Week 5: First Drafts and Workshop

Your first draft of the materials for your  E110 course is due on Tuesday, 7/08, at 11:59 pm.

Here’s how I explain what I mean by a draft when I’m working with undergraduates:

A draft is an open and approximate version of the piece you want to write. It is not simply a set of notes, or an intro, or outline, or ideas toward an essay . . . Rather, it is an attempt to write the actual thing, the essay itself, even while knowing that you are not yet quite in a position to write that thing, that you still have more work to do.

An analogy might be to a sketch or study that an artist makes of a painting, or a demo that a musician makes of a song. The attempt in each case  is to offer a sense of what the final version might look or sound like—even if all the details haven’t been worked out or filled in, and even if key parts of the piece are still open to change. I’m hesitant to use the metaphor of a rough draft, since that can suggest something hastily or sloppily done, but in a sense that is what you want to do—to rough out your essay, put together an approximate version of it as a whole, so that you can then later go back to reshape, develop, and refine it.

So that’s what I want you to try to do for next week—to create a first, working version of your essay, something that gets at what you think you want to say, but that is still open to change and revision.

Substitute course materials for essay, and you pretty much have your assignment for next week. But while I’d like you to begin to sketch out your course as whole—its writing projects, its readings, its basic shape and pace—I’d advise you not to get too lost in the weeds of scheduling and policy details. Focus instead on drafting a good version of  an About section, in which you describe the aims of your course, and of a Plan in which you offer a quick sense of how the course will unfold over time—its narrative arc, as it were.  And then see if you can list the main Writing assignments for the course. If you can come up with solid versions of those three sections, you’ll be off to a strong start in your planning.

You can refer to this website as a kind of template for your course, and you may also want to look at two other versions of E110 I taught last year, in the Fall 2013 and Spring 2014 semesters. I’m also attaching syllabi from my UD colleagues Christine Cucciarre and Stephanie Kerschbaum—who both do an excellent job, I think, of setting a friendly tone and rigorous set of expectations for the work they will be doing with students.

I will send the three of you an email with the subject line: First Drafts. When you’re ready, please hit Reply All and attach your course materials, saved as a single Word document. (Or if you’re working online, just send us a URL.) That way we will all have copies of one another’s work.

We will workshop your course materials on Wednesday, 7/09, from 2:30-4:30 pm, in my office at 134 Memorial. I think we will probably use all two hours. Please come with a print-out of all three drafts, and if at all possible, try to scan the materials posted by your colleagues. I’ll explain the form the workshop will take when we meet together.

Don’t hesitate to email me if you have any questions. I look forward to seeing how your plans for your courses take shape. Good luck!