Runway or sleeping)? 

Composition Committee is sponsoring the first-ever Mid-Year Mini-Conference for Interested Faculty & TAs in English at GMU. (Still looking for a better name for this....!)

Please join us on Friday, January 18, 9-noon in the Robinson Conference Room (RobA 447) for coffee, muffins, and intellectual stimulation.  Check back for updates on our tentative schedule:

You're welcome to just come and listen, or come and listen and bring a teaching-handout to share.

But if you have even the vaguest interest in presenting something -- about a research interest, a teaching innovation, a writing-related workplace achievement -- we'd love to hear from you, so please email Shelley by Monday 1/14 to get on the schedule.

And watch your email for additional updates!

 

Spring Workshop: Distance Learning for Composition

In late January, we'll start a spring-semester workshop for faculty who are interested in developing pedagogies for teaching English 302 in an online (distance-learning) format.

If you're interested and you haven't yet contacted Shelley, please do so ASAP.  The online portion of this workshop will begin in January, and a face-to-face workshop will be scheduled for later in the spring.  You're welcome to lurk online, to come just for the on-campus meeting, or do both; active participants will receive workshop stipends.

 

Spring Workshops:  Technology Pedagogies for Composition

In February, we'll begin a series of workshops presented by our summer technology workshop participants.  Keep an eye out for announcements, and come learn to use blogs, wikis, discussion boards, photo-essays, web presentation pages, and multimedia composition assignments to help your students better engage with and learn a range of strategies for their writing.

 

If you have other ideas or requests for spring workshops, please contact Shelley or Jessie.

DONATE YOUR ASSIGNMENTS TO e-100!

Composition Committee members will be sending you a reminder in the next couple of weeks to ask you to contribute a handout, class exercise, or essay assignment prompt to our growing E-100 (E-302) resource site.  (Have you browsed by it recently?  Click here for more info!)

Please take 5 minutes to respond and send something that worked for you recently.  (If you have two things, send 'em both -- this is no time for false modesty!)  We're particularly interested in English 101 materials right now, but if you have an English 302 handout, we'd love to hear about it.

We're not looking for fancy-dancy (though we'll take it if we find it!) -- but rather anything you've tried that worked well with GMU students. Surely you can think of something, yes?  And since the site is still very small, the chances that you'll duplicate someone else's submission are also very small.

If your "cool idea" was borrowed from someone else, feel free to send it in anyway; don't assume that that someone will remember to do so! (Feel free to add a note at the top giving credit, as far as you know, to the originator of the document.)

If you don't get a request from a CC member, or you delete the one you got in a fit of in-box clearing, feel free either to email your cool idea to Shelley or Jessie, or to just upload it to the Submissions discussion board on the E-100 site.

Thanks for your contributions!

 

E-100 SITE: Composition Resources

In response to popular demand, we're beginning to build a collection of assignments, handouts, & activities for English 100 and 101.  Eventually, the site will be on our composition.gmu.edu server, password protected, like the E-200 site. 


While we're waiting, the "beta" version of the site is available to everyone through WebCT.

From the WebCT login page, you can sign in with our comp UserID:

WebCT ID =   aristotle

Password =   plato

You should then be able to click to enter the E-100 site.

If you didn't find what you were looking for, that's because we need contributors!  Please use the Submissions & Q&A  Discussion Board link to upload a document with an assignment, handout, class activity, or other English 100/101-related document.  Or if you really need a certain kind of document, you can post a note asking others to post their ideas. 

English 302 faculty:  your contributions are welcome, too!

If you have feedback about the site, or you'd like to help gather and organize materials for it, please contact Lisa Lister or Shelley Reid.


VOLUNTEERS NEEDED for spring semester TA observations

If you'd be willing to let a new TA observe one class session of your English 101 or English 302 class this semester, and then chat or email with that student briefly afterwards about your teaching strategies, please email Shelley.  (It helps if you include the course + section #, the day & time, and the room.)  TAs will be asked to contact you in advance to suggest a visit time that's mutually convenient.

 

Research Resources for Faculty

Library Computer Classrooms may be available for research-focused class meetings on a space-available basis, for classes that are either led by or supported by a library faculty or staff member.  Contact Craig Gibson or your liaison librarian to request that space for research-focused 101 or 302 classes.

 


WORD 2007 IN ALL COMPUTER LABS
Beware ".docx"!

All computer labs this spring will continue using MS Word 2007.  The interface has changed -- the new "ribbon" is supposed to organize icons and commands more efficiently -- and a number of new or improved tools may be of interest to composition teachers, including contextual spellcheck (which might catch some "there/their" mistakes), document sharing, and commenting/track-changes/sharing tools.

For a quick overview of changes, see the Mason Word '07 transitions page, or click here for a pretty good orientation by Microsoft.

Also, if you're asking students to share files or turn them in electronically, remember that students using Word 2007 may may need to be reminded to save their documents in ".rtf" or ".doc" form rather than the default ".docx" format which is unreadable by any other program.  Some computer labs have had the default Save set to "Word 2003," but this may not be true universally.  An upgrade is available; see the "important links" section of the Transitions website noted above.  Freeware docx converter programs are also available -- there are links from the Transitions page, or you can do a web search if you get stuck with a file late at night.