Overview of College Composition I
AT A GLANCE
CCI/ICCI is the first course in the Rowan Core general education program’s two-course composition sequence. The course serves to introduce students to rhetorically meaningful writing and the habits of mind (articulated in the program’s five Core Values) that are associated with successful college writing.
GENERAL OVERVIEW
Rowan students are required to complete two composition courses to fulfill their general education requirements as part of the Rowan Core Program: the first is either College Composition I (COMP 01111) or Intensive College Composition I (COMP 01105).
CCI and ICCI introduce students to rhetorically meaningful writing: students learn what rhetorically meaningful writing is, they engage with rhetorically meaningful texts, and they learn to produce rhetorically meaningful writing themselves. Many students enter college assuming that writing is a limited performative act with prescriptive approaches (e.g. the formulaic and rigid essays and writing responses that are frequently encountered in standardized tests), and they are not in the habit of actively engaging in considerations of audience, purpose, and context. In ICCI and CCI, students are guided to envision writing as an evolving, active engagement with ideas, their lives, and others: a process that is based on critical thinking and rhetorical awareness.
One of the central emphases of the course is critical engagement with sources: collectively, students engage with a variety of texts representing a range of perspectives, developing their ability to carefully and critically read, analyze, and synthesize those texts. Thoughtful engagement with outside texts becomes the foundation of their portfolio writing projects, in which students share their perspectives and make meaningful, informed contributions to existing conversations.
CCI/ICCI may be the first time that many students are asked to think of themselves as writers who can contribute to an ongoing conversation. The ultimate goal of the course is to encourage students to recognize themselves as someone with something meaningful to say, for a purpose, to a potential reader (beyond the instructor), and to do that in an informed manner.
COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION
The Rowan First-Year Writing Program is committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Our goal is to meet each of our students where they are as individuals, recognizing that they all learn differently, come from diverse backgrounds, and bring a variety of experiences and expressions to the classroom and to their writing. We aim to create courses and learning environments that are respectful of differences across gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, culture, first generation college student status, political beliefs, and more.
In CCI, this commitment is reflected in engagement with readings and ideas that represent a diversity of perspectives and experiences: students should encounter perspectives and contexts different than their own and be able to see themselves in or relate to readings and ideas.
The FYWP affirms linguistic diversity as a strength and encourages instructors to establish instructional and assessment practices that align with antiracist pedagogy. This includes recognizing how the power dynamics of the academic discourse community reinforce white supremacy, making those power dynamics visible for our students, and encouraging their conscious choices about when to push back against genre conventions and when to strategically deploy diverse Englishes in their writing. For more information see the program’s Position Statement on Language and Correctness.
THE CURRICULUM
Readings/Sources
Through course projects, students in ICCI and CCI are encouraged to join and meaningfully contribute to ongoing conversations: these might be broadly public conversations, or conversations specific to particular communities, disciplines, or interest groups. Students will engage collectively and independently with texts representing a range of perspectives, with attention to which voices have traditionally been amplified and which have been marginalized. Texts/readings for FYWP courses include traditional alphabetic texts (articles, book excerpts, etc.) as well as multimodal texts (such as video lectures, theatrical performances, artistic works, documentaries, etc.) Many if not most of the course readings are provided by the instructor and read collectively to foster collaborative discussion. Instructors may elect to also require an instructional text on rhetoric and writing.
Engagement with the thoughts and ideas of others is cultivated through close and critical reading, analysis, and synthesis:
The Critical Engagement Activity
In CCI/ICCI, each of the three portfolio writing projects is preceded by the Critical Engagement Activity, which helps students 1) learn about and understand the existing conversations that they wish to enter, and 2) explore and discover their own voice in the conversation. This process of inner-directed writing is designed to clarify the purpose and provide scaffolding for the outer-directed writing that they will produce for each assignment.
The Basic Critical Engagement Assignment (under CCI Default Syllabus & Sample Assignments) provides one model/structure for this activity; however, instructors can modify this structure to best respond to their specific readings and assignment. The two components of the critical engagement assignment are:*
Three Major Writing Assignments
CCI/ICCI students compose three informed writing projects in the course, which might be produced in a variety of different forms or genres: academic essays, web-based or multimodal compositions, journalistic genres, etc. All three projects incorporate (i.e. are informed by) 2-3 outside sources, and each is preceded by a Critical Engagement Assignment (see above) designed to help students understand the conversation and their contribution to it. The writing purposes of the assignments should vary to expand students’ rhetorical flexibility and adaptability: for example, asking students to explore questions and options, offer an interpretation, advocate for a particular cause or perspective, and/or applying analytical approaches to other texts, lived experience, and other phenomena.
Many if not most of the readings/sources will be provided by the instructor, but for at least one of the projects, students should include a source they have found on their own (after the instructor provides an introduction to mindful research practices).
Students will receive instructor feedback on initial drafts, and they will select two of the three projects and one of the three Critical Engagement Assignments to include in their Final Portfolio (see below).
Basic CCI/ICCI Project Guidelines/Requirements:
Reflection
Reflection is an important tool for achieving one’s goals, recognizing one’s learning and development, and encouraging transfer of new skills and habits. Just as importantly, reflection helps individuals better understand themselves as writers, and it is important practice for addressing new writing situations.
Throughout the semester, instructors should present CCI/ICCI students with opportunities for individual and collective reflection on their writing experiences and their practice of the habits of mind represented in the five Core Values. Students will compose a final Reflective Statement, included in the final portfolio, focusing on their understanding and practice of the Core Values over the course of the semester.
COURSE DESIGN
Instructors can choose a single theme for the course or select individual, unrelated topics for each of the three assignments that students will produce. The First-Year Writing Program offers a number of classroom-tested sample assignments that instructors can adopt, and a number of instructors have developed themed course materials that they are happy to share. See the CCI/ICCI Default Syllabus & Sample Assignments page for a selection of sample assignments, and consult with the CCI/ICCI course coordinators for more insight on developing your own topics, assignments, and/or course theme.
Topic Selection - Considerations
If instructors plan to develop their own topics or theme, it is important that they consider not only their own interests and knowledge areas and potential appeal to students, but also the fruitfulness of the topic/theme with regard to shared readings, resources, and ideas available for students to explore and respond. Some key considerations:
KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS
Some of the rhetorical elements and writing/reading strategies that students leaving the course should understand and be conversant with are:*
GRADING
The Portfolio (60% to 75% of the final grade) (see also the CCI Portfolio Info page)
The CCI/ICCI student portfolio contains the following items:
The Non-Portfolio Grade (25% to 40% of the Final Grade)
The non-portfolio grade is made up of course engagement and all graded class activities/assignments not included in the portfolio. This can include journal entries, reading responses, other homework or scaffolding activities, credit for peer-review/workshopping, and the non-portfolio essay.
For the non-portfolio essay, some faculty collect a revised version at the same time as the portfolio and give it a quality grade. Other faculty simply give essay drafts a significant number of completion points (as compared to smaller homework assignments) toward the non-portfolio grade. Considering the stress of final exams and projects from their full courseload, it is probably best to let students put their revision energy into just the essays/major projects in the final portfolio rather than asking them to revise/resubmit the non-portfolio essay.
CCI/ICCI is the first course in the Rowan Core general education program’s two-course composition sequence. The course serves to introduce students to rhetorically meaningful writing and the habits of mind (articulated in the program’s five Core Values) that are associated with successful college writing.
- Students produce three major writing projects, each of which:
- meaningfully engages with 2-3 sources
- is preceded by a Critical Engagement Assignment that focuses on summarizing, analyzing, and synthesizing the selected sources for that project
- Class activities often focus on:
- close and critical reading, summary, analysis, and synthesis of selected texts/sources
- rhetorical considerations of author and audience, purpose, and context
- developing one’s own perspective in relation to existing conversations
- practicing integrating outside perspectives into one’s own writing with signal phrases, summary/paraphrase/quotation, and citation
- articulating and practicing the recursive and social phases of the writing process
- identifying and evaluating the goals and expectations of various discourse communities, with attention to the voices and ideas that are valued by those communities, as well as those that are marginalized or suppressed
- Students’ final grades are determined holistically through the submission of a final portfolio, with consideration of course engagement and completion of non-portfolio work throughout the semester
GENERAL OVERVIEW
Rowan students are required to complete two composition courses to fulfill their general education requirements as part of the Rowan Core Program: the first is either College Composition I (COMP 01111) or Intensive College Composition I (COMP 01105).
CCI and ICCI introduce students to rhetorically meaningful writing: students learn what rhetorically meaningful writing is, they engage with rhetorically meaningful texts, and they learn to produce rhetorically meaningful writing themselves. Many students enter college assuming that writing is a limited performative act with prescriptive approaches (e.g. the formulaic and rigid essays and writing responses that are frequently encountered in standardized tests), and they are not in the habit of actively engaging in considerations of audience, purpose, and context. In ICCI and CCI, students are guided to envision writing as an evolving, active engagement with ideas, their lives, and others: a process that is based on critical thinking and rhetorical awareness.
One of the central emphases of the course is critical engagement with sources: collectively, students engage with a variety of texts representing a range of perspectives, developing their ability to carefully and critically read, analyze, and synthesize those texts. Thoughtful engagement with outside texts becomes the foundation of their portfolio writing projects, in which students share their perspectives and make meaningful, informed contributions to existing conversations.
CCI/ICCI may be the first time that many students are asked to think of themselves as writers who can contribute to an ongoing conversation. The ultimate goal of the course is to encourage students to recognize themselves as someone with something meaningful to say, for a purpose, to a potential reader (beyond the instructor), and to do that in an informed manner.
COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION
The Rowan First-Year Writing Program is committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Our goal is to meet each of our students where they are as individuals, recognizing that they all learn differently, come from diverse backgrounds, and bring a variety of experiences and expressions to the classroom and to their writing. We aim to create courses and learning environments that are respectful of differences across gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, culture, first generation college student status, political beliefs, and more.
In CCI, this commitment is reflected in engagement with readings and ideas that represent a diversity of perspectives and experiences: students should encounter perspectives and contexts different than their own and be able to see themselves in or relate to readings and ideas.
The FYWP affirms linguistic diversity as a strength and encourages instructors to establish instructional and assessment practices that align with antiracist pedagogy. This includes recognizing how the power dynamics of the academic discourse community reinforce white supremacy, making those power dynamics visible for our students, and encouraging their conscious choices about when to push back against genre conventions and when to strategically deploy diverse Englishes in their writing. For more information see the program’s Position Statement on Language and Correctness.
THE CURRICULUM
Readings/Sources
Through course projects, students in ICCI and CCI are encouraged to join and meaningfully contribute to ongoing conversations: these might be broadly public conversations, or conversations specific to particular communities, disciplines, or interest groups. Students will engage collectively and independently with texts representing a range of perspectives, with attention to which voices have traditionally been amplified and which have been marginalized. Texts/readings for FYWP courses include traditional alphabetic texts (articles, book excerpts, etc.) as well as multimodal texts (such as video lectures, theatrical performances, artistic works, documentaries, etc.) Many if not most of the course readings are provided by the instructor and read collectively to foster collaborative discussion. Instructors may elect to also require an instructional text on rhetoric and writing.
Engagement with the thoughts and ideas of others is cultivated through close and critical reading, analysis, and synthesis:
- Close and Critical Reading
An early and persistent focus of the CCI/ICCI curriculum is developing careful and purposeful reading practices. Students are often accustomed to seeing reading as a process of finding information (e.g. highlighting all of the dates in a textbook chapter with the expectation of being quizzed on them later). They are less accustomed to engaging with persuasive/argument-driven texts and may be unfamiliar—or out of practice—with active reading processes and how to apply them to more complex texts.
What does this look like in practice?
Instructors provide students with carefully selected shared readings, offering instruction/activities to practice close and critical reading strategies (chunking, annotating, close reading passages, identifying authors’ arguments, summarizing, etc.). - Analysis
As they engage with texts in order to listen to and understand the thoughts and ideas of others, students in CCI/ICCI also practice textual analysis: this might include considering how and why particular texts are constructed, identifying the author’s persuasive strategies, questioning the author’s premises and arguments, making connections to their own knowledge or experience, etc.
What does this look like in practice?
Instructors facilitate discussions and activities to promote textual and rhetorical analysis (identifying a text’s audience, purpose, and context, analyzing the author’s use of rhetorical appeals, assessing the persuasiveness of the author’s claims and evidence, discussing whether students agree or disagree with the author’s argument, making connections to students’ backgrounds and experiences, etc.) - Synthesis
Students are guided to make connections, draw distinctions, and establish relationships between the various sources and perspectives they are analyzing. Synthesizing sources means putting authors and their texts into conversation with each other, which allows the reader to better understand the conversation and to gain new insights into their own perspective and how to support it.
What does this look like in practice?
Instructors facilitate discussions and activities to promote textual synthesis (imagining conversations or debates between authors, visually mapping relationships between sources, practicing synthesis using visual media/memes, composing synthesis paragraphs, etc.)
The Critical Engagement Activity
In CCI/ICCI, each of the three portfolio writing projects is preceded by the Critical Engagement Activity, which helps students 1) learn about and understand the existing conversations that they wish to enter, and 2) explore and discover their own voice in the conversation. This process of inner-directed writing is designed to clarify the purpose and provide scaffolding for the outer-directed writing that they will produce for each assignment.
The Basic Critical Engagement Assignment (under CCI Default Syllabus & Sample Assignments) provides one model/structure for this activity; however, instructors can modify this structure to best respond to their specific readings and assignment. The two components of the critical engagement assignment are:*
- Summaries of sources (two at minimum)
- A "dialogic" piece where students synthesize ideas from the sources, putting the authors in conversation with one another and adding their own voice to this conversation. While the Universal Critical Engagement Assignment has students use a graphic organizer to produce answers authors would give in response to a question, students could also create scenarios that put authors together in a room to engage in dialogue, imagine authors in conversation on Twitter, etc. In other cases, it might be more useful to have the authors weigh in on the student’s specific object of study/topic rather than focusing on where the authors agree/disagree with each other.
* While the “critical engagement assignment” = summaries + dialogic piece, it’s usually more humane to students to assign these two parts separately, even if they appear as a unit in the final course portfolio. Summaries can also be spread out over time.
Three Major Writing Assignments
CCI/ICCI students compose three informed writing projects in the course, which might be produced in a variety of different forms or genres: academic essays, web-based or multimodal compositions, journalistic genres, etc. All three projects incorporate (i.e. are informed by) 2-3 outside sources, and each is preceded by a Critical Engagement Assignment (see above) designed to help students understand the conversation and their contribution to it. The writing purposes of the assignments should vary to expand students’ rhetorical flexibility and adaptability: for example, asking students to explore questions and options, offer an interpretation, advocate for a particular cause or perspective, and/or applying analytical approaches to other texts, lived experience, and other phenomena.
Many if not most of the readings/sources will be provided by the instructor, but for at least one of the projects, students should include a source they have found on their own (after the instructor provides an introduction to mindful research practices).
Students will receive instructor feedback on initial drafts, and they will select two of the three projects and one of the three Critical Engagement Assignments to include in their Final Portfolio (see below).
Basic CCI/ICCI Project Guidelines/Requirements:
- 800-1,200 words
- 2-3 sources (used for contextualization, illustration, or explanation)
- In-text citations and a References page in APA format (instructors can and probably should provide the citations in the appropriate format for the students)
- this may vary depending on the genre of the project (e.g. embedding hyperlinks for a web-based composition) but students should practice APA in-text citations and create an APA-format References page for most if not all of the projects
- One of the three projects should incorporate a reading/source not provided by the instructor but found and selected by the student
Reflection
Reflection is an important tool for achieving one’s goals, recognizing one’s learning and development, and encouraging transfer of new skills and habits. Just as importantly, reflection helps individuals better understand themselves as writers, and it is important practice for addressing new writing situations.
Throughout the semester, instructors should present CCI/ICCI students with opportunities for individual and collective reflection on their writing experiences and their practice of the habits of mind represented in the five Core Values. Students will compose a final Reflective Statement, included in the final portfolio, focusing on their understanding and practice of the Core Values over the course of the semester.
COURSE DESIGN
Instructors can choose a single theme for the course or select individual, unrelated topics for each of the three assignments that students will produce. The First-Year Writing Program offers a number of classroom-tested sample assignments that instructors can adopt, and a number of instructors have developed themed course materials that they are happy to share. See the CCI/ICCI Default Syllabus & Sample Assignments page for a selection of sample assignments, and consult with the CCI/ICCI course coordinators for more insight on developing your own topics, assignments, and/or course theme.
Topic Selection - Considerations
If instructors plan to develop their own topics or theme, it is important that they consider not only their own interests and knowledge areas and potential appeal to students, but also the fruitfulness of the topic/theme with regard to shared readings, resources, and ideas available for students to explore and respond. Some key considerations:
- The purpose of the course and the purpose of the students’ writing is not to demonstrate specific knowledge; rather, it is a platform for students to understand and practice the habits of mind associated with effective, rhetorically-meaningful writing (articulated in the five Core Values.) The topics selected should allow students to develop their own takes and ideas and create opportunities to analyze, question, and even resist. Students need to be able to find meaningful ways to engage in conversations about the topic, while also expanding their ideas and understanding of themselves and the world around them.
- Topics and themes ideally will offer variety in the types of readings and resources:
- the type of text (informal/formal, popular, journalistic, academic)
- its presentation (written, multimedia, and non-alphabetic)
- a range of genres, audiences, and perspectives
KEY COURSE TAKEAWAYS
Some of the rhetorical elements and writing/reading strategies that students leaving the course should understand and be conversant with are:*
- The rhetorical situation: author and purpose, context, and audience
- Close and critical reading to understand, analyze, and synthesize texts
- The concept of discourse communities/interpretive communities and their effect on texts and writers
- The general conventions of academic writing and college-level writing:
- how to use outside readings/texts to trace one’s ideas, and to validate, contextualize, illustrate and explain one’s ideas to others—as college-level writing requires more evidence than personal opinion and experience to support one’s claims
- how to select, introduce, and integrate outside material into one’s writing, using signal phrases, contextual introductions, quotation/paraphrase, and transitions to indicate where the writer’s voice ends and the outside material begins
- how to summarize a text (and why summaries are an important component of academic writing)
- how to employ a formal documentation style (the FYWP uses APA style), with awareness of why formal documentation/citation styles are employed in academic writing, why different citation styles exists, and why the practice of formal documentation is an expectation of college-level writing
- How genre and medium effect writing and communication (including visual communication and digital media if used)
- Writing as a recursive and social process
- The social/ethical dimensions of which perspectives are heard, valued, and promoted in different contexts
GRADING
The Portfolio (60% to 75% of the final grade) (see also the CCI Portfolio Info page)
The CCI/ICCI student portfolio contains the following items:
- Two of the three major writing projects/essays, revised and including references to 2-3 outside sources, APA-format citations, and an APA-format Reference page (the project that is not selected for the portfolio counts towards the non-portfolio grade)
- At least one instructor-commented draft for each of the final portfolio essays
- One Critical Engagement Assignment (does not need to be related to the two essays included in the portfolio)
- A Reflective Statement that addresses the five (5) Core Values/Course Outcomes
Grading Portfolios
Portfolios are graded holistically using the CCI/ICCI Portfolio Evaluation form. While graded holistically, certain elements carry more weight as would be expected (such as the major writing projects themselves). Instructors are not expected to make extensive comments in the portfolio. The Portfolio Evaluation form allows for comments and feedback.
Students are expected to turn in complete portfolios. Students should not include essays in their portfolio that the instructor has not previously seen and commented on, and missing instructor-commented drafts will significantly impact their grade. See more about grading portfolios and the FYWP grading scale under the Grading tab.
The Non-Portfolio Grade (25% to 40% of the Final Grade)
The non-portfolio grade is made up of course engagement and all graded class activities/assignments not included in the portfolio. This can include journal entries, reading responses, other homework or scaffolding activities, credit for peer-review/workshopping, and the non-portfolio essay.
For the non-portfolio essay, some faculty collect a revised version at the same time as the portfolio and give it a quality grade. Other faculty simply give essay drafts a significant number of completion points (as compared to smaller homework assignments) toward the non-portfolio grade. Considering the stress of final exams and projects from their full courseload, it is probably best to let students put their revision energy into just the essays/major projects in the final portfolio rather than asking them to revise/resubmit the non-portfolio essay.