EXPO E-42c/W Section 3: Writing in the Sciences

Thursdays 8-10 PM (22 Jan - 17 May 2018)

Instructor: Cynthia F.C. Hill  

chill02@tufts.edu

Note: this syllabus may be subject to small changes 

(Update 25JAN2018: graduate-credit students, schedule)

Course Description:

Advancements in genetic engineering and the farm­to­table movement have pushed consumers to think about where our food comes from, food production practices, and the implications of our choices as stakeholders in this complex equation. In this expository writing seminar, we will explore three interconnected themes: food production, sustainability, and nutrition. Students will read peer­reviewed research literature as well as other relevant source material to gain disciplinary literacy on ecological and biotechnological approaches to food production. Students will develop skills in both written and verbal communication for different audiences via in­class and take­home assignments. Students will use skills gained through these assignments to complete three main papers that are described briefly here: 1) analysis of a lay article with claims rooted in scientific research, 2) research and analysis of a claim that originates from advertisement or the media 3) review of current scientific literature, identification and proposal of an area of development pertaining to one of the three core themes of the course.

Guidelines for writing-intensive courses (mandatory description adapted from the Extension School catalog):

Writing-intensive courses at Harvard Extension offer students the opportunity to develop their writing skills in the context of a particular academic discipline, and they all feature common elements.  Students will:

• develop core writing skills, as defined by the instructor, in the discipline of the course;
• complete multiple writing assignments of varying lengths, at least 2 of which must be revised;
• produce a minimum of 10-12 pages of writing, exclusive of the required drafts, over the course of the term;
• meet at least once in individual conference (in person, by phone, or electronically) with the instructor to discuss writing in progress;
• receive detailed feedback on their drafts and revisions, on both content and expression.

Texts:

• Readings will be available via the course website. These are purposely brief (5-10 pages long), to encourage you to engage with the content on a deeper level. Sometimes, supplemental readings will be provided, in case you wish to gain more contextual understanding of our topic.

Course Design, requirements, and expectations:

Prerequisites:

• As this is an intensive writing class, it is important that you have the basic skills to complete the core requirements thereof. Thus, on the first day of class, I will ask for an in-class writing sample to make sure you are prepared to write at the level required in this course.  If I have any concerns about your ability to succeed in this class, I will communicate with you confidentially via e-mail.
• This seminar is designed for students to interact with one another as we work together to gain understanding of the material and of the writing process. Please be prepared to commit your attention to each session and to share your writing and your ideas with your classmates so that our time together is as productive as possible.

Contacting me: 

I will respond to email messages within 48 hours, Monday through Friday. 

Attendance: 

It is the policy of the Harvard Extension School Writing Program that students who miss more than two class meetings risk being failed. Because Writing Program courses depend on sequential writing activities, group workshopping, and lively class discussion, your consistent attendance is essential.  Consistent lateness by more than twenty minutes will begin to count as absences after the second time.  If you must miss a class, your assigned work is still due on time.  Please get in touch with a classmate to learn what was covered. 

Assignments and Homework:

• You will complete two short (4-6) page analytical essays and a longer-format paper (8-10 pages) that pertains to one of the three central themes of this course, which includes a brief review of the literature and proposes a new direction of development for the field. You will also deliver a brief presentation on your paper to the class.  Shorter writing assignments that feed into your three formal papers will be incorporated into the course.
• You will read peer-reviewed scientific literature and learn how to interpret and use that information for communication elsewhere.
• We may have pop quizzes on grammar, syntax, and other basic writing issues and/or in-class writing sample tests throughout the semester.

Completion of work: 

Because the writing course is a planned sequence of assignments that build upon each other, and because writing workshops affect the schedule of the entire class, you must complete all the assigned exercises and stories to pass the course.  You must also write them on schedule – not in the last few days of the term after you have fallen behind.  Allow for computer problems and other mechanical failures; I recommend you print out and save hardcopies of all your work.

Accessibility services: 

The Extension School is committed to providing an accessible academic community. The Accessibility Services Office offers a variety of accommodations and services to students with documented disabilities. Please visit www.extension.harvard.edu/accessibility-student-services for more information.

Academic Honesty: 

Following is Harvard College’s policy on academic honesty as stated in the Handbook for Students:

• All homework assignments, projects, lab reports, papers, and examinations submitted to a course are expected to be the student’s own work. Students should take great care to distinguish their own ideas and knowledge from information derived from sources.  The term “sources” includes not only published primary and secondary material, but also information and opinions gained directly from other people.
• The responsibility for learning the proper forms of citation lies with the individual student. Quotations must be placed properly within quotation marks and must be cited fully.  In addition, all paraphrased material must be acknowledged completely.  Whenever ideas or facts are derived from a student’s reading and research or from a student’s own writing, the sources must be indicated.

Plagiarism:

Plagiarism is the theft of someone else’s ideas and work.  Whether a student copies verbatim or simply rephrases the ideas of another without properly acknowledging the source, the theft is the same.  A computer program written as part of the student’s academic work is, like a paper, expected to be the student’s original work and subject to the same standards of representation.  In the preparation of work submitted to meet course requirements, whether a draft or final version of a paper, project, assignment, computer program, or take-home examination, students must take great care to distinguish their own ideas and language from information derived from sources. 

Sources include published primary and secondary materials, the Internet, and information and opinions gained directly from other people.  Whenever ideas or facts are derived from a student’s reading or research, the sources must be properly cited.

THERE IS A PLAGIARISM GUIDE INCLUDED AT THE END OF THIS SYLLABUS. You are responsible for familiarizing yourself with this guide and may be quizzed on it during the course of the semester.

You are responsible for understanding Harvard Extension School policies on academic integrity (www.extension.harvard.edu/resources-policies/student-conduct/academic-integrity) and how to use sources responsibly. Not knowing the rules, misunderstanding the rules, running out of time, submitting the wrong draft, or being overwhelmed with multiple demands are not acceptable excuses. There are no excuses for failure to uphold academic integrity. To support your learning about academic citation rules, please visit the Harvard Extension School Tips to Avoid Plagiarism (www.extension.harvard.edu/resources-policies/resources/tips-avoid-plagiarism), where you'll find links to the Harvard Guide to Using Sources and two free online 15-minute tutorials to test your knowledge of academic citation policy. The tutorials are anonymous open-learning tools.

Format for Writing Assignments: 

All work must be typed and thoroughly proofread.  For the most part, please use one-inch margins, 12 pt. font in Times, or Times New Roman.  In addition please note that formatting guidelines may change based on the various documents we construct.

Please submit all documents as PDFs unless otherwise instructed.

Grading:

Students who turn in all the work that is asked of them, who demonstrate a solid introductory understanding of craft, and who produce compelling work, may earn top grades. 

Students who do not pass in all the work required of them may not receive a passing grade.  Work that indicates a lack of effort or interest – shoddy work, containing excessive and careless errors – will affect your grade, as will the lack of participation in class, or the failure to keep up with your weekly reading and writing assignments. 

Late papers will receive a penalty of a partial letter grade. After 3 weeks, late papers will not be accepted.

Grading breakdown is as follows:

Writing assignments:

Analysis papers 1 and 2 (15% each)                                                  30%

Final writing assignment, paper 3                                                       30%

Oral Presentation                                                                                15%    

Course participation

Leading and participating in weekly discussions                                 5%

In-class exercises, reading notes, e-mail communication,drafts,

outlines/activities for major writing assignments, etc.                         20%

Grades reflect the quality and quantity of a student's work submitted throughout the term according to the grading standards listed below. Undergraduate- and graduate-credit students may earn the following grades:

• A and A- grades represent work whose superior quality indicates a full mastery of the subject and, in the case of A, work of extraordinary distinction. There is no grade of A+.
• B+, B, and B- grades represent work of good to very good quality throughout the term; however, it does not merit special distinction.
• C+, C, and C- grades designate an average command of the course material.
• D+, D, and D- grades indicate work that shows a deficiency in knowledge of the material.
• E is a failing grade representing work that deserves no credit. E may also be assigned to students who do not submit required work in courses from which they have not officially withdrawn by the deadline.

Graduate-credit students

Graduate-credit students are expected to do more work and perform higher standards than undergraduate-credit students. This means that each assignment will have additional criteria (these will be articulated on the assignment sequences) and more stringent grading standards.

Class Participation:

To foster an intellectual community in class, the course is structured as a seminar.  Throughout the term, we will be discussing the work of both professional and student writers, and it is crucial that you come to class prepared to offer insightful comments on assigned readings, as well as helpful feedback on your peers’ work.  Such a vital, ongoing intellectual conversation – about your writing and that of other scholars – comprises the heart of this course.  To be effective as a seminar participant, you will need to complete reading and writing tasks with great care, and be able to demonstrate that you have done so. Thoughtful attention and response to others’ comments is a part of being a member of this community. 

To commit fully to this community, I ask students to refrain from engaging with unrelated activities whilst in the virtual classroom space.

Individual Conferences: 

Each of you will meet with me individually at least once during the term to discuss your progress.  The purpose of our individual conference is to address in detail some of the ways you can accomplish successful revisions of your drafts as you work them into more polished, focused, and compelling work.

Being absent for a conference without proper notice counts as a missed class. 

*Tentative* Course Schedule: (UPDATED 25 January 2018)

PART ONE

Session 1: Thursday, 25 January

In class:  Introductions and expectations.

About writing: Purpose, Audience, Discourse Communities, Rhetorical Strategies and the process.  

In-class writing assessment.  All students are required to complete this by Session 2.

Session 2: Thursday, 1 February

In-class: Discussion of reading assigned for class.   

Discussion: What is an analysis? Identifying lenses for analysis - what directed your attention when you read the assignment? What work does the author do to invite discussion or thought about that lens?

Session 3: Thursday, 8 February

In-class: In-class workshops of Paper #1;

Discussion: What makes peer-review effective?  How can we make it do some of the heavy lifting?

About writing: Outline tool for Word.

Session 4: Thursday, 15 February

In-class: “Last chance” workshops for Paper #1.

Discussion: How do we navigate paper #1? What makes the process meaningful?

About writing: Clarity, Brevity, and Overall Structure; Paragraph Structure

PAPER 1 FINAL DRAFT: due Wednesday, 21 February at 11:59PM

PART TWO

Session 5: Thursday, 22 February

In class: Introduce and assign paper# 2; concept maps.

Discussion: Stakeholders and camps – for whom do you write and how do you decide?

Session 6: Thursday, 1 March

In-class: Discuss final project and sequence of events.  In-class workshop on Paper #2.

Discussion: perspectives and lenses, revisited

Session 7: Thursday, 8 March 

In-class: About writing: final project pieces – chaos and order

Spring break: Thursday, 15 March

Session 8: Thursday, 22 March

In class: “Last chance” workshops for paper #2.

PAPER 2 FINAL DRAFT: due Wednesday, 28 March at 11:59PM

Session 9: Thursday, 29 March

In class: Paper #3 workshop; Discuss possible branches for development, literature as source material (but not gospel). Discuss annotated bibliography – grouping literature thematically, etc.

Session 10: Thursday, 5 April

In class: continue discussion of annotated bibliography.  Questions that arise from annotated bibliography – which to pursue, what has been done.  If applicable: discussion of funding agencies and strategy for proposals.

Session 11: Thursday, 12 April

In class: Presenting the findings to an audience round 1: 2-minute papers!; exploring what has been done, future directions, what gets funded (and what does not). Putting together the pieces to construct an argument.

Session 12: Thursday, 19 April

In class: Workshop paper #3 draft.

Session 13: Thursday, 26 April

In class: Presenting findings round 2: 5-minute papers!; feedback groups: what needs to be articulated, highlighting what’s important.

Session 14: Thursday, 3 May

In class: Arguments in brief and full version of paper #3, compared.

Session 15: Thursday, 10 May

In class: Last chance workshops

PAPER 3 FINAL DRAFT: due Saturday, 12 May at 11:59PM

Plagiarism Guide: 

Plagiarism is the act of passing off someone else's work as your own.  Sometimes plagiarism is simple dishonesty.  People who buy, borrow, or steal a paper to turn in as their own work know they are plagiarizing.  Those who copy word-for-word - or who change a word here and there while copying - without enclosing the copied passage in quotation marks and identifying the author should know that they are plagiarizing.

But plagiarizing can be more complicated in act and intent.  Paraphrasing, which is stating someone else's ideas, can be a useful way to support your own ideas, but it can lead to unintentional plagiarism.  Jotting down notes and ideas from sources and thoughtlessly using them without proper attributions to the authors or titles of those sources may result in a paper that is only a mosaic of your words and those of others that appear, nonetheless, to be yours.

Another innocent way to plagiarize is to allow your fellow students and friends - those outside your peer-review group - to give you too much rhetorical help or do too much editing and proofreading of your work.  If you think you have received substantial help in any way from people whose names will not appear as authors of the paper, acknowledge that help in a short sentence at the end of the paper or in your list of works cited.  If you are not sure how much help is too much, talk with me, so that we can decide what kind of outside-of-class help (and how much) is proper, and how to give credit where credit is due.

As they are drafting their work, conscientious writers keep careful track of when they use ideas and words from sources.  They diligently try to distinguish between their own ideas, those of others, and common knowledge.  They try to identify which part of their work comes from an identifiable source and then document their use of that source in accordance with established academic or professional conventions, such as a parenthetical citation and a works cited list.  If you are in doubt about what needs documentation, talk with your instructor.

When thinking about plagiarism, it is hard to avoid talking about ideas as if they were objects like tables and chairs.  Of course they are not.  You should not feel that you are under pressure to invent new ideas - which is probably impossible.  So-called original writing consists of thinking through ideas and expressing them in your own way.  The result may not be entirely new, but if honestly done, it may well be interesting and worthwhile reading.  Print or electronic sources, as well as other people, may add good ideas to your own thoughts.  When they do so in identifiable and specific ways, give them the credit they deserve.

The following examples should clarify the difference between dishonest and proper uses of sources:

Original Source:

It is not generally recognized that at the same time when women are making their way into every corner of our work world, only one percent of the professional engineers in the nation are female.  A generation ago this statistic would have raised no eyebrows, but today it is hard to believe.  The engineering schools, reacting to social and governmental pressures, have opened wide their gates and are recruiting women with zeal.  The major corporations, reacting to even more intense pressures, are offering attractive employment opportunities to practically all women engineering graduates.

            From Samuel C. Florman, "Engineering and the Female Mind" Copyright by Harper's Magazine

Example 1: Word-for-Word Plagiarizing

In the following example, the writer devises part of the first sentence in  hopes that the reader won't notice that the rest of the paragraph is simply copied from the source.  The plagiarized words are italicized:

Because women seem to be taking jobs of all kinds, few people realize that only 1 percent of the professional engineers in the nation are female.  A generation ago this statistic would have raised no eyebrows, but today it is hard to believe.  The engineering schools, reacting to social and governmental pressures, have opened wide their gates and are recruiting women with zeal.  The major corporations, reacting to even more intense pressures, are offering attractive employment opportunities to practically all women engineering graduates.

Quotation marks around all the copied text, followed by a parenthetical citation, would avoid plagiarism.  But even if that were done, a reader might well wonder why so much was quoted from Florman.  Beyond that, a reader will wonder why the writer chose to quote instead of paraphrase this passage, which as a whole is not very quotable.  Furthermore, a paper consisting largely of quoted passages would be relatively worthless.

Example 2: Plagiarizing by Paraphrasing

In this case the writer follows the progression of ideas in the source very closely - too closely - by substituting his or her own words and sentences for those of the original.

Original:

It is not generally recognized that at the same time when women are making their way into every corner of our work world, only one percent of the professional engineers in the nation are female. 

A generation ago this statistic would have raised no eyebrows, but today it is hard to believe.

The engineering schools, reacting to social and governmental pressures, have opened wide their gates and are recruiting women with zeal.  The major corporations, reacting to even more intense pressures, are offering attractive employment opportunities to practically all women engineering graduates.

Paraphrase:

Few people realize, now that women are finding jobs in all fields, that a tiny percentage of the country's engineers are women.

Years ago this would have surprised no one but now it seems incredible.

Under great pressure, engineering schools are searching out women, and big companies are offering good jobs to practically all women who graduate with engineering degrees.

The writer appears to be generating his or her own ideas.  In fact, they are Florman's ideas presented in the writer's words without acknowledgment. 

The writer could avoid plagiarism here by introducing the paraphrase with an attribution to Florman and following them with a parenthetical citation.  Such an introduction is underlined here:

                        Samuel Florman points out that few people realize... (page number).

Properly used, paraphrase is a valuable technique.  You should use it to simplify or summarize so that the ideas or information, properly attributed in the introduction and documented in a parenthetical citation may be woven into the pattern of your own ideas.  You should not use paraphrase simply to avoid quotation; you should use it to express another's ideas in your own words when those ideas are not worth quoting verbatim.

Example 3: Mosaic Plagiarism

With this more sophisticated kind of plagiarism, the writer lifts phrases and terms from the source and embeds them into his of her own prose.  Words and phrases that the writer lifts verbatim or with slight changes are italicized:

The pressure is on to get more women into engineering.  The engineering schools and major corporations have opened wide their gates and are recruiting women zealously.  Practically all women engineering graduates can find attractive jobs.  Nevertheless, at the moment, only 1 percent of the professional engineers in the country are female.

Even though mosaic plagiarism may be caused by sloppy note taking, it always looks thoroughly dishonest and will be judged as such.  Above, just adding an introduction and a parenthetical citation will not eliminate the plagiarism since quotation marks are not used where required.  Adding them would raise the question why the writer thinks those short phrases and basic statements are worth quoting.  The best solution is to paraphrase: recast the plagiarized parts in your own words, introduce the passage properly, and add a parenthetical citation.

In Summary

Using quotation marks around original wording avoids the charge of plagiarism, but when overdone, makes for a patchwork paper.  When most of what you want to say comes from a source, either quote directly or paraphrase.  In both cases, introduce your borrowed words or ideas by attributing them to the author and follow them with a parenthetical citation.

The secret to using sources productively is to make them work to support and amplify your ideas.  If you find, as you work at paraphrasing, quoting, and citing, that you are only pasting sources together with a few of your own words and ideas - that too much of your paper comes from your sources and not enough from your own mind - then go back to the drawing board.  Try redrafting the paper without looking at your sources, using your own ideas.  Only after completing a draft should you add the specific words and ideas from your sources to support what you want to say.  If you have any doubts, talk with me ASAP.