About the Writing Requirements for this Course...

The "W" Designation
This course carries the "W" designation, meaning that it meets the writing competency requirement.  This means, too, that you have to produce at least two written, individual assignments as part of this course.  I will grade each of these and provide specific, hopefully constructive feedback in addition to a grade on each assignment.

The Writing Assignments
As required in order to have "W" designation, one of these writing assignments will be graded and returned to you by mid-term.  As you will see from the Course Calendar, the writing assignments begin almost immediately, beginning with short papers, culminating in a research paper.

Each writing assignment is woven into the content topics for this course.  In each case, the teaching team will work with individual students to try to make the paper useful and relevant to him/her, with a focus on a topic within the student's major.

Grading and Expectations for Written Products
Your paper will be graded using a rubric provided in each topic under the heading GRADING for that topic's products.  Check the grading rubric that I will use; that will help you guide the development and preparation of your paper.

Each writing assignment will be graded and feedback provided to each student using the TRACKING function of WORD.  You will turn in your document as a WORD attachment; I will grade it using the TRACKING tool within WORD and send it back to you.  This TRACKING function allows you to see my suggestions, comments, and edits within your original document.

If necessary,  I may ask that you make the suggested changes and resubmit the paper to me; if that is the case, I will work with you to show you how to use the WORD function that allows each of us to see the various changes as the paper evolves.  This is valuable teaching/learning tool for us both and, in most cases, is more important to you in learning about writing than the letter/numeric grade I will also provide!

The expectations are that you will, through your learning experiences in this class and previous instructional experiences, be able to demonstrate that you are proficient in writing at a level consistent with academic standards reasonably expected  for an undergraduate.  Minimal academic standards in this case include:

• accurate spelling
• proper and correct grammar
• appropriate level of sophistication and accuracy in composition, and
• proper and full documentation of all information cited, either as paraphrased or directly quoted material
• professional presentation of the document itself, including appropriate format, following MLA guidelines.

The University Writing Center, 125 Morgan Hall  http://www.as.ua.edu/english/2_undergraduate/undergrad_resources/wr_ctr.htm

We will use MLA style for the papers in this course. This is an appropriate style for undergraduate research papers and has sufficient supporting information and guidelines to help undergraduates in this endeavor.

ABOUT PLAGIARISM ...
Plagiarism means "representing the words, data, works, ideas, computer programs or output, or anything not generated in an
authorized fashion, as one's own", as defined by the Academic Code of Conduct, The University of Alabama.  In many instances, those guilty of plagiarism have claimed, probably correctly, that they did not realize that they were plagiarizing. For this reason, there is specific information about what IS plagiarism and how to avoid it. Click here to reach this information; it is useful for all students to review this information at various points in the semester.