oh wait a minute I pressed the wrong one I wanted to record but not okay all right I can't switch which one it is but I'll get it to you whichever way I need to do all right I'm going to go back to share screen and we will be here okay so I'm sharing the PowerPoint so your faces should not show up okay so that's me Carrie my last name is Ross Vance but for some reason they couldn't get that whole name on the email so it's just K Ross just to make it easier for people uh my pronoun is she and her uh just to let people know the question is why are you here so uh it is a prequisite for your program to take uh communicating across the context um 2000 is sort of the the college ready course um there's another one that's sort of uh focuses on sort of Foundations and uh getting sort of up to speed to to take this course so what you did was hopefully you took the placement test um and they said you should be in Comm 2000 and then you were given the option to to take this course so that's what happened if you have more education or or you have more uh work experience and you feel very confident that you know so I'll explain what's in the course and what we're going to do if you feel confident that oh yeah I've got all these skills I don't think I need you know I think I'm good um then you can always apply for a transfer credit so a transfer credit is you've taken a course a post-secondary course that has either like English in the title where you've done uh you've done some writing you've done documentation some research um and you know you just have a a good grasp of sort of your writing skills right so that could be it but it has to say I think they're really particular like it has to say English or Communications or like it has to say something like that in the title uh and I think it's still within the last five years and on top of that it had to be a c or above so if you didn't do that well then they wouldn't accept it as a as a transfer credit uh so this is on this is on but I should I'm G to just put the link if I can find it uh yes okay so this is the transfer credit put that in the chat if I can find the chat now hey chat by next week I'll I'll be much more up to speed here so that's the uh that's the transfer credit so any postsecondary institution in Canada internationally I think there's some extra steps that you have to go through um for that and then the second one is the pl so let me go back to my PowerPoint okay so the second one is the pl so it just means previous learning assessment something something this is great it's recorded because it's going to record all my all my mistakes um so it's yeah so if you have some like previous work experience or you don't have a course that exactly matches what they're looking for you can still you can use this um method but this one you have to take a test so uh it'll be like the um assessment the assessment test right they gave you a question you had to write something so this one they'll give you a question you'll have to write something you'll probably have to use APA documentation so uh American Psychological Association documentation uh and someone will mark it so what they do is one of the profs marks it and gives you a b c d and then that's what you get for the course I can't remember exactly how much it costs it's on the uh it's on the link so it's like a couple hundred dollars or something like that to to do it but then like let's say you got a D and you're not happy or a c and you're not happy uh then what do you do well and you just take the course which is kind of a pain but kind of what happens oh 115 thank you and 20 cents they had to add the 20 cents in there yeah gotta gotta get it uh so that's the uh that's the only way that you can escape that's just letting you know okay so if you think you you know you fall into those categories please try it um with the transfer credit uh you'll have to it's not me I don't get to do it it has to be my um department head so you have to email um I think it's shadewa s oh what's her last name I'm sure if you look that up it'll only be one shwa so you can uh look that up and email her I can say that I am already enjoying this class so I'm not going anywhere uh oh yeah you're just looking at my mistakes and so you're like oh yeah no seem very lovely so there we go lovely I don't people don't usually say that about me okay that's great thank you well you can tell I haven't had you know a lot of uh interaction for a while so you're getting me on a good day all right so that's how you can escape and if you have any questions please uh don't hesitate I might not have the answers but I will find the answers so let's let's move ahead so okay let's think about this course so the overview so everything is on bright space so anything that we're talking about anything that we're doing I'll say to you okay I want you to open this document I'll I'll show you okay go to this folder open this let's look at it and let's do it so I I go through that so the overview of this course this is sort of the official kind of the official description of communicating across contexts so we're looking at writing uh overall but it's like we're unpacking it so we're breaking it down piece by piece to sort of show you know what's really involved in that kind of writing and because we're communicating quote across contexts you're really thinking about um the different audience right and the purpose of that writing so it's not your typical like let's write essays so you write one sort of formal kind of essay but the rest of the writing is either um it's it's more public writing so like either social media posts or you're going to write emails or you're going to write uh a letter to the editor like so it's it's more communicating in different ways right so different audience different purpose different context but you might be using similar information right so we've got the three different things you're going to inform you're going to persuade and of course you're going to entertain right always always so in those sort of three academic professional and public sort of contexts um the key they want to really focus on is transferring the skills so I think we feel that most people are kind of if they're writing essays they feel like they're sort of blocked in and sort of that's the only way to write right but that's not right so we want to so we want to sort of open things up we're going to focus on research process um digitally you know we're thinking about digital literacy we're thinking about you know using sort of your academic sources but also you know you want to troll the internet like you we want to use sources that we find just right just everywhere so we just want to make sure that we're using proper sources so we're going to sort of talk about that um the key I guess the the one thing they added to this course which is kind of interesting is the metacognitive stuff so a reflection so it's thinking about how do you learn or thinking about who you are and why is your perspective different from someone else's perspective and how does that affect the way you see things or the way you react to things or the way you communicate uh we all communicate differently and because we've got let's say baggage or experience right either way so it it changes and I think it's really important that we we think about those things especially when we're communicating with people all the time right so it really changes things um the texts are not like it's it's not like an English course like you don't have a a textbook or a text um I I use I don't know magazines news uh videos TED Talks uh sometimes posts social media posts right um so it's just anything that I I feel like wow that's an interesting topic let's look at that right so it'll cover a different range um and the key that that like one of the biggest changes is the lens of anti-racism and Indigenous practices so things are changing um well when we say indigenous practices what do we mean so what does it mean to me it means that we honor different kinds of knowledge uh we don't just honor academic uh sort of book knowledge we honor life experience you know we honor people that have done things right and they they can contribute and it's just as important so that's really important and oral knowledge right speaking anti-racism is not just about saying I'm not racist it's about actually doing something you know thinking about it and when it comes to reflection it's being honest with ourselves right to really think about do I have some biases did I react a certain way why am I doing that right it's just the it's just the process so um some of the stuff today that we're going to do um is I know we've just met it's a bit I was just saying I don't know who designed this course but the first day we're going to dig deep we're going to dig deep and we're gonna we're going to do some self- knowledge um but we'll see we'll see how that goes it's going to be good it's going to be good so technically the course outcomes there's there's a few if you look on the course outline and I'll show you where it is it it's like they list I don't know 10 10 different outcomes for each bigger outcome so it's crazy I'm just going to give you sort of the condensed this is what it means to to me so the first one is to analyze texts basically doesn't sound so hard but what is it you know what does it involve well it's a bit more complex but of course audience purpose structure right communication techniques how are they doing what they're doing why is it effective why is it not effective right those kinds of things you're going to write it's a writing course it's interesting this day and age we're not allowed to do um like we can do an oral presentation but it doesn't I can't mark it has to be a written thing so we might do like if you want to write a speech I can mark the written speech but I can't Mark the speech itself right so I'm kind of tied with that um so if you do want to do you know something like that uh Maggie did you have a question hi the last Professor we just had um she didn't want us to quote anything just because she uses turn it in obviously this is a completely different course not your thoughts what are your thoughts on on like because you said essay and oftentimes when you want to prove a point especially if it's like APA or even ml you quote something so what are your thoughts on that guess uh my question is the context of what what was just what was said so like I I don't think I mean did person she doesn't want us to do it pretty much at all like she quotations no quotations as much as like none because she doesn't want she doesn't want us to um plagiat or yeah take from because she said that it's then it's not our words it's someone else which fine but I'm talking about and if we wanted to use them within the whatever essay we're writing um like if you're writing one I mean my um I pre-wrote one for the placement test and it was about dogs and so I like quoted I don't know it was like Clifford the Big Red Dog book just something like that like are you okay with us doing that oh my my my yes like we are definitely yeah yeah I mean I think it's really hard to say anything original these days um but yeah we're definitely going to use other people's ideas at some point and use other people's words at some point uh maybe paraphrase them you know so we're going to document them properly and so that my job is to make sure that you know the proper way to document so that you're not accidentally plagiarizing uh or accidentally you know using them without giving credit so uh that's the next uh the next outcome right so using research using um you know trying to really tackle the digital world because there's just so much information and we never know if it's right or who's saying it or like what's happening so we sort of delve into that a little bit and so because we do that we also document so we make sure that we're documenting properly um and so the fourth is the the metacognitive skills so there's two sort of they call them Reflections um and you'll do sort of one today so there's three I lied there's actually more than that but they're bonus so um there's two sort of embedded in the course uh that you do and one is um you create sort of it's for your pre-writing so you want to do outline but it's also reflecting on you know the challenges or the um the challenges and I was going and the celebrations of you know writing that or going through that process so it's always thinking about what was hard for me what was interesting what did I learn why is that important and like so what kind of thing right answering that question so that's when we talk about metacognitive meaning you know thinking about thinking thinking about learning learning right so that's the that's the course outcome three I'm just looking at the time 348 okay we still look like Eyes Are Open so that's good that's good okay so that's just your basic basic basic so I always start with a quote and uh that's why it's just shocked me because I use quotes all the time all the time everywhere so this one's for the course the greatest obstacle to Discovery is not ignorance it is the illusion of knowledge so does anyone want to take a shot at that what do you think that means I guess for it you don't know something it's okay to know something but it's just thinking that you know a lot like you actually don't know just like illusion of thinking that you're smart or you know everything nice I don't yeah anyone want to add to that um I think that like we can sometimes become our greatest obstacle when we think too much of what we think we know nice we think we know I love it so Daniel bston uh was a historian and so I got this quote when he was talking about when we knew the world was flat because we knew it like it was flat and they were you know if you go you know you go off exploring you're gonna fall off the face of the Earth right and so I I love this because I think about yeah it is our I love that our basic our our we're We Own Worst Enemy right kind of thinking about this we you know we don't take risks because we think we know it or you know I already know this so what do I have to do so why do you think I would use that quote for like an English course or a Communications course anyone want to guess I I feel like I just said the word like sorry it's okay it's it's I feel like it's the concept of instead of spewing I guess I don't know if that's the right word either like spewing information that may or may not have facts behind it we should make room for what we don't know and allow for that to kind of fill the space instead of just demanding that this is right and this is what we're doing but allowing for like a communal Witches Brew of like information that will come from various sources that is in fact true and and will provide us with skills to then move forward nice that's much more profound than I was thinking you're welcome I was just thinking you know just give me a chance you know if you're open you might learn something that's that's what I always say right if you're open you might learn something if you're closed you're not going to learn but that's up to you uh so I usually do this because I you know English we we've all taken I don't know how many courses you know in our lives and we just think gosh this is another course I got to write an essay I got to do this right um but this course they really changed it a lot like when I first started teaching it was yes it was that but it's not that anymore um and I really think it it does it like it it challenges our creativity and it challenges us to think uh more about what we're saying how we're saying it right and really thinking about your audience like it's it's so important to really consider you know how you're being perceived right and and you know are they believing me why don't they believe me what's like you know what do I do kind of with that uh so it's all about connection and uh that's that's why I love this course now but thank you for um everyone telling me what they think because that's that's courageous to just speak up right first day that's awesome so for me this course okay so why is this different from any other course that you've you've already taken um so for me it is it's about the conversation right because this is sort of I I it's a social advocacy course that's for me that's what this is that's the Bas um we're looking at it from there's people that we can advocate for right and so how do I do that in my writing how do I make it happen so that's key um the canvas yes there's going to be one purely sort of academic essay where you have to do proper documentation proper citation you know formulate your arguments and and have that essay um but it's a it's a really challenging essay and it's uh it's a critique so it's an evaluation of someone's argument so in the process of us writing we're learning sort of How to Build a Better argument how to create a better argument um but we're also doing you know maybe you're going to choose social media posts or maybe choose sort of a TED Talk style kind of uh writing or a letter to the editor right so different kinds of of formats uh from you know I guess I'm looking at people and just hearing people because they've got you know second career and you know things like this um not so much you know of course in your career you've done all these things analyzing evaluating creating right but in in lower English courses like in secondary school you you don't do as much of that right so you could get away with just sort of this is what I said here it is you know that's it right very sort of superficial um but here we're trying to sort of build something a little bit uh more in depth right analyzing evaluating creating so in that vein I love writing and I just feel like if you don't like writing you are going to be a writer anyway in this course so you have to embrace that you are a writer um and all of this that we're doing is is really about is advocacy so you're going to choose a topic that you feel passionate about um you know things that you want to see change in and you're going to write about it so hopefully um I give you you know enough space to find that topic that you're interested in right so it could be very program related and that's awesome but maybe it isn't right maybe it's something else so I try to leave space for that so it's it's really um up to you so the first like couple assignments I'm more sort of directive um but then later on sort of it sort of opens up and it allows you to kind of have more options so you still have no idea what you're doing in the course all right 356 okay we're going to take a break soon I'm going to get to this this this is this this is the the paperwork here we go we're meeting every week except for your placement weeks right all the sources posted or linked through brightspace like everything this PowerPoint the recording of our meeting any material you need so if there's something like if you you're looking at you're looking at the PowerPoint you looked at the recording and you go H I don't understand still don't get it you email me I say oh I get another video for you and I post right so I don't want to um clog up bright space like I don't want to put too many things up there because then nobody nobody looks at anything because there's just too much um so if you need something please let me know like you need more there's something right um there's lots of digital like even online texts that I can like link you to you know anything you need so there is no textbook so everything should be there so you don't have to like spend any money on something that should be free knowledge yes all of the assignments that are definitely you have to submit through bright space right so and I'll walk you through it if you don't know how to do it you know I I'll walk you through that um but it has to be a word doc or a PDF can't be like um what is that like Pages or like there's there's other sort of extensions it doesn't uh it doesn't read it and I can't annotate like I can't give you feedback actually on the document unless it's a Word document or a PDF so um please make sure that that and uh for this course the passing grade's 50 so like if all you're thinking about is gee I really need to get through this course 50 not not hard to uh to accomplish but just so you know do you want MLA or APA or so yeah so we're going to do APA okay when yeah when we when we get to that APA there you go um there is a late penalty I don't know what your other professors do or like what what happens so technically there's a late penalty of 10% per day hm so like that means you go down a grade basically every day but I did say in the beginning that I would help you as much as I can so and I know this program you're all in the same program so then that's easy like oh we've got this do that do this do there's no way we can get it done okay let's shift right let's do something um so I always give a soft due date and a hard due date and then probably if you like email me and cry I'll give you another due date so it's okay um it's okay 5% yeah so technically I don't know why our program or like our English Department whatever is 10% Like I never give 10 oh I'm being recorded aren't I oh I never give 10% like never like I might give it if it's like a week late then I'll take 10 per. you know what I mean like it's just not I don't believe in that it's just you just need to talk to me right just be proactive let me know what's happening and then we can always work something out but if you call me like the day after it's like wait a minute it was due yesterday right so let's do that all right um that's the technical technical do you have questions that I have not answered besides actually looking at the actual assignments that we're doing oh I have a question you just earlier like you know on this page you said that we meeting every week unless um you know there's a placement day right right yeah what does that mean this is on Tuesdays right and the placements on Thursday and Fridays oh so what I meant was the block placement okay block placement okay yeah so you have those two weeks that should be embedded in the course when I did the course outline if I did it correctly it should say block placement so we are not meeting on block placement days yeah you don't have any classes those weeks like you shouldn't yeah you should not be meeting with anybody except your placement person you know maybe uh for those two weeks and then also intercession there's no classes right so that's week eight so you do get some time yeah where you don't have to be here any other burning questions all right okay so some of you said oh yes I'm familiar and some said no no I'm not so when you go on to bright space I always suggest um clicking content so if you want to see what's happening click content it gives you the easiest view uh when you when you open things up so when you click content um it it just opens up this really nice easy menu on the left if not it's got you click into something you got to click click click and it's it's confusing um so all the resources are there the only thing is like we we'll check due dates again this is a small class so things will change I think due dates will change just depending on what you're doing and and sort of what's happening so um just be just be sort of aware there's a couple times where I'll ask you to so we do work shops so I'll ask you to bring an outline in so that we can talk about it in class so the due date will be that day it'll be bring it for class kind of thing versus sometimes it's due after class uh usually the due date is the day of class so today is Tuesday so when things are due week two that means Tuesday week two so when you open up the content it gives you this nice sort of clean menu on the left you see so if you want to see just the overview of the course you just click overview and it gives you sort of the parent documents and sort of all of those official kind of documents uh that describe the course and things like that so if you want something official I would go there um course Basics has your sort of frequently asked questions uh basic academic Integrity you know things that are sort of core to the course uh and it has also has the weekly outline for us contact your professor that's me and then weekly learning modules that's where all the information will be right so it'll go for each week I'll give you links to the assignments in the weekly learning modules but they'll also uh I don't think I have an assignments tab but you you can also get assignments through assessments up top so there's many ways to get to it so whatever's easiest and I think student resources are now on the top as well this could be an old old picture but I would just go in there and explore just click away click click click all right so me easiest way to get me email don't use the bra space there's a chat notification or there's some bright space thing don't do it it's just easy easy just email me if you try to phone my extension at at work I probably don't even know the number to get the messages so I've been away for so long uh so email is the best um so you can get me on the communications tab in brightspace or you know just remember to use use your George Brown email don't use your personal email we had a big thing about that somebody hacked the system a couple summers ago and held us hostage so it only likes George Brown emails now so try to avoid that um we can get a zoom appointment like we can talk before class or after class um you know we'll very rarely uh go until 6 o'clock so we'll have time at the end um for you to either start working on an assignment or ask me questions or you know talk to me or especially if we have such a small class there's going to be lots of time for you know questions stuff yeah um the one thing I ask about the email is to just uh remember that I have a work life balance or a life work balance so 24 hours don't email me again and again and again you know I'll I will answer you the next day or within you know that 24h hour um on the weekends I don't answer emails unless I know there's an assignment coming up and then I'll I'll be like somebody's freaking out I better answer there I better answer them um but I try not to right Friday at 5: till Monday morning right so don't don't panic all right I know I'm keeping you for a long time before we break but we will break soon so as I said content and then you go into overview and you've got this what I did was I posted sort of a snapshot and it's probably very blurry if you try to look at it um but you can go into the overview Tab and if you scroll down it'll give you that snapshot um so every week I'll post it and I'll say hey we're on week two and this is coming up and we just did this and this is what we're looking forward to um so if you just look at this this call this is is that right oh yeah that's right 11:59 PM okay um so you think I've got something due today that we're going to do week one so anytime it's got week three so that says bonus that means only if you want to right if it's a bonus 15% that's the first Biggie before metacognitive a 10% so this one is week five or week six that's week five sorry week five you're prepping for week six so it's like something that we're working on so that it helps you then move into the next assignment and you know so each each assignment will be s sort of a scaffolding of you start something you get some feedback you do an outline or something that you're prepping and then you you hand in the final assignment so there's never just a hand this in uh except maybe week four um so it's the course is really I like it it's built into that you're you're doing something you get some feedback either from me or from your peers and then you hand in the final assignment so it's always that sort um process anytime it says bonus it's a bonus you don't have to do it um but I try to work in uh you know workshops peer review my feedback you know anything we can to sort of get that writing process in so I just wanted to show a snapshot of this to say okay it's it's busy busy um so week four is really your first sort of big like big assignment um 15% it's pretty big to start I'd say right and then you've got your other other ones but it's um because of your two week placement we had to push things forward so normally it would be week five is the first one but I had to push it back because I don't want you falling behind the second half right so uh we'll see about that so we'll talk about the assignments um but I just wanted you to get a snapshot of wow okay so I've got something week three four five six seven 9 13 and 15 so it's like okay I'm not sleeping in this class I got to do stuff I try not to make it it's not uh the writing is not long so I mean the one essay I think I ask is like three pages I don't know if that seems long to you it's not to me three pages double spaced you know aerial 11o font so think about that it's so I think that's the longest piece you do right three pages so the speech you know at the end the letter I think is is under 500 words or you know so there's it's more condensed um but there's a lot of thinking that goes into those smaller pieces all right here's the elephant in the room generative AI we're going to talk about that next week but and I'm sure your your profs have like mentioned it like you're being hit over the head with this idea right I don't I am not anti- generative AI we use it for grammar checking that's amazing we use it for citation generators amazing right uh we use it in everyday life amazing we just can't overuse it and we just have to make sure that when we're writing it's our writing and not the computer right so we'll get into that idea but um just let's say as an overall caveat you only use it to spell check and to generate your citations and that's it I would say you could use it for brainstorming also right but just use it carefully so we'll talk more about that sort of in specifics right um but that's the that's the elephant in the room all right if you go to course Basics so do you want to try that now open up bright space go to content and then go to course Basics and scroll down to weekly outline let me let me try to do that where am I [Music] homepage okay so if I go to my homepage I go to content and then I scroll down course Basics and so we've got land acknowledgement digital learning academic Integrity FAQs and then detailed weekly outline so if you click on that it'll probably ask you to download it oh no it'll open okay so um I'm waiting for my uh Dean to sign to sign it so when it's official then it'll have a signature there it says two to five I lied it's three to six so that was the sort of snapshot of your overview if you're scrolling down and then in detail for every day this is the the weekly outline so it's got your so from the left to the right you've got your week your topic the resources or sort of what we're kind of working on and then is there an evaluation is it worth marks what's happening there right so you notice today we're doing what we call a diagnostic piece of writing so it's complete or incomplete so there's no grading but you're just asked to write uh week two as early as week two I start talking about the critical response in an email so what that involves it's a very short emails are short right emails are not long so it's a very short email we'll talk about sort of the content of it but you're basically imagining that you're you you've got your job and you've gone through a workshop and the boss wants you to like recap the workshop and tell them sort of what you thought about it right so that's the email assignment so we'll talk about email conventions just Basics um and then we'll also talk about AI use and things like that next next week so we start off with that and then so once we talk about Ai and academic Integrity you can do that little bonus so it's due week three so whenever it's here that means it's due the day of class it can be at the end of the day but what I usually think about is I I assume you've got it done when you come to class so that we're probably starting something new because you've already got it done but you can always ask questions about it like you're almost done you you want to just check some stuff then you can ask me questions and then hand it in later so that just depends so you can look through this just to sort of get a sense um it's got a lot of writing on it it's not it's not I'm very minimalist so I would be just giving you like two or three words but I'm told to give more detail so there's a lot of writing it seems like a lot of writing but it's just trying to break down really precisely what we're doing in class um so you'll see as you read it you know every time the evaluation is due you've got what it's what's due and you've got the percent right assignment and it's 10% so we always talk about it before the week before at least and then do something and then you hand it in right so you take a look at that you can uh I'm just going to make sure that we say so week seven so then you have intercession no classes we come back week nine and you hand something in then you go on block placement so you've got week 10 week 11 no classes then you come back week 12 and I've got here like discuss what you handed in remind you what it's about and then the actual assignment is due the next week so I'm hoping that gives you some time if you can't get it done for Tuesday then you know we might push it back to the Friday or like you know what can we do for you so we'll we'll look at that but we can we can be flexible because then we need it do done because then the next and final biggest thing is the final assessment which is also 20% so assignment that big assignment due right after your placement is worth 20% and then the final assessment is also worth 20% so um we're trying to I'm trying to give you sort of at least two weeks to work on that one so that it's kind of balances out uh so we're a bit crunched because of the placement uh I will say that the final assessment will always be a similar theme to your transfer one uh and you you'll be able to use some like similar materials from transfer one so it won't be this brand new like oh no what do I do I have to create something brand new but it's transferable right it'll just be a different audience and a different purpose right but it'll you could still use some information from the first to the second uh yeah so your brains are probably EXP loading right now so let's you can take a look at that let's take a break uh let's do we're going to leave early today but you we're going to do something sort of heavy after this little break so let's take 10 minutes I know that doesn't sound like much but I lose you if I take more than 10 minutes trust me um so let's do 10 minutes it is what's your time 418 so 429 because the clock's going to change let's meet back at 429 e e e e e