Syllabus

Welcome to Honors 1112! I am Dr. Mary Isbell, and I’ve created this syllabus to communicate what we’ll learn and how we’ll learn it this semester. I’ve tried to present this information as clearly as possible. I’ve also hidden the name of a major league baseball team somewhere on this page. Students who e-mail me the name of the character before the start of the second class will have one missed informal writing assignment forgiven. The penalty for sharing the secret word with a classmate who has not carefully read the entire syllabus is…guilt.

Contact Me

I love talking to students. Please get in touch often to ask questions, share ideas you’re having about the course, or discuss something interesting you’ve read or watched.

• E-mail: misbell@newhaven.edu
• Office Hours (just drop in!): Wednesdays, 7:30pm-8:30pm at this link
• Schedule a one-on-one appointment (especially if you’re not free during office hours): https://calendly.com/maryisbell

Course Description

The Seminar in Academic Inquiry introduces students to the conventions of academic writing and the habits of critical inquiry they will need in university courses and beyond. Students read and annotate texts on a topic selected by the instructor, develop original avenues of inquiry through classroom discussion, and transform their questions into well-supported academic arguments. Assignment sequences incorporate opportunities for research, drafting, revision, editing, and reflection to help students find writing processes that can be replicated in future courses and workplace projects that require only polished work. Because different disciplines and career paths present different scenarios for critical thinking and writing, this course also teaches students how to adapt the conventions of academic inquiry to a variety of contexts.

Required Materials

Almost all texts and films assigned in this course will be made available through our Canvas site, but there is one assigned film (The Great Hack) that can only be viewed on Netflix. If you do not have a Netflix subscription, please send me an e-mail so we can make arrangements for you to get access to this film.

Course Topic: Adaptation

We’ll be looking at how stories get adapted for different audiences and in different media this semester. We’ll begin by looking at several versions of a tale that is most commonly called Little Red Riding Hood. We’ll then look at a different sort of adaptation, the Netflix documentary The Great Hack, and explore how it constructs a story about the 2018 Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data breach. For your research project, you’ll have the option to choose a cultural product you want to study in terms of adaptation. In the past, students have studied video games, films, songs, and even institutions (like the military).

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to:

• Interpret and analyze any text through annotation
• Produce clear and effective writing that demonstrates an understanding of the relationships among audience, purpose, and voice
• Formulate a response reflecting insights gained through critical reading and textual analysis
• Craft a written response to a text that puts the student’s ideas in conversation with those in the text
• Adapt to varying contexts and writing conventions across disciplines through attention to tone, format, and style

Major Assignments & Grade Breakdown

15%	Informal Writing Assignments
10%	Assignment 1
15%	Assignment 2
20%	Assignment 3, part 1: Research Narrative
25%	Assignment 3, part 2: Research Paper
15%	Assignment 4

My Course Policies (read carefully!)

Diversity Statement

I value human diversity in all its richly complex and multi-faceted forms, whether expressed through race and ethnicity, culture, political and social views, religious and spiritual beliefs, language and geographic characteristics, gender, gender identities and sexual orientations, learning and physical abilities, age, and social or economic classes. I respect the value of every member of the class, and everyone in the class is encouraged to share his or her unique perspective as an individual, not as a representative of any category. Multicultural and intercultural awareness and competencies are key leadership skills, and I intend to present material and classroom activities that respect and celebrate diversity of thought, background, and experience.

Attendance 

Attendance and participation in our synchronous class meetings will enable a much richer experience in this course, but I understand the unpredictability of the moment. Astros. Students who are unable to attend our virtual class sessions synchronously can complete in-class activities (described in the course schedule) by 11:59pm on the day of class with no grade penalty.

Deadlines 

There is no penalty for requesting an extension for any work due in this course. Send me an e-mail if you need more time. You do not need to give a reason for the request.

How We Will Use Zoom

We will gather twice a week on Zoom, a platform that can be a little tricky to navigate. We will spend some time at the start of the semester developing a process that will allow us to communicate as clearly as possible. I offer here a set of strategies to get us started, but we may revise these at some point.

• Video: There is no expectation for you to turn your video camera on for this course; you can absolutely join with audio only.
• Audio: For the most part, I will keep everyone muted.
• Zoom Chat Window: To ensure that all students have a clear path to sharing ideas and asking questions, I will ask all students (those with cameras on and those with cameras off) to type “I have a question/I have a comment” in the chat window or in our shared document. If I call on you, I’ll invite you to unmute so you can ask your question live.
• Note-taking Document (a Word Online Document): You will be invited to complete class activities in this shared document.
• To protect the privacy of you and your classmates, I will only record short bits of class sessions where I am explaining things.
• As you annotate this syllabus with hypothesis, please share any suggestions you have on the way we should use zoom during our class meetings. For example, should we agree on particular times when everyone turns cameras on? In our second class meeting, we will come to an agreement for the semester.

Please…

• Read the syllabus and/or assignment prompt carefully before contacting me with a question about the course. An e-mail that includes some variation on “I re-read the assignment and I still have a question” is a way of signaling to me that you respect my time (this will work with other professors as well!).
• Include a greeting (Hello, Hi, etc.) and a closing (Thank you, Best, Sincerely, etc.) in all e-mails that you send to me (and all professors!).

Online Tools (to reference as needed)

I will be introducing a number of free online tools for reading, writing, and researching over the course of this semester. I include instructions for each of these programs below and you will see in the course schedule when you should get them set up. Please don’t hesitate to drop by office hours or e-mail if you have trouble navigating this technology. I strongly recommend that, where possible, you use your university e-mail username and password when registering for these accounts to cut down on confusion when logging in.

Word Online

Word Online documents are accessible via a link (they live in “the cloud”) and any changes made to them are available in real time. I will create a private Word Online document for you to use for the entire semester. This document will only be viewable by you and me. I will ask you to post informal writing in this document, while your formal projects will be submitted through Canvas. I will grade the work in your Word Online document on a pass/fail basis and keep a running tally of your grade in Canvas. You can use Word Online without downloading Microsoft Office for your computer, but you will need Word when creating formal assignments to be uploaded to Canvas. Instructions for getting set up with Office 365 and downloading the applications for your computer are at this link.

Kaizena

Kaizena is a tool you can use to request and give feedback on papers at any point in the semester. I will sometimes share a paper from a previous class for all of us to review together on Kaizena, but you can also share a draft of your paper with just me or a group of students. I will demonstrate how to use Kaizena early in the semester, but if you need a refresher after the fact, follow these steps:

1. Go to app.kaizena.com (make sure you don’t go to kaizena.com…that’s the wrong place!)
2. Click sign up (I suggest signing in with Microsoft Office–you can then use your university e-mail address)
3. Choose ‘Student’
4. Enter the code for our group: errxe

Zotero 

Zotero is the best tool around for gathering, annotating, and citing sources. I don’t require students to use Zotero, but I do offer extra credit throughout the semester if you save your source material in Zotero and share it with our class group. If you want to use a very quick version of Zotero (better than easybib, in my opinion), check out ZoteroBib:

If you want to try out the full application, check out the video below for instructions on getting started. You’ll need to register for an account here: https://www.zotero.org/user/register/. After you have registered for an account, you will download the version of the application appropriate for your computer here: https://www.zotero.org/download/.

The process will be slightly different for each of you depending on your computer and the internet browser you use most often. I am happy to help if you have trouble.

Hypothesis

Adding notes in the margins of the texts you read (annotating) is one of the best ways to understand what you are reading and begin to formulate your own ideas in response. Many of you have probably discovered that it is hard to take notes when reading online. Hypothesis is an annotation tool we will use to annotate readings for this class. When you open an assigned reading in Canvas (including this syllabus!), you’ll notice that when you select text, you are prompted to make an annotation. Please annotate actively as you read and respond to the annotations of your classmates. If you run into any technical issues, please send an e-mail to support@hypothes.is and copy me on the message. 

Note: It is possible to use Hypothesis to annotate anything you read on the web (instructions at https://web.hypothes.is/). We’ll be using the tool from inside Canvas because it makes things simpler in a course setting, but I encourage you to try the free online version on your own (it can be very helpful for the research project in this class and those you’ll encounter in the future!). I’m happy to answer questions if you have any.