👋🏾 1. Settling In

Are You Where You Should Be?

This is Module 1: Settling In, which should be completed between 1/26 - 1/31.

Goals and Checklist

In the first week of this course, you’ll learn:

• How this course will be organized and what will be expected from you in each class and each week
• How to use our primary tech platforms (Discord, this website)
• How to plan your workflow for this async course

To help with various access needs, including task identification and separation and advance notice, I’ll include an abbreviated list of tasks at the top of each weekly module. You can check these items off, but your input won’t be saved after you close this window. You remain responsible for checking the Calendar and ensuring that you’re completing everything in a timely fashion.

Welcome to ENG 201: Writing in the Disciplines (WID)!

Dear students: I want to welcome you to ENG 201: Writing in the Disciplines. I’m Dr. Mani, and I’ll be your professor this semester. I’m an Eelam Tamil American creative-critical writer, artist, activist, and game designer. I’ve had chronic pain and fatigue for 20 years, taught for 19, written for 30, and have published multi- and inter-disciplinary work in both creative and scholarly forums. My server nickname is Legendary Boon, a reference to the Hades games. My current research focuses on the rhetorics of chronic pain, interactive narrative, academic ableism, and the value of diasporic-disabled digital composition; in a former life, I was known for my work on transgressive Internet cultures. I have a Siberian cat named Athena, and my hill to die on is that writing is thinking, not just the menial task that happens after the thinking is done.

I believe in critical, accessible, social justice pedagogies. What this means for you is: a flexible, responsive course architecture, lessons, and professor-student communication; equitable classrooms, assignments, and grading schema; and an expectation that you’ll be actively involved in reviewing the course, creating community, and learning. You can always reach out to me with a concern by @ing me on Discord, DMing me directly, or sending me an email.

This section of ENG 201: Writing in the Disciplines is offered by the Dept. of English, Writing, and Cultural Studies at Pace University - Pleasantville (PLV). Our core writing program is carefully scaffolded, and this “writing in the disciplines” (WID) composition class is unique in that it teaches you how to both:

1. Conduct qualitative research, and
2. Enter the distinct discourse community of your discipline.

ENG 201 is designed to build on previously learned writing skills, using qualitative research to help you develop argumentation, analytical skills, advanced research skills using primary and secondary sources, and to help you develop the patient, curious, dogged mentality needed for many kinds of writing.

If You’re Working on a Thesis

ENG 201 is not aimed at helping you write a thesis and is relevant to your thesis in terms of writing craft, not content! This course will teach you to emulate the disciplinary conventions of your field in preparation for future scholarly and professional texts you’ll write, using qualitative research as the vehicle for your learning. If you can apply discipline-specific moves across genres of writing, you can easily employ them in the writing tasks of your field.

ENG 201 centers research and method to support students in exploring contemporary field-related concepts through research and writing that synthesizes primary and secondary sources. Our low- and high-stakes writing work is designed so you can engage with your field, understand how information is presented, what is valued, and how it is developed and determined, and practice writing for those communicative expectations. And because writing is a social activity, you’ll also work closely in small groups (to be assigned by Week 3) in asynchronous discussions and peer workshops.

In PLV’s core writing program, all sections of a given core writing course use the same framework, with similar objectives, themes, organization, assignments, and grading policies. This section of ENG 201 is designed for the PLV core writing program and has similar requirements regarding participation, drafting and revision, and collaborative work. It presumes prior content knowledge and writing skill — in a basic sense at least, no content mastery required — from ENG 120, including the ability to: recognize and define discourse communities; do discourse analysis; understand the rhetorical situation; close-read popular, literary, and scholarly articles; use library databases; and document your sources.

If you’re unfamiliar with the format and expectations of PLV core writing courses, or if you’ve gotten rusty since you took ENG 120, you may initially feel lost. And that’s okay! No one masters anything in a single semester, anyway. Whether you didn’t take a PLV section of ENG 110 or 120, or did but only vaguely remember what you learned, you can succeed in this course! Just be aware of our actual course expectations, and don’t base your understanding of core writing courses or writing in the disciplines on anecdotal information about what this course has been like for others.

🛑 Stop!

Take a moment to locate the Announcements page in the sidebar, and read the “Week 0” announcement (cross-posted to Classes\Announcements).

This first week is dedicated to settling into the course: joining our Discord server, becoming fluent in its operation, and familiarizing yourself with Classes and this course website. So get ready to do that now! But first…

A Warning About Async Courses

Asynchronous classes are fully remote and self-paced, meaning you aren’t required to synchronously interact with your instructor or classmates at a set meeting time. If you’re taking this async section to be able to maximize work and credit hours, be advised: While async courses permit greater flexibility for arranging a tight schedule, they are always more time- and labor-intensive. The workload is equivalent to a sync 3-hr credit course, but it can feel like more than that without set meeting times and real-time oversight from professors. It’s easy to lose focus or fall behind in async courses, especially if you have a busy schedule already. You’re responsible for making sure you’re dedicating enough time to the course and remaining motivated and on track even when life, work, and other classes get in the way.

I’m sympathetic to a difficult work-life balance, but having a full-time job or taking 7 classes doesn’t excuse you from meeting participation and submission deadlines for an async course, and I can’t accommodate a sheer lack of time. Whatever your personal schedule looks like, you’re responsible for doing the work and meeting our deadlines each week (except in extentuating circumstances or if we’ve made alternate arrangements well in advance).

Course Website

This course website contains course-specific documents (like the syllabus and calendar), weekly modules I created, and links to open-access or freely available resources designed to help you improve on your existing critical reading, critical writing, and writing-in-the-disciplines (WID) skills.

Together, the modules on this website form a kind of “un-textbook” that compiles readings, “how-to” instructions, demos and models, and practice exercises that can be read/used linearly or in any order, depending on your learning needs (though I recommend you follow the recommended Sat-Tue & Wed-Fri workflow as much as possible).

Note

Out of respect for your selection of an asynchronous modality, and to reduce everyone’s screen fatigue, I have intentionally kept audiovisual content to a minimum, i.e. there are very few recorded lectures, so you don’t need to block out chunks of time to watch them on a computer screen. This website can be read on a computer, tablet, or phone, so it lends itself to “on-the-go” work.

The weekly modules included here bring together text-based lessons, audiovisual content, writing exercises, and model student papers from students at Pace and elsewhere. Each module identifies important general and discipline-specific methods for doing research and research writing and explains how you can practice them in your ENG 201 qualitative research project. As their titles indicate, these modules will guide you through different aspects of the research process — such as developing research questions; doing secondary and primary research; organizing, synthesizing, and presenting data; and the discipline-specific nature of communication expectations.

Each module is designed to stand alone and with other course materials. There are also appendices with content aimed at particular academic specializations. You’ll be directed to these appendices throughout the semester, but I encourage you to reference the appendices relevant to your discipline whenever you need to.

Technological Platforms

🛑 Stop!

If you haven’t already, take a moment to explore this website!

Classes

Classes is unconducive to real learning since it encourages a grades-oriented mindset of “let me get my work done and GTFO with minimal interaction,” and now it’s also full of surveillance over your attendance and GenAI training on your work and feeding it to plagiarism checkers. To avoid that circus, I’ve created an external course website for us — this website!

I’ll primarily use Classes to collect your high-stakes writing assignments in dropboxes in Classes\Assignments and to share your scores in Classes\Gradebook. For privacy and security reasons, the invitation link to our Discord server is posted under Content\Syllabus.

Course Website

Here’s a brief overview of what you can find on this website. To help familiarize yourself with the layout of the website, click on each tab in the sidebar after reading its description below.

• 🗓️ ENG 201 Course Info & Calendar: Linked at the top of the sidebar, this page contains an instructor bio, course info, course calendar, and details about modality and how to schedule with me. The Calendar includes each weekly learning objective with links to weekly modules (which contain the readings and external resources you’re responsible for studying that week), descriptions of class/team activities, and a list of any work due that week as well.
• The Book a Coffee Chat button at the top of the calendar/home page will take you to my Zcal scheduling page, where you can see my available times during my Coffee Chat hours.
• 📢 Announcements: Linked at the top of the sidebar, this page contains any announcement I make on Classes or in #classroom on Discord. You can find announcements on Discord with the ctrl-F function, or periodically return to this page as needed.
• Modules: The weekly modules are linked in the sidebar under 📢 Announcements. There are 16 modules — one for each week of the semester. Each one contains textual content, audiovisual content, external links (that you’re responsible for reviewing), practice exercises, etc. As suggested on the Course Calendar, aim to review as much of the weekly module as possible by Tuesdays, which is when your “question” posts are due, and aim to complete the module by Fridays, which is when your “answer” posts are due (see ✍️ Assignments for more details).
• 📖 ENG 201 Syllabus: Linked at the bottom of the sidebar, this page contains a longer course description, course-specific policies, and Pace policies.
• 💯 Alt-Grading System: Linked at the bottom of the sidebar, this page contains a description of the “ungrading” system that we’ll use in this class and how async participation and submitted work will be evaluated.
• ✍️ Assignments: Linked at the bottom of the sidebar, this page contains descriptions of low-stakes (Discord posts) and high-stakes (essay drafts) writing, including suggestions on how to participate in discussion each week.
• 🍎 General Feedback: Linked at the bottom of the sidebar, this page will be updated after you complete Draft 1, Draft 3, and Draft 5 with my feedback regarding areas of improvement I noticed in 90%+ drafts in the class. (During #team workshops, when you’ll use this feedback to help revise each other’s drafts, I’ll share this feedback with you as a survey as well to facilitate peer review.)
• 🙋 FAQs: Frequently asked questions will be posted here, as they’re asked and answered!
• 🎵 Playlist: And on the fun side of things, there’s a playlist page curated by me and former students if music helps stir the words in you.

You can navigate to all these pages using the links on the side. For accessibility purposes, each page has a dropdown submenu that also appears in the sidebar navigation menu.

Discord

Join our Discord server using the invitation link posted to Classes\Syllabus. If you don’t have a Discord account, or if you want to create a separate account for this class, you’ll need to register for one — just follow the instructions in the Discord Tutorial (linked at the bottom of the sidebar menu).

🛑 Stop! Customize Your Profile and Get Roles!

If you haven’t already, take a moment to poke around our Discord server and customize your profile. Upload a profile picture, and enter your display name — an alias, like mine, so that relative anonymity can help ease barriers to participating in writing — and your pronouns. If you don’t choose a pseudonym by the end of the week, I’ll choose one for you and will change your profile accordingly. You can use one of the placeholders for your About Me section if you like. Once you’ve done that, click on the #get-roles channel and select the ones that describe you.

The Discord Tutorial has a breakdown of Discord’s basic functions. If you’ve never used Discord, don’t be intimidated! Discord’s controls are a lot like text messaging or social media. You can get by with these 3 main functions:

• Click #text channels on the left to enter them, type in the message box, and hit enter to send;
• Click 🧵 and 📌 at the top of #text channels for a directory of threads (click a thread name to join and send messages in the panel that appears) and pinned posts; and
• Click 🔊Voice channels on the left 1x to join voice-only and 2x to join voice-and-video.

In text channels, the chat bar is located in the main view, at the bottom-center of the screen. The message box is where you type your messages (which are visible to all members of the channel). In voice channels, the main view displays the users in the voice channel and the controls.

Check the Discord tutorial for instructions on how to adjust your user preferences, like color themes, font size and spacing, etc. It also has a directory of channels and what we’ll use them for.

🔰 Practice!

Practice messaging in each Discord channel to increase your confidence in using Discord, since it’ll be our primary mode of communication. Try posting “Week 1 test posts!” in each text channel, reply to one of your test posts with “Week 1 test reply!,” react to one of your test messages with an emoji of your choice, and DM me “Hello! This is my test DM!” That’s it — that’s all you need to know to be able to use Discord.

🛑 Stop! Write! Submit!

After you’ve joined our server and customized your profile, choose an online name for yourself — this should be a pseudonym that has nothing to do with your IRL identity, the kind of handle you might choose for a social media account, for maximum anonymity (please keep it PG). Without mentioning your IRL name (or other identifying details), draft a short, casual introduction that answers the following: What’s your alias? Why did you choose it? And what’s one fact or quote that lives rent-free in your brain? Share this introduction in #classroom on Discord.

It’s Okay Not to Know!

ENG 201 courses are made up of students and instructors who come from very different disciplinary backgrounds. Each person in the classroom has a different level of familiarity and comfort with different disciplinary conventions: for instance, a business major will know something about writing business reports, but may know less about writing an anthropology paper or engineering report. Similarly, I possess expertise in writing, medicine, communication and media studies, and the fine arts, and I’m familiar with legal writing and science writing, but I may not be expert in the writing conventions of your discipline.

This course isn’t meant to “test” your knowledge of research or discipline-specific writing. You’re not supposed to know everything about writing in your discipline right now, and that’s OK!

ENG 201 as a class best approached as a community of learners. I’ll guide you through the process of writing a qualitative research paper and will help you read to identify disciplinary conventions and practice those conventions in your papers. And as we work together this semester, I hope you can accept that real, productive learning begins with discomfort: that means accepting that you don’t already know everything; being responsible for asking questions in our classroom text chat; having to reveal the gaps in your knowledge and mistakes you make in order to learn; staying calm in the face of discomfort (avoid “I’m going to fail” panic or fury); and finding time as your schedule permits to have sync coffee chats with me if you’re confused.

At-a-Glance List of This Week’s Resources

Finished? 🥳

Have you completed everything in this module, including any practice writing activities and low-stakes Discord posts? If you did, congratulations on completing Module 1, and take a well-deserved break! If not, go back and finish what you skipped. In either case, don’t forget to begin the next module before Tuesday!