FSCC 100 overview

This four credit-hour course provides an introduction to various dimensions of academic life. It will be characterized by intense yet open-ended intellectual inquiry, guided by reading from primary as well as secondary sources, and will include practice in written and oral communication in small groups. This seminar is one section of a large and coordinated Case Western Reserve University effort led both by members of various departments of the university undergraduate faculty along with instructors from the Department of English. The goals are to enhance basic intellectual skills of academic inquiry, such as critical reading, thoughtful analysis, and written and oral communication; to introduce basic information literacy skills; to provide a foundation for ethical decision-making; to encourage a global and multidisciplinary perspective on the learning process; to facilitate faculty-student interactions; and, in the most general sense, to provide a supportive common intellectual experience for first-year students.

Contribution

This is a discussion-based course. Discussion pedagogy is considered effective when the educational objectives include the development of qualities of mind (curiosity, judgment, wisdom), qualities of person (character, sensitivity, integrity, responsibility), and the ability to apply general concepts and knowledge to specific situations.

Discussion has the advantage that it puts both students and professors in an active learning mode. It challenges each of us to accept substantial responsibility for our own learning and it gives us first-hand appreciation of, and experience with, the application of knowledge to practice. You are encouraged to draw upon your knowledge and experience to build, test and modify theories that you can then make your own.

Journal

During the semester you are to keep a journal of the thoughts, ideas, notes, and exercises that you produce throughout this seminar. It should be a physical notebook. Designers often speak about the usefulness of such notebooks in helping them think. Of course, you’ll use a computer for much of your writing. But a notebook may encourage sketching, clipping, and other behaviors that will be useful through the course of the semester.

The journal is an integral part of the seminar, where you will make notes from class, from your readings, and for your writings. Use it to state and restate key ideas as they evolve during the semester. Use it to draw diagrams and pictures of your thoughts, Use it for building outlines of your papers, revisiting and revising them as you go through the term. Also use it for personal reflections on your interactions with others during the seminar, on your writing successes and failures, and on your own personal ideas about the mind.

In addition to the journal, you should create a portfolio at the end of the semester. Your writing will be a major part of that. But you should also include photographs, interview notes, prototypes, and other artifacts that result from you work over the course of the semester.

Papers

The three paper assignments this semester will range from personal explorations into the concept of design to more formal papers that place different designers and/or design concepts into dialogue with each other. These papers will grow out of class readings, discussions, journals, and fourth hour activities; they will often be personal, but also academic, ambiguous, and complex. Nor are these papers mutually exclusive in that the ideas and content of one paper may be sparked by or grow out of the last paper. Hence, individual papers will be designed towards revision, towards “process” so that there will be writing growth not only over the evolution of each paper, but also over the entire writing trajectory of the class.

Oral presentations

There will be three oral presentations during the course of the semester. They will be based on the work you are doing.

A five-minute presentation will be made after you have spent some time working on the development of an original idea. You should present the idea, and explore why it is interesting.

The second presentation will be done in pairs. This will be a ten-minute presentation and in it you should show the results of some original research. The presentation should be analytical and interpretive, not simply descriptive.

The third presentation will be done in small groups. As the semester progresses some natural grouping of interest in particular topics will likely emerge. As they do we’ll structure groups to explore them and make presentations back to the rest of us.

Fourth hour activities

SAGES first seminars provide you with four hours of academic credit. This reflects the diffuse ambitions for the program and its first course. Since credit hours and contact hours are roughly parallel, the class will utilize approximately 15 hours outside of our normal Tuesday-Thursday meeting time. We will meet about every other week during the semester.

The schedule for our meetings for this “4th hour” has not yet been determined. When it is, it will be posted on Blackboard. The activities will reflect the following priorities:

Involvement with University Circle Institutions. We will be doing a field trip to two of these institutions and will follow these trips with classroom discussion.
In class writing workshop—we will collectively work on the improvement of writing skills by examining documents in small groups.
Participation in University cultural and academic events. As these events become announced, they will be assigned as part of the “4th hour” activities. Since these may occur outside of the appointed hour, some flexibility will exist about meeting this requirement.

Academic integrity

All students are expected to adhere to university standards of academic integrity. Cheating, plagiarism, and other forms of academic dishonesty are not tolerated. This includes, but is not limited to, consulting with another person during an exam, turning in written work that was prepared by someone other than you, and making minor modifications to the work of someone else and turning it in as your own. Ignorance will not be permitted as an excuse.

If you are not sure whether something you plan to submit would be considered either cheating or plagiarism, it is your responsibility to ask for clarification. When your name appears on a group product for a class, you are responsible for the integrity of the work, even if you did not personally write the offending material. Either ask me about it or consult credible sources of information on the subject.

Two useful Internet sites are Indiana University's guidelines for avoiding plagarism and UNC's citation guidelines. Please remember that you have agreed to Standards of Academic Integrity which outlines your responsibility in greater detail.