WRT 303 Outcomes

This course extends the research skills required in WRT 205. We think that advanced student writers come into these courses with an already developed knowledge of or interest in a topic of inquiry; that they are eager and able to work more independently; that they have professional goals related to research and writing (e.g., plans for graduate school, interest in doing an Honors thesis); and that we can expect more of them as writers (greater length, more polish, more sophisticated claims and arguments, larger sense of the genres and conventions of their discipline or area of study).

Writing 303 will focus on the practice, discussion, and critical analysis of researched writing:

• Students will develop, design, and produce over the semester a sustained research project on a topic related to their discipline or derived from other areas of interest (e.g., a 30 page research paper, a series of documents designed
• Students will examine rhetorical matters of audience, style, mode of proof as an integral part of completing their project(s).
• Students will do activities as a class to learn more about how research and writing occur in specific communities (e.g., mock editorial boards, interviews with professionals in their field)
• Students will write formally and informally in a range of genre as they conduct research, experiment with claims and formats, shape material for specific audiences, and polish the final product(s)

Writing 303 will teach the skills, conventions, and aims of researched writing:

• Students will access and assess an array of source information and genres, such as library research, databases, Boolean searches, field or observational research.
• Students will use conventions of citation and document design that meet disciplinary or community standards for credible presentation.
• Students will learn modes for publishing their research relevant to their projects (e.g., print, online, multimedia).
• Students will edit their own and their peers’ work, appropriate to context and conventions and occasion.

Writing 303 will provide a theoretical framework for researched writing:

• Students will study how research is conducted in various disciplines and fields (e.g., as inquiry, analysis, investigation, or problem-solving).
• Students will study research as a social practice--as rhetorical--and take up questions such as the construction of objectivity, bias, and ethics.
• Students will study the social contexts, conventions, and values of the discipline or field within which they are writing.