Eng300-700 Health Professions · Professions ! 2 Course Guide for English 300 This guide contains the course syllabus, writing assignment prompts, grading rubrics, and other materials

Course Guide

English 300-700 Spring 2014

Writing in the Disciplines:

Communication in the Health Professions

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Course Guide for English 300 This guide contains the course syllabus, writing assignment prompts, grading rubrics, and other materials that you will be writing this term. Table of Contents Course Syllabus p. 3 Six Rules for Submitting Assignments in Blackboard p. 8 Basic E-mail and Discussion Board Etiquette and Guidelines p. 10 Example Successful and Unsuccessful E-mails p. 11 Basic Discussion Board Etiquette and Guidelines p. 13 Grading Rubric for Discussion Board—50 Point Rubric p. 14 Assignment Prompt: Practice Assignment w/Rubric p. 15 Assignment Prompt: Summaries of Scholarly Sources w/Rubric p. 17 Example Scholarly Summaries p. 20 Assignment Prompt: Proposal w/Annotated Bibliography w/Rubric p. 24 Example Proposal w/Annotated Bibliography p. 29 Assignment Prompt: Critical Review w/Rubric p. 33

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Course Syllabus English 300-700: Writing in the Disciplines (3 credit hours), Spring 2014 Instructor: Dr. Christopher Ervin Class Time/Location: Online E-mail: [email protected] Office Location: Cherry Hall 100 Phone: (270) 745-4650 Office Hours: By appointment in person or online Your continued enrollment in this course constitutes your acceptance of this syllabus as a learning contract. By remaining enrolled in this course, you agree to abide by the policies outlined above. Course Focus This section of English 300 is designed specifically for students entering the health professions. The course requires students to read, research, and write about communication in the health professions throughout the course. All course readings (not related to writing instruction) will focus on various aspects of communication among health professionals, between health professionals and the public (including patients and patients’ families), and other aspects of communication. Required Texts Lunsford, Andrea. (2010). Easy writer. Boston: Bedford. ISBN 9780312650315. Various research reports, case reports, academic journal articles, and excerpts from writing instruction texts available as downloadable PDFs via our Blackboard course. Also, students should own the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association 6th edition or use the Lunsford book for your APA citations or the Diana Hacker Research and Documentation guide, which is linked from the Blackboard course. Catalog Description & General Education Goals Met by this Course Interdisciplinary writing course to be taken in the junior year. Students will read and write about challenging texts from a number of fields. Each student will produce a substantial research project appropriate to his or her chosen field. English 300 helps to fulfill the A.1. (Organization and Communication of Ideas) general education requirement at WKU. The course will help you attain these general education goals and objectives: 1. The capacity for critical and logical thinking and 2. Proficiency in reading, writing, speaking. Prerequisite: ENG 200 or equivalent. Important Dates Monday, January 27: Classes begin Monday, February 3: Last day to add a class or drop a class without a grade March 10-14: Spring Break. No class assignments due this week. Friday, March 21: Last day to withdraw from a class Monday, April 7: FN date (60% point of the semester) May 12-16: Final Exam week (no final exam in this course) Goals and Objectives This course gives students advanced instruction and practice in writing and reading essays within the various health disciplines and makes students aware of how disciplinary conventions and rhetorical situations call for different choices in language, structure, format, tone, citation, and documentation. Students conduct investigations into writing conventions in their respective health disciplines and receive advanced instruction in planning, drafting, arranging, revising, and editing discipline-‐specific essays. Reading assignments stress how knowledge is made and reported in the health professions. Students learn how to evaluate primary and secondary sources for accuracy, authority, bias, and relevance and how to synthesize different points of view within their essays. Building on skills and experience obtained in lower-‐division writing classes, this course stresses writing that employs advanced reading strategies, critical thinking, synthesis of various sources, research, and argumentation. The goal of this course is for students to improve both the kind of academic writing they do in college, and the thinking and writing skills necessary for professional and personal development.

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By the end of English 300, students should be able to: • Write longer formal essays--including at least one essay that advances an academic argument--that include

significant support from appropriate scholarly sources • Use a citation style appropriate to their discipline (in this specific section, APA is required) • Make choices of voice, tone, format, structure and usage based on an analysis of disciplinary and academic

conventions • Employ their own writing processes to produce academic and disciplinary texts that include significant and

properly formatted sources • Work in a collaborative setting both with their own texts and with those of other students and • Be able to read disciplinary essays and to comment critically on their meaning and structure. Major Assignments You will write summaries (300-400 words each), an annotated bibliography of 15 sources to be used in your major critical review essay (summaries = 75-150 words each) plus a proposal for the critical review (600+ words), a critical review essay (3000+ words), and a final short essay reflecting on listening in your specific health discipline (900+ words). Grading Scale and Minimum Requirements for Passing This Course Students who wish to pass this course must first (1) complete and submit all major assignments (annotated bibliography, proposal, critical review, and listening essay); and (2) submit only writing that has been produced this semester for this section of English 300 (see “Recycled Writing” policy below). Course grades will then be determined based on the following scale: Assignments Summaries (4 total) 200 (25; 50; 50; 75 pts respectively) Proposal w/Annotated Bibliography 200 Critical Review 300 Essay: Listening in your Profession 100 Participation1 200 Total 1000 Final Grading Scale 1000-900 = A 899-800 = B 799-700 = C 699-600 = D Below 600 = F A Note on Length of Writing Writing assignment prompts will specify word ranges or minimum length requirements, such as “150-200 words” or “minimum of 3000 words.” Grades on assignments that do not meet these length requirements will be reduced by 25% (see “25% Rule” below). This applies to assignments that exceed the maximum word count when a word-range has been specified. Recycled Writing: All writing submitted for English 300 must be produced this semester for English 300. Students who submit writing completed during previous attempts at English 300 or writing submitted for other courses must rewrite the assignment, and a mandatory 25% penalty will be applied to the new submission. Students who continue to recycle old papers will fail the course. Participation For this online course, participation will be defined as submitting assignments (short and longer), including 1 Participation includes Blackboard discussion, various short writing assignments, quizzes, reflective e-mails, drafts of longer writing assignments, and other miscellaneous homework.

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Discussion Board (DB) postings. Students who submit assignments on time and post to the DB as directed will be considered “participating” students in the course. Students who stop “participating” on or before the 60% point in the semester will be assigned an FN grade instead of an F. The grade of FN might negatively affect a student’s scholarship eligibility, financial aid, loan repayment requirements, and on-campus housing eligibility, among other things. Students who feel they will not finish the course should withdraw prior to the deadline for withdrawing from a course. A warning for students who expect to be “out of town” or in some other way “unavailable” for an extended period of time (one week or more): My advice is to drop the course unless you can continue to fully commit the necessary time and effort to the course while you’re “out of town” or “unavailable.” If you will not have a reliable internet connection and the tools necessary to complete coursework for a period of time longer than five days at any point in the term, you run the risk of falling behind and failing the course. Submission of Work All work will be submitted in Blackboard as uploaded documents (not copied->pasted into the text box on the submission page). Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx), OpenOffice (.odt), or Rich Text Format (.rtf) are the only acceptable file formats for document submission for this course. When submitting an assignment in Blackboard, students must click the “Submit” button to finish uploading the file, not the “Save as Draft” button at the bottom of the submission screen. Clicking “Save as Draft” will allow the document to be retrieved by the student, but the instructor will NOT have access to the document. Assignments that are late because the students clicked “Save as Draft” instead of “Submit” will not receive credit or will be subject to the 25% rule. Accidentally saving the document instead of submitting it is the most common reason an assignment fails to submit correctly. Students may e-mail assignments to the instructor only when specifically requested by the instructor. Normally, assignments that are not available for the instructor in Blackboard by the due date at midnight will be considered late (see late work policy below). Due Dates All work in the course will be due by midnight central time on the day listed in the Unit Schedules. Late Work & Make-Up Policy Online classes require that you recognize deadlines and meet them. Grades on major assignments that are submitted late will be reduced according to the 25% rule, explained below. No other coursework will be accepted late. It is the student’s responsibility to keep up with class assignments. The class schedule has a clear due date for each assignment on it. Students are encouraged to work ahead and submit their assignments early rather than late in order to earn the highest grade possible. Students who know they will be unavailable for any reason may arrange in advance to submit work according to an appropriate alternative schedule that is agreed upon by the instructor and student. Otherwise, no “make-up” for assignments, quizzes, etc., will be accepted. IMPORTANT POLICY The 25% Rule for Assignments that Do Not Meet Basic Requirements The grade on any major assignment that does not meet the minimum requirements (marked with an * in the writing assignment prompts) will be reduced by up to 25% automatically. Examples of “minimum requirements” are length, submission deadline, minimum number of drafts, minimum number of sources, and so on. For example, if an assignment has a 1200-word minimum requirement, that means that 1200 words excluding works cited/references are the absolute minimum accepted and that, for example, an assignment that is 1070 words long, including the works cited/references, does not meet the “minimum requirements.” Grades for such assignments will be automatically reduced by up to 25%, at the discretion of the instructor. Another example: if the annotated bibliography assignment calls for 15 scholarly sources and only eight scholarly sources are submitted, the grade will be automatically reduced by up to 25%. NOTE: This rule applies only to major assignments, not participation homework activities, which are not accepted late for any reason. Failure of Technology Technological failure of any kind is no excuse for submitting assignments late or failing to submit assignments. Students who are not confident with their technology skills are encouraged to work ahead and submit work early. All students should back up their work on a flash drive or e-mail files to themselves. Using Google Drive or DropBox is also a great way to back up work and get access to it from multiple computers and portable devices.

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Instructor E-mail I will usually respond to e-mails within 48 hours or, if received over the weekend, by the end of the day Monday, and I expect my students to do the same. I typically do not check e-mail during the weekend or after 4:00 pm on weekdays. Student E-mail and Blackboard Announcements All students should check their WKU email accounts and the Blackboard Announcements page at least once each weekday. Not checking email or the Announcements page is not an excuse for not keeping up with course assignments or updates. When you e-mail me, appropriate etiquette for professional e-mails is expected. Don’t take offense if you receive a response to a poorly-written e-mail with a request for you to revise it and send it again. The Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab) provides a useful set of guidelines for composing professional e-mails at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/636/01/ , and in the course FAQ in Blackboard, I have provided an e-mail etiquette document. Please use it. IMPORTANT POLICY Academic Integrity Plagiarism/Academic Fraud occurs when a student knowingly or unknowingly submits another person’s published or unpublished (print or web) writing as his/her own, has another person dictate what should be written, has another person write an assignment and submits that work as his/her own, or copies/”borrows” another person’s ideas/progression of argument without acknowledgment or permission. Students must complete their own work in this class, and they should not ask for or receive inappropriate assistance on their work. Students who violate this policy should understand that, at the instructor’s discretion, they might automatically fail this course. On the other hand, students who decide to do their own work will challenge themselves intellectually; these students decide to abide by ethical principles that illustrate they value the educational opportunities presented to them and that they believe the quality of their contributions should be given a fair evaluation. In this course, we trust each other to adhere to the principles of academic integrity discussed in this section of the course syllabus. My assumption is that you will submit work that is your own because you wish to be evaluated on the quality of your own work rather than the quality of someone else’s and that you understand that doing otherwise is unethical. However, if I begin to question the integrity of your work, I will investigate the originality of your work using SafeAssign and other plagiarism detection tools. Plagiarism or academic dishonesty on any single assignment, including quizzes, exams, reflective assignments, outlines, proposals, Discussion Board posts, other short papers, or early drafts of longer papers will result in a course penalty up to course failure. The severity of the penalty will be at the discretion of the instructor, depending on the nature of the violation. Length or nature of the assignment are not factors affecting the course penalty. In other words, plagiarism on a one-‐page paper could result in course failure just like plagiarism in a six-‐page paper might; or cheating on a daily quiz could result in course failure just like cheating on a final exam might. All instances of academic dishonesty will be referred formally to the WKU Office of Judicial Affairs and, in some cases, to the department heads or program directors of the student’s major discipline. SafeAssign Final drafts of all papers must be submitted through SafeAssign in Blackboard. Students will have the option of submitting drafts of papers to SafeAssign in advance in order to check for inadequate paraphrase or errors in quoting. Research Requirements Typically, all sources used in this course must be current, relevant, scholarly research accessed from print sources or library databases. Other sources, like credible websites, newspapers, magazines, and the like will be accepted only if the student justifies the use of such non-scholarly sources. Use of scholarly sources constitutes a “basic requirement” on all assignments unless otherwise noted on the assignment prompt.

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Extra Credit No extra credit will be offered in this course. My experience has been that it is the students who aren’t completing the “regular credit” assignments who ask for “extra credit.” Students who complete the work in the course and revise according to my feedback should have no trouble earning a C or higher. The Writing Center The Writing Center has locations in Cherry Hall 123 and in the Commons at Cravens Library on the Bowling Green campus. The Glasgow Writing Center is located in room 231 on the Glasgow campus. The Writing Center also offers online consultations for students who live at a distance or who cannot visit during our operating hours. Our writing tutors have been trained to provide helpful feedback to students at all phases of a writing project: they can help you brainstorm ideas, structure your essay, clarify your purpose, strengthen your support, and edit for clarity and correctness. But they will not revise or edit the paper for you. See instructions on the website (www.wku.edu/writingcenter) for making online or face-to-face appointments. Or call (270) 745-5719 during our operating hours (also listed on our website) for help scheduling an appointment. More information about the Glasgow Writing Center hours can be found at the website: http://www.wku.edu/glasgow/writingcenter.php Incompletes Typically, incompletes will not be granted for this course. When extenuating circumstances arise—for example, if a student in the military and is deployed toward the end of the semester, or if a student has a personal or medical crisis that comes up toward the end of the semester—the student must discuss the situation with me if possible and I will consider an incomplete. I will only consider an incomplete for students who are in good standing (C or higher) in the course. Respectful Behavior and General Civility In my classes, I like to have free and open discussions of what we think and feel about the things we read and write. To that end, I ask that everyone be respectful of each other, even if we don’t agree about everything. If someone chooses to use hateful, bigoted, or inappropriate language, I will first consult with that student and, if the behavior continues, I will remove that student from the course. Resolving Complaints about Grades Any student who takes issue with a grade or another aspect of a course ordinarily speaks with the instructor first. If the student and instructor cannot resolve the issue, the student may refer the matter to the Department Head, who will assist the instructor and the student in reaching a resolution. If either party is dissatisfied with the outcome at that level, the matter may be appealed further. The Student Handbook (available online at http://www.wku.edu/handbook/) outlines procedures for appeals beyond the department level. I encourage you to ask me about all matters pertaining to grading, fairness, and course policies prior to approaching the Department Head. ADA Notice Students with disabilities who require accommodations (academic and/or auxiliary aids or services) for this course must contact the Office for Student Disability Services, Room A200, Downing University Center. The OFSDS telephone number is (270) 745-5004 V/TDD. Please do not request accommodations directly from the instructor without a letter of accommodation from the Office for Student Disability Services. Program Assessment Notice As part of a university-wide accreditation study, a small sample of papers will be collected from randomly-selected individuals in all ENG 300 classes this semester. The papers will be examined anonymously as part of a program assessment; results will have no bearing on student assessment or course grades.

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The Six Rules for Submitting Assignments in Blackboard Rule 1. The first rule begins before you even get to Blackboard. To assist your instructor in keeping your work organized, always begin your assignments with the proper title page or heading with your name, instructor's name, date, etc. according to the documentation style you've chosen to use in this course. AND when you save the file, name it according to this template: yourfirstname_yourlastname_assignment-title.docx Example: christopher_ervin_summary2.docx or albert_dumbledore_synthesisessay.odt or cosmo_kramer_researchessaydraft2.rtf Rule 2. Submit assignments by uploading them (using the “Attach File” tool) as MS Word (.doc or .docx), Rich Text Format (.rtf), or OpenOffice (.odt) files. If you don't get it, see the course FAQ. If you use a word processor other than Word or OpenOffice, you must know now to use the "Save As" function and save as one of these approved file formats. No exceptions to this rule.

Rule 3. Never write anything in the Submission or Comments box on the assignment submission page. Don't write "Hey Dr. Ervin, here's my paper. Peace out! -JakeZ" in the comments box. I don’t read those comments, so don’t write anything. Rule 4. When you've finished browsing for your file and have selected it to upload, DO click the "Submit" button; DO NOT click the "Save as Draft" button.

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Rule 5. Always back up your work, especially if you're working in a public lab. E-mail your assignments to yourself, upload them to your Z-drive, X-drive, X-men drive, or whatever. Rule 6. Submit your writing to SafeAssign prior to final submission to check for accidental plagiarism, inadequate paraphrase, and quoting errors. I will create a SafeAssign submission link for each major assignment as well as a submission link for the final draft. Use the SafeAssign submission process to work through any documentation or accidental plagiarism issues (like inadequate paraphrase) in your first draft so those problems do not remain in the final draft.

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Basic E-mail and Discussion Board Etiquette and Guidelines E-mail is a means of correspondence that can take many forms, from informal/personal to formal/professional. That said, e-mail is more like letter or memo writing than it is like texting, so complete (spelled-out) words, correct punctuation, and complete sentences are important qualities of almost all e-mail. Beyond that, the rules vary depending on whether the e-mail is personal or professional. Since professional e-mails are expected in this course, students should err on the side of formality. Visit http://owl.english.purdue.edu/ and type in “e-mail etiquette” in the search box for a primer on writing professional e-mails. Discussion Board postings are comparable to class discussion, so they can be less formal than professional e-mails, but DB postings should still adhere to basic grammar, spelling, and punctuation guidelines for standard written English. NO TXTING in the DB, but smilies and other emoticons are fine JJ. Also, DB postings should be civil and polite, detailed and thorough. See the “Grading Criteria for Discussion Board” document (Blackboard->Course Materials->Grading Documents) for more details. In this course, when you send me an e-mail I expect it to be professionally written and formal in diction, tone, and content. If it is not, I will e-mail back with either some feedback on how to do better next time or, if it's too far from the mark, a request for you to revise the e-mail and resend it, along with instructions on how what to change. Don't be offended if you receive either of these kinds of responses; learning to write appropriate professional e-mails is a goal for this writing course, and you will be graded on your improvement over the term as well as the overall quality of your e-mail correspondence with me. In most instances, use these guidelines for communicating via e-mail or the DB: • E-mails should be professionally written with descriptive subject lines, appropriate salutations, complete

sentences and full/correct punctuation, and appropriate closings. Salutations include “Dear Dr. Ervin,” or “Dear Professor Ervin.” Appropriate closings include, but aren’t limited to, “Sincerely,” “Best regards,” “Cordially,” and “Thank you.”

• Discussion Board postings should be civil, professional, and courteous. That said, DB postings need not use formal diction, as they are meant as class discussion, but students should provide descriptive subject lines, and they should use complete sentences and full/correct punctuation.

• E-mail and DB postings should be written with appropriate capitalization, not in ALL CAPS, and not all lower case.

• Words should be spelled out fully, and should be spelled correctly. No txting, BIODTL. • Students should re-read and proofread e-mails before sending them; students should check to make sure

that any files that are supposed to be attached are actually attached before clicking “send.”

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Example Successful and Unsuccessful E-mails Poorly-Written E-mail

What’s wrong with this e-mail? • No subject line • No attached document • No salutation • “I” isn’t capitalized; the text is almost all in lower case. • Missing periods at the ends of sentences • No closing • Initials only (no name to close the e-mail), and they’re lower case.

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Same E-mail Revised After Feedback

What’s new in this revision? • Subject line appropriately describes the contents of the e-mail message and includes the course number

and section • The promised document is attached • The salutation “Dear Dr. Ervin,” begins the e-mail • The e-mail is punctuated properly and is written using appropriate capitalization • The closing “Cordially,” closes the e-mail, with the full name of the student following it. • Also, it doesn’t utilize TXT-speak or emoticons, and it asks for a confirmation response from the instructor.

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Example Discussion Board Postings Poorly-written DB postings, which earn zero points: "I agree." "Wow, that must have been really annoying!" "I'll check." "Visit www.cnn.com" [These 4 are fine to do and viewed favorably as signs of sociability, but they don't reveal thoughtfulness about the course material.] "In my humble opinion, this situation is one that requires a lot of thought and expertise before an answer can be achieved. It is something the experts will debate for many years, no doubt." [However lengthy, there is no content in this posting.] Sufficient postings, which earn half credit [could easily be no credit depending on the total context]: "I agree. The point you bring up is similar to the author’s comments in chapter 2." [Not enough information.] "Wow, that must have been really annoying! I once was trying to take a standardized test and the teacher started giving out the answers. I really question the validity of that measure." [Not clear if the person knows what validity is or is just using it because it sounds good there.] Example of a superior posting, which earns full credit: “I’ve studied the politics of the 1950s in my History class, and we read about McCarthyism and the Red Scare, and we also read about more recent developments in losses of privacy with regard to the ‘War on Terror.’ What I find fascinating are these historical parallels. Seems we’re doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past so long as the context changes ever so slightly (we don’t go Communist-hunting anymore; now we go terrorist hunting). Government intruding into the private lives of its citizens fundamentally contradicts the Bill of Rights and the principles upon which democracy is founded. Wire-tapping without FISA approval (see http://www.fletc.gov/training/programs/legal-division/downloads-articles-and-faqs/articles/foreign-intelligence-surveillance-act.html for details about FISA) is just one contemporary development that mirrors the atrocities of the McCarthy era. With every new warrantless surveillance operation on U.S. citizens, our democratic rights are diminished a bit. Your thoughts, fellow citizens?” Academic Integrity Warning for Discussion Board All writing in the Discussion Board must be original unless proper quotation/paraphrase/summary plus documentation provides credit to borrowed material. Assume that DB assignments that are found to contain undocumented borrowed ideas or language from other sources will result in a significant course penalty, up to course failure.

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Grading Rubric for Discussion Board—50 Point Rubric

Student Name: _____________________________ Grade (out of 50 points): ________ See highlighted grade description below for explanation of your final DB grade

Discussion board postings are a regular part of this course. Although we won’t have a DB forum every day, when we do, you are expected to contribute meaningfully. DB posts are part of your participation grade, and will be graded holistically. In other words, I don’t assign points for each forum post. I evaluate the entire semester’s worth of DB activity and assign a grade for the entire semester. If a Discussion Forum is scheduled over a number of days, posts must be spread out throughout the period, not posted on the final day of the discussion. For example, if a discussion is posted for March 20-26, a rule of thumb is to post on March 20 prior to midnight and then revisit the DB on March 24 and post again after reading others’ posts. Finally, visit the DB again on March 26 and post responses to others’ posts if the opportunity arises. What you should not do is post just once, just before midnight, on the date the DB ends. For this course, DB activity will total 50 participation points of the final course grade. The opportunity to earn more than 50 points is described in the last bullet point below. Specific requirements of the DB follow: • Students who contribute consistently, meaningfully, and thoughtfully, and contribute regularly will earn 45

points credit for their DB activity. A good guide here is 3+ DB posts per forum—1 original posting in response to the prompt (early in DB period) and at least 2+ meaningful responses to other students’ posts.

• Students whose contributions are thoughtful and well developed but who might contribute less frequently throughout the DB period will earn 37.5 points. A good guide here is 2 posts per forum—1 original posting in response to the prompt, with 1 meaningful responses to other students’ posts.

• Students who contribute from time to time, or perhaps whose postings are very brief and posted regularly just before the deadline or after the deadline, will earn 12.5 points.

• Students who rarely contribute, or whose contributions almost always look like the “poor posts” described below, will earn 0 points.

• To earn 50 or more points, students must not only contribute to the DB as described in the first bullet above,

but also interact meaningfully with others through the DB, sometimes participating in dialogues with other students, and responding thoughtfully and consistently to others’ posts. A guide here is more than 4 DB posts per Discussion Forum, with several meaningful responses to other students’ posts for each forum. Students who earn 50+ points will consistently contribute in this way all semester, and will post throughout the week for almost all forums.

A note about use of sources/research in DB posts If you use any other source, including your classmates’ ideas or actual words, you must follow standard documentation guidelines. If you need to cite a source in the DB, a shortened version of the standard works cited or references entry is fine, but you must at least do that. You must also enclose verbatim text in quotation marks, as you would in a formal paper. Academic Integrity Due to the highly collaborative nature of the DB, students must mindful of academic honesty guidelines. Use of others’ ideas must be documented fully. See course syllabus for academic integrity rules.

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Assignment Prompt: Practice Assignment Overview/Purpose of Assignment This assignment is intended to help familiarize you with the process of downloading writing assignment prompts, gauge your ability to follow directions for completing writing assignments, determine whether you are able to upload your writing assignments (and other participation activities) using the correct process and in the correct file format, and determine your understanding of APA formatting and documentation.. Due Date and Submission Process Submit to BboardàSubmit Writing HereàSubmit Unit 1 Assignments Here. Submit as a Microsoft Word or rich text format document only. Upload your file; do not type anything into the “submission” box. Due date listed in Unit Schedule and on submission link. Grading 5 points Length 50-100 words for short paragraph The Assignment

1. Review the formatting requirements for the APA style of documentation. Review those requirements in your APA style guide and in Blackboard->Style & Documentation.

2. Open a new document on your word processor. Format the document as required by the APA documentation style, but you don’t have to include an abstract on page 2. On the first BODY page of the paper (which will be page 2 since the title page is page 1), write a short paragraph about an instance in which an attempt by you to communicate with someone in the context of the health professions has been challenging or particularly difficult, and how you met that challenge.

3. Save the document in one of the three acceptable file formats (see course syllabus if you don’t remember which file formats are acceptable; see course FAQ if you don’t know how to save a document in an alternative file format).

4. Submit the assignment in Blackboard->Submit Writing Here->Submit Practice Assignment Here. If you have questions about this assignment or if you’re having problems, see the course FAQ.

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Note to students: This rubric is more than is necessary for the simple practice assignment you completed, but I'm providing the full "rubric effect" so you can see how the feedback process works. Normally, in addition to the rubric/grade attached to an assignment, you will find feedback written into the margins of your assignment.

Practice Assignment

Earned Possible

Writing accomplishes the purpose it is supposed to: Write a short paragraph introducing yourself to me—tell me about your major, the kind of writing you’ve done in your major, the documentation style your major uses, and the documentation style you’ve chosen to use for this course __ 3

Formatting: Assignment follows correct APA guidelines __ 1

Submission: Assignment was submitted correctly in Blackboard (file in correct format, submitted in correct spot in Blackboard __ 1

Does the assignment meet all minimum requirements, as indicated with an asterisk* on the assignment prompt? YES NO

Penalty for failure to meet minimum requirements? (25%) n/a -1.25

Total __ 5

Comments:

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Assignment Prompt: Summaries of Scholarly Sources *Items marked with an * are considered “minimum requirements” for this assignment, and failure to meet those minimum requirements will reduce the grade by up to 25% automatically. Overview In academic writing, we often use summaries of scholarly sources (books, book chapters, journal articles, websites, government documents, and so on) to demonstrate that we understand a position, or to offer support for our own position, or to extend an argument. We sometimes use summaries to provide information to others about the main argument in a particular source. Some disciplines don’t use the term “summaries.” Instead, they call them abstracts. Either way, a summary or abstract is a summation of the main points in a source—the main argument, evidence that supports the argument, research methods, and other important information from the source. In science, math, engineering, and other similar disciplines, including the health professions, we must often make sense of graphic texts, as well, and communicate the overall conclusions of tables, charts, and graphs to audiences. Purpose of the Assignment To read actively and identify the main points of selected scholarly sources (articles, case reports, and graphic texts); to summarize the sources concisely; to write a correct APA bibliographic entry for each source. Directions Read the source you wish to summarize carefully and critically, using the active reading strategies outlined in The Norton Field Guide to Writing, chapter 40 (excerpt, downloadable in Blackboard). Identify the major ideas and the main argument/point of the source. Then write an APA bibliographic citation for the source and a summary of the source. Content and Length of Summaries Because scholarly sources contain a lot of detailed information about the subject, your job in the summary will be to boil all of that information down into 300-400 words. This is a FIRM word range—do not write fewer than 300 words, and do not write more than 400 words. Do not count the heading or citation in your word count—just the text of the summary. Summaries must be written in full, complete prose sentences. They should introduce the source at the beginning by acknowledging the author and perhaps the title of the source (book, journal, etc); for example, one might begin like this: “In this recent study of the media’s coverage of global climate change, Johnson observes that news organizations such as Fox News and Huffington Post have clear political and ideological biases.” Also, the summary should have some kind of “flow” or coherence; it shouldn’t be “choppy.” Important Elements of the Summary Summaries must identify the major threads, patterns, and themes in the source. Don’t dwell on the details (to do so will force you to exclude important information). Also, do not evaluate, editorialize, or offer your personal reaction to the source. Your job is to represent the overall content of the text, not to judge it. And your job is to provide your reader (me) with an accurate representation of the overall content, not to reproduce what you consider to be the most interesting details. Also, remember that a summary covers the entire text, not the first half or first few pages. Students who clearly have not read the entire text will earn very low grades on these assignments. *Format & Citation Preceding (i.e. before) each summary will be a correctly formatted APA bibliographic entry. See Easy Writer and Bboard->Style/Documentation for assistance with correct formatting. Again, the bibliographic citation should precede the text of the summary; there should be no separate references page. See example scholarly summary in this Course Guide for formatting. This formatting requirement forecasts the annotated bibliography assignment’s format, which will come later in the course.

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*Length Summary must be 300-400 words FIRM. Do not write fewer than 300 words, and do not write more than 400 words. Do not count the heading or citation in your word count—just the text of the summary. *Use of Your Own Words The summary must be written in your own words—except that you might quote a particularly memorable or un-paraphrasable passage from the source. In that case, you must follow the rules for quoting in Easy Writer. Students who are found to have copied other sources (like Wikipedia) instead of reading and summarizing the source on their own will be subject to the plagiarism policy in the course syllabus. Grading & Due Dates Summary 1: 25 points Summary 2: 50 points Summary 3: 50 points Summary 4: 75 points Due dates: Various; listed in BlackboardàUnit Schedules Submitting the Assignments Upload your submission as a Word, Rich Text Format, or Open Office document. Submit by uploading to Bboard->Submit Writing Here->Submit Unit 2 Assignments Here. Use the following template for naming your files: yourfirstname_yourlastname_scholarlysummary#.docx . Example: christopher_ervin_scholarlysummary1.docx. This is how to name the file, not how to title your essay. Academic Integrity Warning Often, scholarly sources are summarized already, and you’ll be able to find those summaries online or prominently featured at the beginning of journal articles (this is called the abstract). Do not use these summaries to write yours. To do so constitutes academic dishonesty and plagiarism and will result in a course penalty up to course failure. Do your own reading and summarizing. The skill you will learn from practicing summary is to read actively, identify the source’s thesis and major supporting points, and communicate them to an audience in writing. When a student reads the published abstract from a source (like those abstracts that precede the full text of an article or the abstracts that are available in a search results list from Ebsco or other databases) and writes a summary based on reading the abstract instead reading and digesting the article itself are undermining the teaching and learning in the course.

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Scholarly Summary (25 pt version)

Earned Possible

Organization (paragraphs have topic sentences, focus remains on topic) __ 4

Development (summary includes main points of entire text, not just a part of the text, and summary doesn't dwell on trivial details)

__ 5

Clarity: summary is clear for a reader who hasn't read the original text; individual sentences are written in a way that is easy to understand

__ 4

Grammar/Punctuation/Spelling __ 4

Correctly formatted bibliographic entry included with the summary; quotations are cited properly for the documentation style; paper is formatted correctly

__ 4

Formatting (APA--margins, font, header, etc.) are correct. __ 4

Does the summary meet all minimum requirements, as indicated with an asterisk* on the assignment prompt? YES NO

Penalty for failure to meet minimum requirements? (25%) __ -6.25

Total __ 25

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Example Scholarly Summaries Note: These summaries were not written for the assignment that calls for 300-400 words, so they’re shorter than the ones you’ll be writing at the beginning of the semester.

Scholarly Summary 8

[STUDENT]

Western Kentucky University

Author Note

This paper was prepared on [DATE] for English 300 Section [###] taught by Dr.

Christopher Ervin.

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Scholarly Summary 8

Gillespie, B.B., Chaboyer, W., & Murray, P. (2010). Enhancing communication in surgery

through team training interventions: A systematic literature review. AORN Journal,

92(6), 642-657. In this literature review, the researchers analyzed outcomes of multiple

team training interventions that took place in the OR. These interventions are activated

to provide structure and effective communication, as well as increase patient safety

outcomes in the OR. Some of the interventions included checklists, education

workshops, simulations, and debriefings (p. 652). According to Gillespie, Chaboyer, and

Murray (2010), most ORs use a combination of team training interventions (bundled

interventions) to achieve positive results, while only 33% of ORs use just one type of

intervention (p. 653). Also, the results indicated positive team-based outcomes as a

direct result to team trainings (p. 654). Gillespie et al. (2010) also noted several

limitations in their research. For instance, they primarily focused on communication for

their study and left out other key areas, such as decision-making and leadership (p.

654). Furthermore, Gillespie et al. (2010) suggested ongoing studies to evaluate the

relationship between team performance and outcome data, as well as the validity of

team training interventions in the OR (p. 655). Most importantly, the researchers

concluded, communication and positive patient safety outcomes directly stem from team

training interventions in the OR (p. 655).

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Scholarly Summary 8

[STUDENT]


Author Note

This paper was prepared on [DATE] for English 300 Section [###] taught by Dr.

Christopher Ervin.

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Scholarly Summary 8

Burley, D (2011). Better communication in the emergency department. Emergency Nurse,

19(2), 32-36. The purpose of Burley’s literature review is to examine the role that

interruptions play on a nurse’s ability to manage patient care, especially with respect to

history taking. The data focused on ENP’s or “emergency nurse practitioners”, a

specific nomenclature introduced in the 1980s in the UK to describe nurses hired with

the goal of enhancing effective communication among those patients with “complex

needs” (Burley, 2011, p. 32). However, as Burley (2011) explains in his own background

summary, the role of an ENP evolved over time until these nurses, who were initially

charged with facilitating effective communication, became sidetracked by overload of

job duties and responsibilities. Senior nurses who “struggled to switch off’” (p. 35) were

particularly at risk since they seemed unable to manage interruptions using strategies

like delegating tasks, establish boundaries, and deflecting requests for help. Because

Burley is covering eight articles in his review of the extant literature, there are naturally a

variety of study methods, which ultimately form the research. The studies ranged from

interviews to observations in real time, and yet all the literature supported the

hypothesis that repeated interruptions caused “information overload”, which severely

hampered the ENP nurse’s ability to provide quality patient care.

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English 300 Research Paper Proposal + Annotated Bibliography *Items marked with an * are considered “minimum requirements” for this assignment, and failure to meet those minimum requirements will reduce the grade by up to 25% automatically. Overview/Purpose The purpose of this proposal plus annotated bibliography is to propose a topic, research question(s), focus, and tentative annotated bibliography of source material that will guide you as you draft and revise your critical review essay. The annotated bibliography section of this assignment will include bibliographic citations and annotations (summaries) for sufficient number of credible scholarly and professional sources (journal articles, books, and occasional government documents or credible websites) that will provide a context and background for your research related to a current issue related to communication in the health professions. This assignment will facilitate your final critical review essay for this course. Content The proposal section of this assignment must identify the following, each in a separate paragraph or multi-paragraph section (see example on next pages): I. Section one identifies and describes the general topic of the paper, background, and context—

how it is relevant to the course theme, why it is relevant to the student’s discipline/future career, and so on. In other words, why are you investigating this issue? Why is it important? Although it’s not required, you may include a tentative thesis statement for your researched argumentative essay if you’ve thought that far ahead. (Section one should be 300-500 words.)

II. Section two includes the primary research question and secondary research questions.

All research questions must be specific and may not be answerable with a “yes” or “no.” For example, a research question that’s too broad would be “Where does communication typically break down among nursing staff?”

Primary research questions are the larger questions that guide your research, the ones your paper

will answer as a whole. A primary research question based on the topic of the too-broad research question (above) might be “The “answer” will serve as the basis for an argumentative research paper.

Secondary research questions are those that must be answered in order for the primary research

question to be answered. Secondary research questions for the above example might be:

• “What is the proposed fuel-efficiency increase, and what is the time frame for implementation?” • “What kind of trajectory for recovery are the big-3 automakers looking at?” • “How have increases in fuel-efficiency standards in the past affected the big-3 automakers

financially?” The difference between primary and secondary research questions is that the “answer” to a primary question is composed as an argument (your essay); the answers to secondary questions include information and evidence that help support those arguments. III. Section three describes the kind of information (secondary/scholarly sources) you anticipate

needing in order to write your paper. Use this section to describe what information needs you have for the researched argument. You will begin to meet those needs with the annotated bibliography. See the pages that follow for an example of this section. (This section should be 100-200 words)

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VI. The Annotated Bibliography The final draft of the annotated bibliography must include 15 or more sources and must follow the proposal section. Each source must be summarized in 75-150 words (shorter than your summaries earlier this term). This is a FIRM word count. The word count DOES NOT include the citation for each entry. A correctly-formatted APA citation must precede (come before) each summary. Organization of the Annotated Bibliography Summaries Organize the annotated bibliography section alphabetically by first word of the citation. Use of First Person Limited use of the first person is acceptable in the proposal, but the annotated bibliography should NOT use first person (I, me, my, we, our, mine, ours) or second person (you, yours). The proposal and the annotated bibliography should be written similar to this: “This paper will argue that X . . .” or “Smith’s article describes how Y” or “This chapter provides information on Z.” An example of limited use of the first person in the proposal is included in the example proposal later in this document. Use of Your Own Words Summaries must be primarily in your own words. If you decide to quote a particularly memorable or un-paraphrasable passage from the source, you must follow the rules for quoting in Easy Writer and in Behrens and Rosen, chapter 1. Academic Integrity Warning Often, scholarly sources are summarized already, and you’ll be able to find those summaries online or prominently featured at the beginning of journal articles (this is called the abstract). Do not use these summaries to write yours. To do so constitutes academic dishonesty and plagiarism and will result in a course penalty up to course failure. Do your own reading and summarizing. The skill you will learn from practicing summary is to read actively, identify the source’s thesis and major supporting points, and communicate them to an audience in writing. When a student reads the published abstract from a source (like those abstracts that precede the full text of an article or the abstracts that are available in a search results list from Ebsco or other databases) and writes a summary based on reading the abstract instead reading and digesting the article itself are undermining the teaching and learning in the course. Personal Opinion, Editorializing, Etc. Some annotated bibliography assignments will ask you to evaluate the source for some purpose. This one does not. You should not offer your opinion on the source or evaluate it in any way. Format Begin with a title page. No abstract is required for this assignment. Use standard APA formatting rules for the remainder of the proposal + annotated bibliography: double-spacing throughout (no more, no less), one-inch margins, and a header of some kind, for example. Each annotated bibliography entry should be formatted with a “hanging indent” (see the example annotated bibliography in this document, plus the course FAQ in “Help with Formatting,” for help with the hanging indent). *Length The proposal section must be 600+ words; each annotated bibliography entry must adhere to the 75-150 words (excluding citation) range. Number of sources for the annotated bibliography: 15+ sources—at least 15 must be approved scholarly sources (or equivalent).

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Draft 1 of proposal + annotated bibliography must include a GOOD FAITH EFFORT draft of the proposal and at least SIX sources of the annotated bibliography (summarized). Draft 2 must show evidence of continued development AND revision based on feedback on the first draft and must meet all minimum requirements for deadline, length of proposal, length of summaries, and number and kind of sources. *Due Dates In BlackboardàUnit Schedules *Acceptable Source Material Either print or electronic sources may be used (don’t forget that we have BOOKS in our libraries, and the WKU libraries have print journals that are not accessible online). Generally, only scholarly sources may be used. Scholarly sources include academic journal articles, trade magazine articles and other professional literature, government reports, and book chapters (but not general purpose encyclopedia, like Encyclopedia Britannica or Wikipedia). However, a small number (no more than 3) of other sources, such as specialized encyclopedia, course textbooks, pamphlets or in-house published documents, original reports, interviews, and non-scholarly websites may be used if they are justified in the final draft that includes the evaluative statement in each annotated bibliography entry. If you choose to use books in the annotated bibliography, you may summarize no more than two chapters of any single book; do not summarize entire books. You may use more than two chapters of a book for the researched argument, but not for the annotated bibliography. Grading Draft 1 of proposal + annotated bibliography: 50 points.

• The first draft must include a GOOD FAITH EFFORT draft of the proposal and at least six summarized sources.

Draft 2: 150 points • The final draft must show evidence of continued development AND revision based on feedback on

the first draft and must meet all minimum requirements for deadline, length of proposal, length of summaries, and number and kind of sources.

Submitting the Assignment Submit the final draft in Bboard->Submit Writing Here->Submit Unit 2 Assignments Here->Proposal + Ann Bib Final draft.

27

Proposal + Annotated Bibliography Final Draft

Student: __________________________________ Earned Possible

Proposal Section

Writing accomplishes the purpose it is supposed to (propose a topic, research question(s), focus, and tentative annotated bibliography of source material that will guide the writer during drafting and revision of the researched argumentative essay)

____ 10

Comments:

Introduction/Background: Provides sufficient information for the reader to understand the issue--how it is relevant to the course theme, why it is relevant to the student’s discipline/future career, why it's important. ____ 15

Comments:

Primary and secondary research questions: Primary research question is focused on a debatable subject that will drive an investigation of the researched argument essay's position; Secondary research questions will help the writer obtain information that contributes to answering the primary research question.

____ 10

Comments:

Information needs: This section sufficiently describes the kind of information needed to investigate the subject and develop a position on the debatable topic. ____ 5

Comments:

Organization: Writing progresses logically and effectively, with clear and logical transitions between ideas/paragraphs; paragraphs are structured logically and address a single topic rather than multiple topics per paragraph. ____ 15

Comments:

Style: Proposal is written in a professional tone, style, and format and follows appropriate conventions of academic writing. ____ 10

Comments:

Grammar/clarity: Writing is relatively free from grammatical errors and stylistic problems; sentences are clear, sentence structure facilitates rather than undermines readers' understanding of content ____ 20

Comments:

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Annotated Bibliography Section

Appropriate/acceptable sources: Annotated bibliography contains sources that are appropriate for the subject and for an academic paper ____ 15

Comments:

Citations: Error-free bibliographic citations precede each summary ____ 30

Comments:

Parenthetical citations/footnotes: Quotations and/or paraphrases are cited in-text with correct parenthetical citations or, for CMS, footnotes. yes

no n/a

Comments:

Content of summaries: Content is clear, concise, organized, and developed appropriately for the type of source being summarized. ____ 20

Comments:

Overall Evaluation: Superior Above Average Average Failing

Does the Proposal + Ann Bib meet all minimum requirements, as indicated with an asterisk* on the assignment prompt? YES NO

Penalty for failure to meet minimum requirements? (25%) ____

Grade from Draft 1 ____ 50

Final Draft Grade (150 points possible) ____ 150

Final Grade on Proposal + Annotated Bibliography ____ 200

Comments:

29

Proposal + Annotated Bibliography:

Verbal Abuse and Nurses

[STUDENT]


Author Note

This paper was prepared on [DATE] for English 300 Section [###] taught by Dr. Christopher

Ervin.

30

Proposal: Verbal abuse of nurses in the workplace

I. Background of Verbal abuse of nurses in the workplace

Celik, S.S. et al. (2007) state that 91% of nurses experience verbal abuse from health care

professionals, patients and the patient’s family. This is a very high percentage, but with nurses being

the “middle man” between patients and the doctors, it is not a surprising fact. Patients who are

hospitalized become agitated when they have not seen the doctor all day or are waiting for evasive

tests to be performed, and they take their frustration out on the only healthcare professional that is

available: the nurse. When verbal abuse happens, nurses can have mental and physical effects from

the abuse, some of which can cause the institution they work in to lose the nurse to turnover, thus

costing the hospital valuable time and money.

As a nurse who has dealt with verbal abuse, I find this topic is very important to me. My ultimate

goal is to be a nurse educator. As a nurse educator, I would like to touch more on the subject of verbal

abuse and coping measures for nursing students, so their first year is not filled with so much shock of

the cruelty that nurses deal with among themselves, with physicians, patients and the patient’s family. I

do not recall during my education being made aware of the verbal abuse I would have to deal with, just

hints of “nurses eating their young” from other students.

II. Research Questions

The primary question for this research proposal paper is: What can the hospital administrators

do to decrease the likelihood of verbal abuse of nurses and if it does happen, how can administrators

assist nurses in dealing with it?

Secondary questions:

• Who are the primary abusers?

• What are the effects of abuse on nurses, both physically and mentally?

• How does verbal abuse affect the institution?

• Do nurses report verbal abuse? Why or Why not?

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III. Information Needed for this Paper

To answer the primary and secondary questions, I will need scholarly journal articles that

address verbal abuse of nurses and in other non-healthcare workplaces, and how verbal abuse was

addressed in those organizations. I would like to find articles about the traits of people that are more

likely to do the abusing, so that it would show the administrators and nurses whom to look out for and

possibly show nurses how to deal with those types of people. It may also be beneficial to locate articles

about employees’ reporting of verbal abuse.

IV. Annotated Bibliography

Arnetz, J.E. & Arnetz, B.B. (2000) Implementation and evaluation of a practical intervention programme

for dealing with violence towards health care workers. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 31(3), 668-

680. Arnetz and Arnetz perform a study that both investigates and assesses an intervention

program designed to help medical staff deal with violent patient encounters using a control

group and an intervention group. Both groups reported violent encounters, but the intervention

group had regular, structured staff discussion about the encounters, which were a source of

support for the victim. The project coordinator discuss the incident with the victim, assesses the

victim’s emotional well-being, and the need for medical care shortly after the incident reported.

The victim was also assisted by the discussion of the violent event with the staff during regular

staff meetings by feeling of having the support of staff members. The intervention group felt a

greater awareness of risks for violence in situations, how to avoid unsafe situations, and how to

manage patients and other people who are hostile to them. There was an increase in the

amount of reporting of incidences in the intervention group, than the control group, due to the

support from other staff members. This article makes the point of interventions of assessing the

victim’s feelings and seeking medical care and having regular meetings to bring those incidents

of abuse, which assists in answering the question of what administrators can do to help medical

staff deal with abuse.

Berry, P.A., Gillespie, G.L., Gates, D. & Schafer, J. (2012) Novice nurse productivity following

workplace bullying. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 44(1), 80-87. doi:10.11111/j.1547-

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5069.2011.01436.x. According to Berry et al., of the novice nurses who encounter bullying, one-

third of them intend to leave their present position. Due to the nursing shortage, retention of

nurses is critical, but also difficult due to the main perpetrators of bullying are the experienced

nurses that are supposed to be guiding novice nurses. The bullying nurses are chosen to be

role models due to their experience, but they keep the cycle of abuse and bullying going and

they might not even realize their behavior is bullying because it is the social norm among

nurses. Effects of the personal and work related bullying include emotional exhaustion that

required the victim to take a personal day just to de-stress, depression, ideas of suicide, and

absenteeism. Bullying also made it difficult for the nurse cognitively to be able to perform

complex tasks in regards to patient care, which makes it difficult for the novice nurse to learn to

be proficient and self-assured. Causes of bullying in the workplace include overwhelming

workloads, tiered reporting structures, job uncertainty, partiality for career advancement and not

enough time or support for safe patient care. Administration can help to retain novice nurses by

attempting to decrease or stop the incidents of bullying by continual observation and

interventions beyond what is in their policy and procedure to make a bully free environment and

bring in extra staff when the workload becomes too much for the staff. In addition, by making

career advancement based on educational and competency requirements, administrators can

allow for healthy competition for advancement. This article shows what administrators can do to

help decrease abuse.

[Note to students: The annotated bibliography is only an excerpt. The full version included fifteen

sources, not just two.]

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Synthesis Essay (Literature Review) for English 300-722 *Items marked with an * are considered “minimum requirements” for this assignment, and failure to meet those minimum requirements will reduce the grade by 25% automatically. Definitions

• literature: The term “literature” refers to scholarly literature (articles, books, etc), not imaginative literature (novels, plays, and poems). “Literature” is the term academics use to describe the scholarship in their discipline

• critical review: a review, or survey, of scholarship on a particular subject. Do not confuse the scholarly critical review with the kind of review we read when we’re considering whether to see a movie or buy a book (a book review, a movie review). The critical review is also referred to in English 300 as “synthesis essay,” but you might also see it referred to as a “literature review” or “critical review of scholarship” or “systematic review” or some variation. They are all basically the same kind of writing.

Overview/Purpose of Assignment The broad purpose of a literature review, or synthesis essay, is to identify trends and commonalities in a body of literature (journal articles, books, and other scholarship) on a particular subject in order to answer a research question. In a synthesis essay, according to Behrens and Rosen, the writer “infer[s] relationships among sources” (p. 87). In your synthesis essay, you will survey the research on a particular focused subject (the one you chose for your annotated bibliography), bringing various sources into conversation with one another in order to characterize the current state of scholarly research about that subject and answer your research question. An example might help clarify the purpose of this writing assignment: If, for example, you’re researching health literacy in low-income communities, your annotated bibliography might include three articles that reported on experimental research that sought to improve health literacy by using a particular new approach to health literacy efforts; four sources that argue and analyze the lack of trust African Americans and Latinos, especially those who do not speak English, have of health care professionals; and three sources that examined various aspects of the internet being used to supplement traditional health literacy efforts. Your synthesis essay would NOT summarize each of these sources individually, one after another, like your annotated bibliography did. Your synthesis essay would actually be an ESSAY whose purpose is to survey the scholarship you found on the challenges to successful health literacy in low-income communities and answer the research questions you identified in your proposal. There’s a “conversation” going on in the scholarly journals and books; experts do research that responds to other experts’ research. Scholars build on each others’ work, expanding it, sometimes finding that the results of their research contradict the results of other scholars’ research. Debates play out in the scholarly journals, and sometimes major overhauls in how scholars think about a particular subject take place (this is called a “paradigm shift”—a major shift in how experts in a field approach their work due to new arguments, new findings, new theories). Your synthesis essay on health literacy in low-income communities might then be organized around only two major tenets or threads you identified in the literature: (1) mistrust of health care professionals by people of color; and (2) use of internet resources to supplement traditional health literacy. You might draw a conclusion that while traditional health literacy is less successful with populations who historically have something to lose by trusting health care professionals, new efforts at health literacy via internet are making it possible to reach these previously health-illiterate populations. This would be your arguable thesis. Each section of your synthesis essay would synthesize the scholarship from your annotated bibliography plus other scholarship that you did not include in the annotated bibliography about each sub-topic, or tenet/thread. In other words, instead of summarizing each source one after the other alphabetically or according to some other organizational scheme, your synthesis essay would address the scholarship in a topical organizational manner, describing how some sources intersect (those whose findings are similar) and others diverge (those with competing findings). Any debates that you identify in the literature should be described.

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Thesis Underline the thesis statement on every draft. Your thesis will be one or two sentences that identify the (arguable) answer to your primary research question. If, using our example, you found that the current literature on the health literacy in low-income communities can be organized into two broad categories, your thesis might be this:

Recent scholarship on health literacy in low-income communities suggests two major threads in the scholarship: analyses of the mistrust felt by people of color toward the health care profession, and the potential for increases in health literacy due to reliable internet sources. Current efforts to study efficacy of health literacy efforts, then, suggest that the internet provides the best opportunity for improvements in health literacy for people of color, who have historically held a deep-seated mistrust of the health profession.

As you see from the example above, the thesis is argumentative for this essay. Audience Your hypothetical audience for this essay will be readers of the journal Health Communication, which is available through the Ebsco database Communication and Mass Media Complete. As you begin to write this essay, skim some of the articles in the journal’s recent issues in order to get a sense of what the journal is all about. *Length First draft: 1500+ words Final draft: 3000+ words, excluding the references pages *Research Requirements At least 20 sources must be cited for this essay. In addition to the sources summarized at length in your annotated bibliography, you must incorporate at least five more sources. This is your opportunity to do additional research to fill in some of the gaps you might have found (or might still find) in the research you completed for your annotated bibliography. *Due Date In BboardàUnit Schedules Grading Draft 1: 25 participation points.

• The first draft must be a GOOD FAITH EFFORT and must be at least 1500 words Final draft: 300 points

• The final draft must show evidence of continued development AND revision based on feedback on the first draft and must meet all minimum requirements for deadline, length of proposal, length of summaries, and number and kind of sources.

Submitting the Assignment Submit to Bboard->Writing Assignments->Unit 3. The document should be named yourfirstname_yourlastname_critical_review.docx Examples to Study as You Write This Essay Important Note: The published critical reviews (sometimes referred to as “systematic reviews”) we’re reading are more rigorous, more extensive, and much longer than the essay you’ll write. Also, they use a much more systematic approach to surveying the relevant scholarship on their subjects, even to the point of providing analytical tables and graphs that categorize the various focuses of the scholarship under review. YOU WON’T BE EXPECTED TO GO TO SUCH LENGTHS, but your essay will resemble these published literature reviews in some ways, outlined below. Download example literature reviews from Bboard->Course Materials->Unit 3

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General Organization of Critical Review Essay for English 300 Introduction/Background This is sometimes two distinct sections of the paper, sometimes just one section. The introduction/ background identifies the research subject; provides necessary definitions of unfamiliar terms, especially if those terms are directly related to the research subject; discusses why subject is important (to your discipline, to society, to research on the subject, or other); contains the thesis statement that identifies the tenets, categories, or focuses that you’ve identified in the literature. Methods This section describes how the “literature” (articles, websites, books, governmental reports, etc.) was located. In your paper, you will just describe the process you used (WKU research databases, likely) to search for and retrieve relevant sources, the keywords you used to conduct your search, and any intentional design to your research (if you chose primarily scholarly articles, for example, but decided to include two or three editorials to demonstrate the broader public opinion about the subject, you could report on this process). See the examples in the pages that follow for further direction on this. Be sure to give this section your attention, as the detail and precision of your description of your research process are important in this essay. Discussion Here is where you actually synthesize the sources. This section will be the longest of the essay. It will bring together the sources thematically, not chronologically or source-by-source. This section is NOT supposed to be a series of summaries of your sources. That’s what you did in the annotated bibliography. This section is supposed to be where you bring the sources together to see where they agree with each other, where they diverge from each other, how they collectively comment on your research subject, and most importantly, this section is where you directly develop your arguable thesis. See Behrens and Rosen, chapter 3, for help with the Discussion section of the paper. Conclusion/Implications Bring the subject to a close; make suggestions for your colleagues; and/or discuss implications of your findings. Excerpts w/Annotations The example readings (excerpts below plus the full articles in Bboard->Course Materials->Unit 3) provide good models for organizing your essay. Since this is a kind of writing you will not have done in the past, a heavy reliance on the organizational pattern that you’ll see in the examples will help you succeed on this assignment. Don’t underestimate the value of reading/skimming these examples.

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Critical Review Essay, Final Draft

Student: _______________________________________

Earned Possible

Writing accomplishes the purpose it is supposed to (characterize the literature about a particular subject related to communication in the health professions and synthesize the literature rather than summarize several articles individually); advance an argument about that subject.

___

40

Focus/thesis: Writing has a clear thesis that is appropriate for the purpose of the piece of writing (the thesis advances an argument and instead indicates an overall description of the literature that’s being reviewed) ___

40

Detail/development: Essay is sufficiently detailed with regard to synthesis of scholarly sources; the argument is fully supported ___

40

Overall organization: Writing progresses logically and effectively, with clear and logical transitions between ideas/paragraphs. Subheadings/subsections are used effectively to denote "themes" or common intersections in the scholarship under review. Sections/paragraphs directly develop the argument. ___

30

Paragraph organization: Paragraphs contain clear topic sentences and are focused primarily on that topic (rather than on more than one topic) ___

30

Grammar/clarity: Writing is relatively free from grammatical errors and stylistic problems; sentences are clear, sentence structure facilitates rather than undermines readers' understanding of content. ___

40

Use of research: Appropriate research is used; each source listed on the references page is cited in the review; total of 20 or more sources are cited. ___

20

In-text citations: Writer utilizes proper in-text citation of sources, including introductions to paraphrases and direct quotations, proper parenthetical citations, and page references when available. ___ 30

Documentation: APA formatting and documentation are correct. ___

30

Does the synthesis essay meet all minimum requirements, as indicated an asterisk* on the assignment prompt? YES NO Penalty for failure to meet minimum requirements? ___

Total

___

300

Comments:

37

Listening in the Health Professions *Items marked with an * are considered “minimum requirements” for this assignment, and failure to meet those minimum requirements will reduce the grade by 25% automatically. Overview/Purpose of Assignment Compose an essay or create an alternative project in which you comment in some way on listening in your specific area of the health professions. The articles you read for the week of April 28 will give you several examples of the kinds of essays you might write; you might also do something more creative—something literary, something visual, something multimodal (like a short video or visual or audio essay). Use this 100-point assignment to explore and investigate listening in a way that satisfies you and your audience. Possible genres for the assignment (your choice):

• formal argumentative essay based on scholarly research; • annotated bibliography or critical review; • reflective narrative essay based on your experience as a nurse, nurse in training, intern, patient,

observer, etc. • short fiction, poem, play, song, creative non-fiction essay, visual or performing art • audio or video essay • Prezi presentation • speech • website • other that you might propose

Audience Your audience will be your peers in your health professions classes, your colleagues at work, your future employers, your health professions faculty. Length The assignment should be as long as it needs to be. You’re in control here. Research Requirements Research is required for projects that require research. Use your judgment. Don’t leave assertions unsupported, and don’t use sources that don’t fit the purpose of your essay. If your audience expects to find your project supported by scholarly sources, then you should use scholarly sources. If scholarly sources would detract from the authenticity of the project, avoid scholarly sources. Etc. *Due Date Final draft is due Thursday, May 8 by midnight Submitting the Assignment Brainstorm ideas in the Discussion Forum for this essay; submit the essay to Bboard->Submit Writing Here Grades 100 points, graded based on how well the assignment meets the purpose you outline for the essay as well as standard conventions for grammar, mechanics, formatting, documentation (if applicable), spelling, punctuation, etc. *Statement of Purpose On the first page of the essay, or on a separate page if you do something other than a written prose essay, you must include a statement of purpose. That statement must explain the purpose your project will meet. For instance, you might write a reflective narrative whose purpose is to share an experience and teach your readers something about the importance of ER nurses’ listening skills during triage. Or you might write a more formal academic paper that argues for additional training in active listening for family physicians, so the purpose of that paper would be persuasive. Whatever the purpose, it’s your call, but you must explain what purpose you want your project to accomplish.