Rationale Writing

M6 Rationale Essay.html

Module 6: Rationale Essay

Final Essay (theoretical rationale for your Syllabus, Assignments, Schedule, and various policies). (15 points)

FORMAT: essay

This essay will explain the theoretical basis for your syllabus, assignments, and schedule including policies for assessment/grading, attendance, late work, OpenAI, etc. 

This explanation is a crucial piece to your teaching: evidence that you are basing your choices in class on what we call "BEST PRACTICES" in the field. What this means is that your choices and goals are based in relevant, current, and respected scholarship in rhetoric and composition. Anyone could think about assigning or assessing writing, but having those choices informed by best practices means that your future students' diverse needs will have been considered. Your choices will have been informed by theories on identity, writing process, assessment, and second language learning, for example. You will have attended to typical Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) in the writing classroom to help students understand that there are goals to be met that include transferable skills. 

Undergraduate students will be expected to write about 8-10 pages and Graduate Students 10-12 pages.

Build your Rationale Essay just like you would a research essay. You will need an open/close, reasons, in-text citations, and a works cited page. Think about introducing the reader to your class: basically explain how you got there and how you made your choices. Essentially you are writing about the reasons why you made certain choices in these documents, what theories they are based in (your evidence), and what it all means. That is - why is it important? When you get to talk about your materials at a hiring meeting or in a teaching demo or in an application, this essay will inform your speech. Having good ideas, a good theory base, and reasons for what you do and why you think it will work will be really persuasive to your audience. 

I encourage you to not only assign multimodal projects for your students, but also I encourage you to use multimodal techniques for this rationale essay. You can add infographics, insert personalized videos about your teaching decisions, add images, etc. Remember that an essay can be written or visual and sometimes both. You need to "show the work" of your syllabus by discussing the theories you are using for best practices, but this can be done textually and visually, if desired. What matters is that the research, structure, and clarity are solid. 

Any multimodal elements count toward you page count.

Due Date

The Rationale Essay is due April 22nd:  Final Rationale Essay

From the Assessments dropdown menu, Assignments.

1. Select Rationale Essay. Upload the Essay here. Final Rationale Essay
2. For second submission: Select Teaching Portfolio. Upload the syllabus and other documents here. 
3. Submit all documents at the end of the class to the Teaching Portfolio box Teaching Portfolio