For some students, the transition to college writing is smooth and without challenges. Perhaps you have taken a college-level writing course or courses as a high school student, or taken many writing-intensive college preparation courses that helped you develop as an academic writer. Perhaps you have written for a variety of public purposes—writing poetry for a literary journal, serving as a columnist or reporter for your school newspaper, or regularly posting to an online blog.

For other students, the transition to college writing might be less smooth. It’s possible you focused on subjects that were not writing-intensive in your secondary education, or there weren’t courses available that included a lot of writing. Some students find they have had negative experiences with writing throughout school, and perhaps have avoided doing it.

There are as many experiences of the transition to college writing as there are students! The good news is that in this course, instruction is designed to support and challenge every student in ways that will help prepare them for college writing and beyond.

There are whole books dedicated to the question: “What Is College Writing"?

Patrick Sullivan and Howard Tinberg, for example, edited a collection of essays called What is "College-Level" Writing?  and a second volume, What Is “College-Level” Writing? Volume 2: Assignments, Readings, and Student Writing Samples, and reading scholars Alice S. Horning, Deborah-Lee Gollnitz, and Cynthia R. Haller have edited the collection What Is College Reading?. These aren’t easy questions to answer, as scholars themselves are continually exploring not just what it is to read or write at a college level, but what kinds of reading, writing, thinking, and research tasks are essential to a college credential.

What is generally agreed upon is that college reading and writing require that college-educated readers, writers, thinkers, and researchers:

• Comprehend, analyze and produce a wide variety of texts for a variety of situations
• Read and write with nuance, understanding the complexities and core meanings of a topic
• Read carefully and write thoughtfully, knowing when claims require evidence and having the ability to evaluate evidence.
• Take on multiple perspectives, demonstrating cognitive empathy and intercultural competence
• Make strategic choices about how they use language depending on audience, purpose, and situation
• Continuously work to become creative, competent, responsible, and ethical communicators

Composition I, UN 1015 is structured around several core assignments along with opportunities for metacognition and reflection. You will produce a final portfolio that includes 20 pages of polished writing, drafted and revised over the course of the semester, with evidence of your strategic thinking as a writer. You will write a variety of formal and informal texts. Your progress as a writer will be assessed in three key areas, such that upon completion of the composition course, you will be able to…

• Rhetorical & Genre Awareness: 
  • Compose and organize rhetorical content in multiple genres, demonstrating strategic decision making.
  • Choose appropriate conventions (tone, style, and design) across a range of genres.
• Critical Reading and Research: 
  • Select and integrate sources effectively, using strategies appropriate for the writing task.
  • Make source use visible through a recognized and appropriate citation style.
• Writing and Research Process Knowledge: 
  • Use and explain writing strategies throughout a recursive writing process.
  • Use and explain research strategies throughout a process of academic inquiry.

Throughout the course, each of the activities that you engage in during class and are asked to complete outside of class is connected to these outcomes, as will be indicated in the Canvas course site that is an important resource for you as a student transitioning to college. 

Throughout the first-year (and often beyond into sophomore-level or even upper-division coursework), many college students encounter a significant gap between instructors’ expectations and their readiness for college learning based on both their academic skills and previous educational experiences.

Some common transitions that students experience between secondary and postsecondary education include the following academic activities:

• Reading texts that don’t include textbook learning clues like mechanical emphasis of important terms, study questions, or chapter previews and outlines (i.e., anything that wasn't specifically written for students with supporting study materials)
• Analyzing and synthesizing ideas from readings and class discussions (instead of just reporting on information) 
• Taking an independent position on a text (rather than summarizing what the authors say, although both skills may be required)
• Independently locating and understanding a relevant research source, and then using it to advance a thesis
• Adapting learning strategies to the requirements of a specific assignment and academic discipline
• Moving beyond reading to studying (selecting and organizing key information, memorizing it, practicing or applying it)

In college, you’ll complete Composition I along with a subsequent, Communication Intensive course which will help you further develop your reading, writing, and critical/creative thinking skills. UN1015 aims to help you develop transferable skills that you build on as you complete projects throughout college.

A first-year writing course like UN 1015 (and sometimes two or more courses) is usual at most institutions of higher education in the United States. Here are MTU, 1015 is a prerequisite for over 100 other courses in the catalog. As a graduation requirement for a degree at most universities in the country, College Writing and Research are considered "core" because they are a foundation for the rest of your degree and because earning a college degree communicates that you have achieved a high level of critical thinking, writing, reading, and research proficiency. 

Some features of college writing (in UN1015 and beyond) include the following:

• Most assignments require students to analyze and apply information by thinking critically about ideas and solving complex problems.
• Successful students need to write about what classmates (and often even the instructor) don’t already know.
• Instructions vary considerably from class to class; most professors cover assignment instructions just once and may even expect students to read instructions on their own in the syllabus or on a course website.
• Essays and projects almost always focus on narrow, specific, and complex topics within a field of study.
• Students usually must support their own ideas with substantial evidence, sometimes through shared course texts and sometimes through credible sources aligned with your audience’s knowledge and values.
• Students use research to support and develop their own original thinking rather than summarize it or assume its value.
• In many courses, students need to revise essays several times to accomplish the purpose of the assignment.
• Students rarely receive time in class to work on graded projects (except in skills courses like composition and reading).
• In some classes, students work independently to develop their own course projects (especially in courses after the first year).

• Students read many different kinds of texts with varying degrees of difficulty, including very challenging readings not originally written for students.
• Most reading assignments require students to understand complex information and then independently do something complicated (e.g., analyze ideas, apply concepts to a new situation, solve problems, interpret the meaning of the text, etc.).
• Successful students need to vary their reading strategies according to the difficulty level, academic discipline, and purpose of an assignment.
• Readers usually need to identify, analyze, apply, and often memorize important information on their own for tests; study guides usually require students to do extensive independent study.
• Reading usually supplements classroom; in many courses, assigned readings cover important instruction concepts for tests that instructors never talk about during class.

• Professors are experts and scholars with an in-depth understanding of their academic discipline; most don’t have formal teacher training.
• College has fewer guidelines, so students need to take much more responsibility for their own behavior.
• Students usually have to identify academic support resources on campus and then seek help on their own.
• Professors and college staff may not directly offer help and instead expect students to contact them for assistance during office hours.
• Students have lots of choices in determining what to study—but also must take responsibility for making sure they enroll in the right courses and understand complex graduation requirements.
• Most professors and administrators treat students like adults and expect them to make their own decisions; students leaving home for the first time may need to redefine their relationship with parents and other family members.
• Many courses include an online learning component, and some courses take place entirely online.

Within this context, you're taking this course-UN 1015: Composition--as part of Essential Education, Michigan Tech's foundational education coursework that all students take to work toward common abilities. 

UN1015 is foundational for the rest of your college experiences. Every student pursuing a program of study at Michigan Tech will complete requirements in the Essential Education program (you might have heard of this as a General Education or Liberal Arts set of courses). As part of this coursework, you’ll take 16 credits in “First-Year Experience” (FYE). FYE courses are intended to provide students who are in their first year of college with critical academic and cocurricular knowledge that will set them up for success in their subsequent studies. These include courses in math, the sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts. Further, first-year students also take a Michigan Tech Seminar (a small, discussion-focused course with a goal of community building). UN1015 is one piece of this larger, Essential Education puzzle that helps you develop, and practice, academic literacy skills aligned with subsequent coursework and expected career literacy goals for any discipline.

This genre focuses on analyzing the choices that writers (or composers) make in creating their text.

Analyses of writers' choices are called "rhetorical analysis” in some situations, but many examples of rhetorical analyses focus on specific techniques of persuasion. Because you'll be gathering and analyzing a wide range of texts (not all of which use techniques of persuasion or rhetorical appeals), the focus of this formal assignment is broader: to identify all the elements of what constitutes the situation: audience, purpose, genre convention, publication information, sentence-level choices that align with context, and more. This will most likely be different than examples you would find if you searched for information about "rhetorical analysis" online, so follow the assignment and in-class guidance carefully.

Your second major writing project will focus on gathering and analyzing sources. You might be asked to do one of two types: 

Annotated Bibliography

You may be already familiar with the term bibliography, which is a list of sources used. An annotation is a descriptive paragraph about the source. What exactly is included in the annotation can vary, but it often includes a summary of relevant information from the source, an evaluation of the source, and a discussion of how you found it.

Therefore, an annotated bibliography utilizes both terms to create a detailed list of sources for you and your reader to reference. With an annotated bibliography, there should also be an introduction discussing how you’re exploring the topic and why, along with a general idea of where your research may go.

Annotated bibliographies are extremely useful documents. A primary audience is yourself, because you will use the information collected here to write your journal article. However, documenting your research in progress is also a way to communicate to invested readers about the kinds of inquiry you have engaged in and what search strategies you have used to find sources best suited to your writing and research task.

Worknet

Some instructors in UN 1015 will offer you the option (or require) a "worknet" rather than an annotated bibliography. This kind of assignment serves the same function as the annotated bibliography in that it is intended to help you identify and build relationships between the sources you have gathered; however, it uses more kinds of communication modes (e.g., visual and linguistic) and might be called multimodal. Visual elements are incorporated in order to showcase the connections, comparisons, or contrasts between the sources such as cross-referencing, similar timing of publication, or publication in the same periodical or by the same press. The goal here is the same as an annotated bibliography--to gather, document, and analyze your sources in relation to each other. 

A journal article is an article that is published in a research journal, and it most often contains original research, though you may find other types of articles such as a review article which surveys previous research in the discipline. 

Journals are related to a specific discipline and/or subject matter. The audience is typically other scholars in the field.

You often see similar sections such as an abstract, introductory sections (research topics and arguments, background information), methodology, results, analysis, and conclusions. There is often jargon and specialized language.

However, journal article conventions vary in different disciplines and in different journals.

In this class, you will be encountering this genre in multiple ways. You will be using these types of articles as sources as you conduct research, but you will also be writing a journal article that is targeted towards an undergraduate readership, specifically focused on the Michigan Tech Community. Launched in 2025, Paw Prints: The Michigan Tech Journal of First-Year Writing will provide submission guidelines and constraints to which you will write, along with a purpose, mission, and editorial vision. Likewise, you can consult volume 1, issue 1 for samples of published student work, and at the end of the semester, you are encouraged to submit your polished journal article for consideration for publication in the journal. 

For this assignment, you will work to transform the research you’ve been working on into a new, multimodal genre that combines text and other modes (such as images, sound, and gestures), using the knowledge of audience, purpose, and genre that you’ve developed so far to adapt the argument made in your Journal Article to a new genre and audience. You will repurpose your Journal Article paper to remix it into a medium that requires multimodal decision-making. Your instructor might provide you with a specific genre, or you may have an opportunity to select one from a list of options. This might include an infographic, a poster, a short podcast, or a TikTok. 

These are genres of reflective writing that you will be asked to turn in along with a piece of writing: 

Author's Notes: 

A lot of the focus in our course is on metacognitive knowledge: process related knowledge that includes "task knowledge" and "self-knowledge." These are forms of knowledge that allow you to transfer your skills to new contexts and situations more easily. Author's notes are a reflective text that you include at the top of your formal writing (before the start of the writing task) that describe the following: 

Every formally submitted writing assignment should include an author's notes which explains the following: 

• The process you followed in preparing the document (how did you go about writing it?)
• The stage of development (where are you at in the writing process, what have you accomplished and what do you need to do yet)
• Assessment of areas that are working well and those that you are continuing to develop (what are you proud of, what needs more work)
• Any barriers or roadblocks you have experienced (if relevant--these can be small or large challenges)
• Requests for specific kinds of feedback, for example, to help you move past a barrier or roadblock.
• If you used a Generative AI tool like ChatGPT, write about the purpose for which you used it, at which stage, and how it is reflected in this current draft. Refer directly to the GenAI Responsible Use Matrix. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ec0D0_WiqXB3rPH7cl8CHIETUNCkfnca/view?usp=drive_link

• Prepare an author’s note for any texts that are being peer reviewed or that you have submitted to the instructor for assessment. 

Cover Letter

Portfolio cover letters will be included in your midterm and final portfolio. These are similarly metacognitive documents but approach your writing (and yourself as a writer) at a larger scale. Instead of accompanying one piece of writing, a cover letter addresses the pieces that are included in the portfolio of writing and how they address the learning goals. They might take up the following kinds of questions: 

• How does this compiled set of documents reflect my growth as a writer?
• How does this portfolio of work show my ability to meet the learning outcomes for the course and the Essential Education abilities of communication and reflection? 
• What goals did I set for my self as a writer at the start of the course, and how do the documents included demonstrate progress toward the goals? 
• What has helped me make the most progress? What kinds of activities, steps, conditions, or feedback are most valuable to my writing process? 
• What goals do I have for the future, whether in UN 1015 or in my further college coursework or beyond?
• What parts of my past writing knowledge have you carried with you, and what might you adjust or discard?

These are only some of the kinds of questions you might address in a cover letter. 

Our course uses a portfolio approach. This means that instead of being assessed on a single piece of writing, your progress toward the three areas of the course (rhetorical and genre awareness, critical reading and research, and writing and process knowledge) is evaluated through the work you have completed over a period of time. The course rubric will communicate how the portfolio is assessed. Your midterm portfolio will include approximately 9-10 pages of polished work. 

Final Portfolio

As in your midterm portfolio, you will assemble the revised and polished versions of the drafts you have worked in throughout the entire course, and this portfolio will include the source analysis, topic proposal, journal selection proposal,  annotated bibliography or worknet, journal article, and multimodal assignment. Your intro letter and midterm letter (unrevised) are also part of the portfolio, and you prepare a completely new final portfolio cover letter that will provide guidance for readers and reflect on your past and future writing goals. This metacognitive document should be keyed to the Essential Education abilities of "communicate contextually," "evaluate information," and "reflect" as well as the more focused course goals of "rhetorical and genre awareness," "critical reading and research," and "writing and research process knowledge." 

e-Portfolio

As part of Essential Education (the foundational curriculum and experiences you will have alongside your major), you will begin in your first semester to create and contribute learning artifacts to an e-portfolio. This is an electronic archive of documents that you will select (or be directed to include) from your Essential Education coursework, of which UN 1015 is one piece. Your final portfolio cover letter will be part of your e-portfolio. As you progress through your college coursework, you'll contribute more documents or projects and the e-portfolio serves as a kind of archive of your learning over your time at Michigan Tech. 

Portfolio Principles

According to the Association of American Colleges and Universities, ePortfolios are a "high-impact practice"; this designation means that there is "evidence of significant educational benefits for students who participate in them." Portfolios are used for many purposes, and you may create and share more than one portfolio during your time at Michigan Tech. 

Portfolios, both in this course and in other contexts such as Essential Education, ask you to engage in folio thinking, which is a reflective and metacognitive practice in which you will observe, reflect on, and analyze your learning beyond the context of a single assignment (or, in some cases, a single course). Developing folio thinking can help you, as a student, identify examples of your knowledge and skills, demonstrate those things to others, and transfer knowledge from one situation (such as a class) to another (such as a workplace). 

Portfolios are designed to help you, as students:

• collect examples of your learning, growth, and achievement
• analyze and reflect on your personal and academic learning and growth
• curate (select and organize) examples of your learning for specific purposes
• draw connections across learning experiences over time and/or across spaces (such as different assignments in this class or different courses that you take for your major or minor, or even between courses and other learning opportunities such as Enterprise teams, co-ops, internships, and/or participation in student organizations)
• take responsibility for your learning and set goals for future growth
• share your skills and accomplishments with others, such as professors, mentors, or prospective employers

Portfolios have been common in some professions and disciplines for a long time. For example, visual artists, architects, web and software developers, and marketing professionals often use portfolios to share examples of their previous work with prospective employers and clients. 

When you create a portfolio, consider the following to help you create an effective portfolio:

1. Consider the rhetorical situation: as you continue reading, you will learn that every communication is shaped by factors such as audience, purpose, and context. A portfolio designed to showcase your learning in class will be different than one designed to demonstrate your skills to an employer. Different genres of portfolio will have different conventions.
2. Consider the goals: different portfolios will have different goals, but all portfolios are designed to demonstrate the creator's work. If you are creating a portfolio to showcase your learning, you will probably need to focus on the goals or learning outcomes of the course, major, or minor for which you are creating the portfolio. If you are creating a portfolio for your job search, you will probably need to focus on the skills and qualifications that employers seek, which you can determine by reviewing job advertisements, talking to mentors, and incorporating feedback from your previous experiences in the field. 
3. Collect, select, reflect: 
   1. Collect examples of your work. You will use these examples to show evidence for the things you need to demonstrate in your portfolio (such as your learning).
   2. Select examples that relate to the goals of your portfolio. For example, if you are being asked to demonstrate your learning, consider which examples from your collection best showcase your achievement of a particular goal. 
   3. Reflect on the examples you've chosen and connect them to the goals of your portfolio. 
4. Consider technology, modes, and circulation: the tools you use will affect the final portfolio, including how easy it is for your audience to access the portfolio, how effectively your portfolio incorporates and explains the evidence you've included, and whether you are able to share the portfolio with different audiences or access it in the future.

Career Center Services connects students, employers, alumni, faculty, and staff and offers a wide range of career planning and job search resources.

Military and Veteran Services: The Veterans Service Office is a campus resource that provides an array of services (http:www.mtu.edu/registrar/students/veterans/). Veterans and active duty military personnel with special circumstances (e.g., upcoming deployments, drill requirements, disabilities, etc.) are welcomed and encouraged to communicate these, in advance if possible, to their instructor(s).

Equity: University policy aims to ensure that employees, students, applicants, and visitors are not discriminated against in employment, educational programs and activities on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, height, weight, genetic information, or marital status, disability, or veteran status. Such conduct by any member of the Michigan Tech community is prohibited and individuals engaging in these behaviors are subject to disciplinary procedures. Contact the Office of Equal Opportunity Compliance and Title IX at 7-3310, eocompliance@mtu.edu, or the Report a Concern webpage to seek assistance or to report a concern. For more information about institutional efforts to promote equity, engagement, and belonging, see Engagement and Belonging.

Technology support is available through the IT office (https://www.mtu.edu/it/help/student-resources/).

Counseling Center: For help or to find additional resources, contact Counseling Services at 906-487-2538 or visit the Counseling Services website: https://www.mtu.edu/well-being/ 

1. Gabriela has always really enjoyed writing, but now that she is in college, there are so many types of writing assignments and many of them are new and unfamiliar. How should she start getting organized and motivated?
2. Jake was very comfortable meeting with his high school teachers because he went to a small school and had been working with many of his same instructors for a long time. He feels like his professors seem intimidating and not that interested in helping. What are some ways he can become more comfortable interacting with his teachers?
3. Kayley was very successful in her secondary schooling, taking lots of college credit courses and Advanced Placement exams. However, some of her credits didn’t transfer and now she is enrolled in courses that she feels are not challenging enough. She covered this material ages ago! What are some ways that Kayley can address this situation and remain engaged with courses that feel boring?
4. Rashad likes to read for fun, especially science fiction and current events news articles, but the readings for college are sometimes long and not very interesting. In addition, he’s being asked to find and read scholarly articles which have so much unfamiliar vocabulary and take forever. What are some ways that Rashad can manage his reading workload?
5. When Mac was in a college-credit course while enrolled as a high school student, they were accused by a teacher of plagiarism because they had not remembered to cite a source in the text that had included a sentence from the original source. Mac feels really stressed about doing research-based writing and is not sure how strict college professors will be about citations. What are some strategies they can use to feel more confident?
6. In high school, Risa found that writing came quite easily to her, and often wrote her formal papers for most classes the night before they were due with little revision. Now in college, the workload is heavier, and her first college essay earned a “C” grade which took her by surprise. Frustrated, Risa is trying to figure out how to adjust her writing process to better meet the expectations of college. What might she do?
7. Dylan is a whiz at math and science but has never found writing terribly interesting—more often, stressful. There are so many ways to do it wrong! And it seems like teachers just make up whatever rules they feel like. How can Dylan develop more positive strategies and goals for their college writing tasks?
8. In high school, Benny dreaded peer editing sessions because it seemed like no one in his group gave useful feedback. They just said “good job” and then corrected a few mistakes. Now in college, instructors require peer review and the expectations are a lot more in-depth including reflecting on your writing and identifying specific goals for readers. What are some ways Benny can expand his metacognitive and collaborative learning skills to make the best use of peer review opportunities?
9. Emma is really surprised by the range of approaches her professors use in their classes. In her writing class, the teacher has lots of materials in Canvas and writes out expectations for assignments, but in some of her other classes, the professors announce things once in a class meeting and then expect students to use a lot of assigned resources to complete the project. What are some ways to navigate this range or to clarify expectations in cases where they don’t feel clear?
10. Jin was surprised by the impulse to procrastinate on the work for certain classes, even though they were a 4.0 student in high school. What are some campus resources or other strategies that Jin might use to counter this trend before it has an impact on their academic performance?
11. Drew is confused because the difference between the attitude of his high school teachers was toward Generative AI technology and what his college professors seem to expect is really extreme. In high school he was told never to use AI for any purpose. Now some college professors want him to use it for multiple courses and types of assignments; other instructors say they will fail any assignment that uses Generative AI. What is he supposed to do?