FYS 101 First-Year Seminar
FYS Course Description
This course introduces all students to effective academic writing through participation in the processes important for its creation: analytical reading, critical thinking, and extensive writing practice. The seminars offer students the opportunity to join a learning community by focusing on a specific topic that poses challenging intellectual questions. Seminar topics vary each year. (This year, our topic is Climate Justice.) Course Outcomes Upon successful completion of this course, a student will be able to:
Course Outline FYS 101-20 Fall 2023 Syllabus What FYS Course is Not First-year Seminar (FYS) is a course intended to help you succeed in college (and beyond) as an astute communicator, attentive reader, forceful writer, and practiced analyst of ideas. This class is not an “English” class, and it’s not a literature class. It’s not a creative writing class, and it’s not a composition class. It is a class intended to help students transition to college-level learning, which occurs through intensive listening, discussing, reading, writing, and presenting. We will do all of these things. FYS is a seminar, rather than a “lecture” class. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a seminar is a group of students gathered together to work with a faculty member on “special study and original research.” In a seminar, a faculty member brings expertise and experience but learns alongside students. Everyone matters, everyone participates in the generation of knowledge, and everyone learns. Everyone generates “original” ideas. Major Assignments Mind Project. The Mind Project invites students to create a tangible thing—using any materials, form, dimensions, etc.—that represents how their minds work. Here’s the question they are trying to answer as they make something: "How does my mind work?" Each student will create this physical, visual representation of how their mind works and share it with the class. They are not merely creating a brain; they are trying to convey how their minds work, what it’s like to be in it, how it feels to be them. Summary. In this assignment, students are asked to select two materials (readings, videos, podcasts, etc.) that have been assigned for this course and write a key point summary and write a paragraph about each creator and their work. Joining the Conversation. There are two distinct tasks involved in completing this assignment. The goal is to articulate an idea that synthesizes the points of sources and moves beyond summary to synthesis. Task 1: Enter the Conversation. The first task asks students to bring together some of the skills and approaches they have used in previous assignments together with a growing awareness of using the writings and ideas of others as a starting point to develop and communicate their own original ideas. Task 2: Join the Conversation. In response to the two sources they summarized for the Summary Assignment, and up to one additional reading, the second task asks students to develop their own ideas in a 5-6 page paper in one of the following formats:
Revision/Re-mix. The Revision/Remix assignment allows students to revise the Joining the Conversation assignment to improve its reception (i.e., its persuasiveness, its entertainment value, its clarity, and/or its beauty) and ability to communicate with your targeted audiences. Students may also re-mix their Joining the Conversation assignment by taking some core message, point, or element of your writing and communicating it via a different genre aimed at a different audience for a distinct (and perhaps different) purpose. Climate Identity. The Climate Identity assignment asks students to use their knowledge of the ideas and content in this course—and their growing ability to thoughtfully use their knowledge of audience, purpose, and genre to communicate effectively—to describe what they might call their own “climate identity,” or their own identity in relationship to the climate. Curated Journal Selections. This assignment asks students to select 8-10 of their class journal entries and write an academic essay to articulate their learning in this course for that semester. |
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