Writing for College and Beyond

Course Description

Are you ready to start writing the way college students write in their academic essays and their longer research papers? In this course, you can challenge yourself intellectually and creatively as you explore and experience writing as a form of inquiry, research, and argumentation. The course meets the needs of writers at any level, from students who are concerned about their academic preparation to those seeking the next challenge of university-level writing.

The first half of this course offers students the chance to think carefully about writing narrative and argumentative prose. Thus, you begin the course thinking carefully about what ideas and argument matters to you and why, while writing in a form that resists conventional structures. The second half of the course focuses on college-level academic writing: making a debatable claim and defending that claim through careful reasoning using primary and secondary sources. The challenge here is to write with clear evidence, effective organization, clarity and cohesion, and incisive revision to develop an engaging and well-supported academic essay. Gaining fluency in these modes will prepare you well for writing at the college level and even for the job world beyond.

Thus, the online course will enable students to:
-Develop a clearer, more confident, more academic approach to writing
-Arrive at an understanding of what it means to write well and why that matters
-Develop their academic essays—and their understanding of college writing—through every stage of the writing and revision process
-Develop critical reading skills through the study of cultural and literary texts and sample essays
-Become well-versed in university-level discourse through group discussion, peer review, and revision processes required of college writers

Instructors vary by section to maintain small, writing workshop-style class sizes. Enrollment is limited to 12 students per section.

Writers in this course are expected to participate in reading and writing exercises, group discussions, peer revision workshops, and individual conferences with the instructor. The pace of this course is at a college level, so the workload requires you to spend approximately 10 hours reading, writing, and commenting spread throughout each week. To be successful in this course, you must have reliable internet access, and will be expected to participate in the course multiple times each week.

Technical Information:
Your course will open on a Monday, two days in advance of the Wednesday course start date to give you time to get to know Canvas (Brown's learning management system), review course expectations and strategies for your success, learn about your instructor, and help us to learn a bit about you. These introductory activities should take you just a few hours to complete.

You will need:

- A computer with reliable, high-speed internet connection | Note: Mobile devices (smart phones, tablets) are also supported, but may be less than optimal for some required assignments. We recommend using these as supplemental access points in addition to your computer. We also recommend downloading the Canvas Mobile App for iOS or Android devices for the best experience on mobile devices.
- Up-to-date Internet browser supported by Canvas, Brown's learning management system
- Headphones, earbuds or speakers
- Webcam and microphone
- Adobe Flash Player browser plugin (Course elements may require Flash and will not work on an iPad.)
- Word Processing application to save and open Microsoft Office formats (.doc,.docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx)


Supplementary materials: none

"I would say this course has been one of the better ones I have taken. The content was genuinely interesting, and I felt like I wasn’t just learning for the moment; I think that what I picked up on in this course will help me as I continue through life."

"I really like the direction this course took. It went beyond the guided writings; it was more about finding your own voice. Thus, I felt like I was able to explore into my writing instead of simply learning about writing. The course required a lot of critical thinking and it challenged me as a writer."
- Writing for College and Beyond students, Summer 2015

Prerequisites: None