This is the Academic Commons page for ENGL 210: Writing for the Social Sciences.
Please read this post, and the earlier email from Aug 11 about our approach to “hybrid” learning. (There’s a PDF of that email here with your emails redacted. Some of this information has changed, but the spirit is the same.) Once you’ve read those documents carefully, send me a brief email from your City College address. If you can do this before our first session on Thursday, Aug 26, that’s great. If you send it by the start of the next class meeting, on Tuesday, Aug 31, that’s also totally fine. In that email, let me know your preferred name and gender pronouns, if you like, and a little about what brings you to ENGL 210. Please also let me know about any specific accommodations or adjustments that might help you be more successful in class.
A few bits of information that might be helpful before we meet.
Books & Book Groups
Our class uses the “subculture” of the book group to practice the skills of social science writing. You’ll have a choice of three books, and will read ONE. The books are available in the CCNY Bookstore. Again, you DON’T need to buy all three. Just one, and not right away, either. I’ll go over this more over our first week.
Digital Tools
This Fall, we’ll use a number of digital tools to work. The big ones are CUNY Academic Commons, Hypothes.is, Google Drive (including Docs and Forms), and Zoom. Most of these are relatively “low-bandwidth” and smartphone/tablet friendly.
CUNY Academic Commons
The Commons is one tool we will use a lot. You’ll use your CCNY email address to join the Commons. The instructions for how to join the Commons are here. Within the Commons, there’s our class blog (this is it). That blog is on our course site (the overall site you’re on now and every link in the menu above.) You’ll use the Commons as creators, too, designing your own four-page portfolios over the course of the semester.
What is the Commons blog?
Our blog is a place where the reading and writing work of the semester will get done. When we think and talk about the “world as a text,” this is where the words get processed. I’ll do most of this processing at first; you’ll do much of it by the end. I’ll invite you to the class group via your City College emails. Once you join the class site and class group, you should all have the ability to leave comments. We’ll test this out as early as our first week. As your instructor, I should have the means to leave public and private comments. Both will have their purposes as we produce informal writing.
What is the Commons group?
The ongoing link for the Commons group is here. You should get an email about it to your CCNY email. The instructions for how to join our Commons group are here. Readings and files and discussion threads are all possible uses for this. I’m still learning how to use this feature so we’ll see what works.
What is Hypothes.is?
Hypothesis is a social reading plug-in. You might think of it as a cross between Comments on Google Docs and the notes you take in your psychology textbook. We’ll use this to discuss a variety of readings as a group, including some of the writing you do yourselves. You can also make private notes using Hypothes.is. It works best on Chrome. The link to join the Hypothes.is group is here.
What are Google Docs & Drive?
Many handouts are originally written and shared in Google Docs. You may also turn in work in this way through Google Forms. The biggest use of Google Docs is our “Chalkboard” Doc. The “Chalkboard” is the definitive place to find all the work we do in class. As we move through the semester, we’re going to increasingly use our Commons sites for these purposes. But for ease, we’ll start it all in Docs.
The “Chalkboard” is a Google Doc in table format, screenreader accessible and mobile-phone friendly. By the end of the semester, it gets pretty long, and it can get very link-heavy, but the good news is pretty much any link we use in class starts there. Since I started using it in Spring 2020, students have found it helpful. We’ll need to see how helpful it is in Fall 2021, with a hybrid class.
“But I hate technology.”
This is, of course, a writing class and not a technology class. While our major assignments, exploratory exercises, disciplinary writing experiments, and other informal classwork will certainly develop some of your digital literacy skills, the main goal of that work ahead of us is to nurture your capacity as a reader, writer, researcher, and active, accountable, engaged member of this academic community.
We are also a “HYBRID” class. This will mean each of you will attend class in person at a few points in the semester. You’ll need to show vaccination status to CUNY through CUNYFirst. You’ll need to wear a mask at all times, per CUNY policy. And you’ll attend class in groups small enough to space out (ie: to stay 3 feet apart), with the exception of October 21 and December 9 or 16, when all students will attend class. (Even then, we may “stagger” arrivals or move class to an outdoor space, weather permitting). Much more on this in a later note.
Again, please send me an email after reading through this document. You’ll also want to look at our class site as it develops between now and Thursday.
Links
Tasks
- Read this post and our syllabus
- Send me a brief email;
- Think about which ONE of our three books you’ll read this semester.
