In this sample course hosted on Blogs@Baruch’s WordPress platform, you will find the syllabus, lesson plans, learning activities, handouts and guides, assignment sheets and rubrics, student testimonials, and miscellaneous blog posts. As you can see in the course site, the Writing Program’s three major assignment sequence is followed. Assignment sheets are provided, each contributing toward a number of the course goals. Under course materials, you are welcome to click on any handout of interest and download its Google Drive file to adapt any of the learning activities for your class. You’re also welcome to copy anything else you may wish to adapt. The blog page can also be used to create summary/responses for readings, having students comment and reply to each other, or ask students to write summary/responses for the content of any lessons they may miss to count for attendance. In addition to the Blogs@Baruch course site, Google Drive (Dropbox or Microsoft Teams are alternatives) is used for in-class writing, drafting, and assignment submission. Grades are submitted on Blackboard. Zoom is used to teach the class synchronously online, but the course functions similarly in an in-person environment as well.
I’m a big fan of Join the Conversation, our program’s in-house Reader text, and this course is designed to cover the book’s material rather thoroughly and to maximize scaffolding for the three major writing projects (literacy narrative, rhetorical analysis, and researched argument essays). The assignment schedule eschews supplementary readings in favor of more low-stakes writing assignments to help students process the concepts and skills and to encourage accountability, which ultimately sets them up to succeed in their essays. As such, there isn’t a specific course theme, and project guidelines allow students to apply the concepts and skills to topics they choose from a large pool of options. Each unit begins with key terms and concepts via frontloaded readings and group meetings and then builds up into skill development and practice via the higher-stakes projects.
This is a virtual course with synchronous meetings, and the assignment schedule attempts to balance large group meetings, breakout groups, and individual work to maximize opportunities for students to connect with each other and to participate in the course even if they hesitate to speak up on full-group Zoom meetings. Almost every class meeting is broken up into segments to try to prevent Zoom fatigue; this has meant designing more hands-on practice exercises (and, admittedly, more grading). In Units 2 and 3, I require one-on-one conferences with every student, and I offer them a lot of options for conference times over several days during class segments for small-group or individual exercises. I also offer a lot of extra conference opportunities they can sign up for. One silver lining to the virtual format is the flexibility to offer so much extra access to individualized help to those that want it.
Constantin Schreiber, Fall 2021
Platforms: Blackboard only (though I will encourage students to use WhatsApp, Slack, or some other platform to communicate as a class without me) Mode: Face-to-Face view syllabus (pdf)
This syllabus for ENG 2100 focuses on the course learning outcomes rather than a single over-arching theme, giving students a lot of freedom with regards to choosing topics for their writing assignments, as well as providing texts/inputs from a variety of different genres and disciplines (which can also, at least partially, be influenced by the students). Instructors using this model syllabus should see a lot of freedom for choosing materials that work well for them and their students, but I have historically used Baruch’s ENG 2100 reader “Join the Conversation” for the majority of the readings, assigning most of the “textbook”-style chapters from the reader along with a selection (potentially selected by the students) of the readings (such as Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue”).
The course is structured around the three major essays (plus an Annotated Bibliography in preparation for the third essay) with 15 “Weekly Writings” designed to a) provide scaffolding for the essays (such as writing the first two paragraphs/about 500 words to start an essay, peer reviews, reflections, etc.) and b) focus on reading responses or activities based on course readings. The final presentation is an opportunity for students to shared their favorite paper from the class via an oral presentation with visual support. In each week, a different language/convention focus engages the students’ regarding their and other people’s expectations toward and practices of language use/writing. Detailed prompts for all of these assignments are provided in the PowerPoint presentations for each day of class and available on request.
Thomas Watters, Fall 2021
Course Theme: Rhetoric in Our Time Platforms: Google Classroom Mode: Face-to-Face view syllabus (pdf)
The course will largely employ the “canons” of classical rhetoric to approach a variety of genres and rhetorical forms, while keeping always in view the expository, argumentative essay as the foundation of academic discourse. We’ll begin with oral argument as it appears “in the wild” in our politics and society, from there examining how written argument manifests in forms as diverse as Op-Eds, essays, short stories, poetry, YouTube videos, and internet memes.
Maxine Krenzel, Spring 2021
Course Theme: Rethinking the University and its Myths Platforms:Slack, Zoom Mode: Fully Online—Synchronous view syllabus (pdf)
In my experience, First Year Writing (particularly 2100 courses) feel most alive when students are writing for each other–not just for the teacher–and audiences outside the classroom. As one of the first classes undergraduates take, this is a course that should offer as many chances as possible for students to be in community with each other. I also have found that writing becomes most vital when students have the opportunity to generate original scholarship through research. With this in mind, the sequence of assignments and readings for this course move through:
1) a personal-reflective essay wherein students design a Dream Course accompanied by an essay that engages analytical skills
2) a public-facing Op-Ed assignment in which students identify a problem in our education system and argue why it is essential to address in our present moment
3) an archival research Essay that asks students to choose and research an artifact from the CUNY Digital History Archive.
With the theme of “Rethinking the University and Its Myths,” the thematic thread that runs through this course engages students to draw on their experience and expertise as students to address problems in our education system. I also strive to teach students about the history of student activism at CUNY so that students can locate themselves in the ongoing history of undergraduates organizing to improve conditions and resources for students at CUNY. Ultimately, through writing and thinking together, my 2100 course builds a writing practice that emphasizes composition as a tool for connection and community.
The course is in 4 units. The first unit explores personal histories with language and literacy to recognize our expertise with language/literacy/rhetoric and to pay attention to process, practice, and revision (and using reflection and peer review to think through multiple possibilities in writing). The literacy narrative assignment is a way to use the evidence from our personal lives from a rough first draft toward a revision that demonstrates a more purposeful exploration that tells a story of change, following Kim Liao’s modeling of the varying purposes of literacy narratives.
Building off of the close analysis of our own writing and processes, we turn to analyzing texts created by others with the second unit that is focused on rhetoric, with special attention to analysis (i.e., linking claims to evidence). The rhetorical analysis assignment asks students to analyze a text that is important to them using what we learn in this unit. The third unit builds off of the previous unit’s focus on analysis in its exploration of research-driven analysis (e.g., building research questions, finding and evaluating sources, synthesizing arguments, conventions of most research writing, documentation style and epistemology). The research project asks students to learn more about something related to language, literacy, their major, or their career using what we learned in this unit.
The final unit returns to reflective moves we began in the first unit to then apply to all of the past writing we did to prepare for the final reflective assignment that asks students to gather evidence from their own writing and from writing group members’ writing to support claims they will make about their own learning during the semester. Throughout the semester, we also pay close attention to style and genre (especially in the first two units).
Sara Deniz Akant, Fall 2020
Course Theme: Writing with and Through Constraint Platforms: Blogs@Baruch, Google Docs, Zoom Mode: Fully Online—Synchronous view syllabus (pdf)
English 2100 is an intensive writing course designed to introduce you to the conventions of academic writing, enhance your writing skills, and advocate for writing as a meaningful approach to both communication and discovery.
As a general theme, this course will focus on writing both with, and in the context of CONSTRAINT. Here are some opening questions:
What are the many forms of constraint that produce the social, political, and cultural experiences that make up our day-to-day lives? How has the era of the pandemic interacted with, reproduced, and/or changed our experience of these conditions? How can we use constraint-based writing to explore individual and shared constraints — the constraints that are placed on our bodies, our minds, our health, our communities, our communication? How can “writing with constraint” help us understand and (re)construct our identities within the complicated frameworks that we already have to navigate (e.g. wellness and illness, care and neglect, freedom and incarceration, belonging and non-belonging)?
We explore these questions by reading, writing, and responding to a wide range of written texts (poems, news articles, creative non[ction, critical essays), as well as some relevant media (video, music, performance, visual art). Along the way, we use the power of a writing journal (which each student keeps on GoogleDocs), where we complete dynamic writing exercises and creative prompts in order to generate ideas. We also read some selections from Joining the Conversation, the Eng 2100 Course Textbook, which introduces formal writing strategies and vocabulary. Finally, this course involves in-depth peer review sessions in small groups, and asks you to engage extensively in the editing and revision process.
Lisa Blankenship, Fall 2020
Course Theme: Race and the American Dream Platforms: Blogs@Baruch, Google Docs Mode: Fully Online—Synchronous view syllabus (pdf)
This class uses the course Reader, Join the Conversation, as well as other texts and student writing to work toward the major goals of the class. The readings and writing assignments for the course focus on the way we use language and how language uses us, particularly around the subject of race and the concept of the American Dream. Together we explore questions such as: In what ways do your own dreams for your life relate to what you’d describe as the so-called “American dream”? How would you define the American dream? How have major thinkers in the contemporary U.S. defined the American Dream and its relationship to race? To whatever degree college and education are related to the American Dream, what do you propose could be done to help more first-generation college students have greater access to college? In the first major assignment, a literacy narrative, students write about their experiences with language and how these experiences have influenced how they’ve been treated by others; in the second assignment, a rhetorical analysis, students write about how the American Dream has been constructed in US culture by major thinkers and writers, focusing on course readings we’ve discussed in class; and the final project of the term asks students to investigate the relationship between education and the American Dream, drawing from their own experience and researching ways of increasing access to higher education for first-generation students.
The course is designed around three main assignments.
The first assignment is a literacy narrative in which the students share their relationship with the many facets of the multiple languages with which they engage in their lives. One of the main purposes of this assignment is to strengthen the students’ abilities in explaining and describing something with which they are familiar or have experienced. Learning how to effectively include details is key for this assignment.
The second assignment is an analysis assignment. The primary purpose of this assignment is to familiarize the students with the concepts of logos, pathos, and ethos, as well as to have the students begin to “read between the lines” when reading/assessing a text.
The third assignment is a research paper in which the students develop a thesis and make an argument. The primary purposes of this assignment are to teach the students how to employ an inquiry-based approach to writing a research paper and how to properly include credible sources in efforts to strengthen their points.
Eva Freeman, Fall 2020
Course Theme: Reversals Platforms: Blackboard, Blogs@Baruch, and Google Docs Mode: Online—Synchronous view syllabus (pdf) | view course site
First and foremost, I want to get my students to think, speak, and write critically. The fastest way to do this for me is to place certain texts into conversation with one another. By exploring how each piece treats a common theme or idea, we can chart the writers’ rhetorical choices and moves. Most importantly, we are able to see how those decisions impact, influence, and change the narrative.
For instance, I teach Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous along with Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. We explore how Vietnam, the Vietnamese population, and the American Marines are depicted in both. We can see who is privileged and marginalized in these texts and how that centering and de-centering impacts our overall view and understanding of the War itself. I try to steer my students away from “yes” or “no” answers and concepts of “good” and “bad,” “right” and “wrong.” I want them to appreciate the complexity of these issues and the writers’ enormous undertaking in trying, to the best of their abilities, to render them successfully on the page.
In this class, we also paired Hilton Als’ essay, “My Mother’s Dreams for Her Son and All Black Children,” with Wendell Berry’s “A Native Hill.” Both explore the vein of violence that runs through American history and culture, one via the lens of police brutality in the African-American community and the other, through the degradation of a beloved hill in Kentucky. Inevitably, this led to a discussion about capitalism, colonialism, and, fundamentally, how power asserts itself in the United States.
Brian Gempp, Fall 2020
Course Theme: Space is the Place: Reading, Writing, and Living in a Physical and a Digital World Platforms: Blackboard and Zoom Mode: Online—Synchronous view syllabus (pdf)
English 2100 for Fall 2020 was a distance learning class that considered the distinctions between our digital lives, which for this course we referred to as “space,” and our first-hand experience with nature, the environment, and our local community, loosely defined as “place.” Reading and writing assignments explored how different regional and natural locations have been represented both historical and in Google Street View, how the physical act of walking through one’s community embodies what Rebecca Solnit calls a “cultural act,” and how consumerism has been impacted by the rise of online platforms.
The course concludes with a consideration of friendship, socializing, and class as a means of reevaluating distinctions between space and place. This thematic and conceptual distinction allows students to write in a variety of academic modalities, as well as engage in more traditional forms of research and inquiry.
Phoebe Glick, Fall 2020
Course Theme: Saying the Quiet Part out Loud Platforms: Blogs@Baruch, Google Docs for drafts and peer editing, Blackboard for final versions of assignments Mode: Online—Mixed Synchronous and Asynchronous view syllabus (pdf)
This course met on Zoom one day per week for me to present writing lessons and for the class to have a chance to virtually interact with each other and with each other’s writing. Following this weekly meeting, students asynchronously completed that week’s Module, which included 1) a blog post 2) a reading and 3) an element of a Core Writing Assignment. The Modules were a key organizational component of the course, and were outlined in full on the course blog. Blog posts were integral as well, and students were required to engage in conversation on each other’s posts, which produced critical, curious, and engaging dialogues. Students met with their semester-long writing groups often to give feedback and work on paper drafts before submitting final versions.
Eva Gordon Ryali, Fall 2020
Course Theme: The Self in Society Platforms:Blogs@Baruch, Google Drive Mode: Online—Blended Synchronous/Asynchronous view syllabus (pdf)
In this writing 2100 course, students read articles, listened to podcasts, and watched documentaries dealing with various aspects of our course theme “The Self in Society.” These materials engaged with the political and social world of today through a combination of readings and assignments that sought to trace the historical underpinnings of some of our current day challenges, such as systemic racism, what happens when the social contract is broken by those in power, the American healthcare system and its constraints during the global pandemic, and American Individualism vs. collective action. The course directly addressed and attempted to contextualize the biggest current events of the moment, from Covid-19 to The BLM movement to the presidential election.
The class met synchronously on Zoom on Tuesdays, and our Thursday time slot worked as an asynchronous period for completion of readings and writing assignments. Students wrote weekly blog posts responding to the readings/listenings/viewings for the week, and commented on two of their classmates’ posts each week. They completed two drafts of each of the three essay assignments, the first of which was used for peer review (conducted in breakout rooms on Zoom during class and through Google Docs) and to get comments from me before revising for a grade. I met with each student one-on-one in the early stages of their final research project to discuss their progress and advise them on next steps. Each student completed an annotated bibliography of five sources for their final research paper, and the sources were then shared with the class so that students could draw from one another’s sources as needed.
Nino Gulli, Fall 2020
Course Theme: Current Issues in New York City and Beyond Platforms: Blackboard Mode: Online—Synchronous view syllabus (pdf)
The course is meant for students who are beginning their writing journey in the academic world. Some of them may have already been exposed to academic writing, while others may have not. Regardless of whether students have already taken a class in academic writing, they should be able to do well in this course as long as they attend regularly (which includes discussion board participation), do all the readings, and submit all the assignments.
The course readings are about current world issues. In particular, we will be focusing on COVID-19, police brutality, and poverty. The three formal essays will be based on the topics I just mentioned. The final project will be a research essay, and students are encouraged to choose their own topics, which should be somehow related to one of our themes or subthemes.
Throughout the entire semester, students will be practicing critical reading, thinking, and writing.
Safia Jama, Fall 2020
Course Theme: Composing a Writing Life Platforms: Email, Blackboard, Zoom Mode: Online—Synchronous view syllabus (pdf)
One of my main goals as a teacher is to help my students take themselves seriously as writers. Thus the course theme and description invites students to “compose a writing life, on and off the page.” The class reads and writes in a variety of genres and I often pluck readings from current events or my own passing fancies so as to keep things dynamic and interesting.
In terms of content, I made some editorial changes to the attached Fall 2020 Syllabus, in order to reflect more truly how the course came together in an online format. Pacing seemed crucial, and that was something I needed to discover during my first full semester of teaching online. I prioritized engagement over all else. This system worked well: an asynchronous lesson on Day One followed by a synchronous lesson on Day Two. This format was easy to remember and led to fruitful, focused discussions.
News of the day, especially the general election presidential campaign of 2020, helped us think about questions worthy of academically sound investigation during this particular autumn. The pandemic-era Zoom syllabus did not utilize Blogs@Baruch, as had been done previously. Instead, students submitted their work consistently via Blackboard. I was into simplifying things by the time we got to this course.
Evan Smith, Fall 2020
Course Theme: What are the Practices We Need? Platforms: Google Docs, Blackboard, Discord Mode: Online—Synchronous view syllabus (pdf)
“What Are The Practices We Need?,” asks students to consider what they, and we as a social organism, might incorporate in our life ‘practices’ to improve the conditions of not only our own lives, but those around us as well. The course asks students to consider various sociopolitical issues such as abolition work, cultural appropriation, neo-colonialism, and the intersection of oppressive forces on various identities. The course culminates by asking students to develop their own “Dream Course” (from a prompt written by Adrienne Rich), the idea being that they intervene in academia to build the ‘practices’ that they find lacking and necessary.
Evan Smith, Fall 2018
Course Theme: Why Go to Art in the Age of Information? Platforms: Google Docs, Blackboard Mode: Hybrid—Face-to-Face and Online Asynchronous view syllabus (pdf)
“Why Go To Art in the Age of Information,” asks students to engage in art criticism. The course pushes them to consider the line between the artwork and the artist, art’s role in disseminating and entrenching norms, and the ability of art to enact social change. The course culminates by asking students to consider an artwork, series of artworks, or artist, and write a piece of art criticism in which they analyze the artwork(s) and the issue(s) they engage with.
Seth Graves, Fall 2018
Course Theme: Futurity (n.) 1. The future time. 2. A future event. 3. Renewed or continuing existence. Platforms: Blogs@Baruch Mode: Face-to-Face view syllabus | view course site
We live in some pretty anxious times: locally, nationally, and globally, our environmental, political, cultural, economic, legal, and digital futures can feel uncertain. This class will dive into that uncertainty, what Percy Shelley (in a very different time and place, London in 1821) called the “gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.” We’ll ask hard questions of the time we’re living in, exploring the relationship between rhetoric, language, propaganda, and identity. But the primary subject of the course will be the writing itself: You’ll hone in on a topic for the course that you’ll then explore in different forms, ultimately putting together a final piece that blends various ways of earning trust from your reader, including personal, analytical, and research-based evidence.