Research Writing Course Proposal Form
Overview
Students must complete English 101 (Thought and Expression I). In addition, students must take three (3) coursesthat carry a Writing designation. One of these three courses must be a specially designated Research Writing course, typically located either within students’ majors or in the English Department (English 201: Thought and Expression II {formerly EN102}). This course must be taken after English 101 and before the end of students’second year. Another one of these three courses will, in many cases, be taken in students’ final year as part of a Senior Capstone Project within their major.
The Writing Intellectual Practice is coordinated by the Director of University Writing.
The writing requirement that students complete a research writing (RW) course by the fourth semester of study indicates that RW courses should be designed as university-level introductions to writing with significant research. Appropriate to the initial stage of a four-year developmental process, the courses should guide students extensively through the various processes of research and of writing, aware that students need more sophisticated paradigms than those acquired in earlier schooling. Over all, RW courses teach students to integrate knowledge acquired through research with their own ideas in analytical written projects
Learning Goals and Course Development Guidelines
Research Writing designated courses meet several of the following goals:
- To understand that analytical essays produced at the intersection of student thinking and research knowledge require that writing and research processes be practices together and developed through multiple drafts
- To approach published research writing with active interpretation and critical reading, paying special attention to purpose and audience
- To use source ideas fairly and honestly in writing that reflects both students’ and researchers’ thinking, including appropriate use of conventions of documentation
- To understand the distinctions between generic as well as discipline-specific standards of beginning university-levelresearch, and to make use of this understanding in writing for different audiences and purposes that bridges the differences between these research approaches and conventions
Research Writing (RW) Course Development Criteria
An RW course must explicitly link its use of research writing to the course goals. Most often these courses will be taught to students early in the curriculum of a particular major, and the course walks the boundary between narrow, deep use of disciplinary conventions of writing and the broader conventions of university-level research writing in all fields. Accordingly it takes on generic obligations such as introducing students to issues of plagiarism and conventions of documentation that differ field from field; having students write at least one essay whose different audience and purpose require different language, formats, and rhetoric; and intense focus on framing research questions narrowly so as to write with a defined hypothesis or thesis that integratessource material with one’s own ideas. Some connection of students with the resources of the Landman Library would ordinarily be expected. RW courses should enroll no more than 20 students; piloted courses most often would be capped at 15 students.
Common Practices
- Planning, drafting, revision, and editing of more than one research project
- Critical reading and analysis of research materials, including instruction in the nature and role of specialized language, formats, and knowledge in representing research information
- Discussions of library and other research methods, as well as conventions of documentation; instruction on ways to avoid plagiarism
- Analysis and practice of interdisciplinary issues raised in crossing boundaries between high school and university research writing; between disciplinary and popular/generic sources; between writing for specialized vs. general audiences
