Welcome to our course of studies together and Welcome to my Instructor’s Blog

I will post new blogs on a regular basis and you should read before beginning each week’s lesson. The principle purpose of this Blog is to respond to your work and the progress of our course of studies together — as well as to provide examples of how to self-edit for each assignment.

With each new blog you can expect to find:

• Comments and examples from the previous practice writing assignments
• Writing tips that address the most common errors
• An example on how to edit one of your pieces of writing
• Comments on the readings and assignments that are upcoming

Today’s blog is all about getting started; I want to describe the course in general, and then provide a few details on how to work with the online platform we will be using as a class, and as writing teams. If you have read the Course Description, you are aware that the course is divided into 4 Units with 3 Lessons. Each Unit is designed to allow you as much practice as possible in preparation for your final assignments: The Formal Report, The Application Package and the Web Folio. There is no final exam. You will begin working on these major assignments in Unit 2, and present your completed projects at the end on Unit 4.

Please take the time now to study this website. Begin with the Home page and continue in this order:

• Course Description: provides necessary and important information about all elements of the course
• Instructor’s Blog: [right here]
• Assignments provides a quick reference to all of your assignments, you will note you are going to practice a great deal
• Course Schedule: provides essential information for scheduling your readings and assignments

Good, now you have a picture of the course in general terms: this is a writing intensive course that involves a collaborative effort and much reflection and self-editing. Self-editing should be continuous – do not wait until the end of term to edit your work!!

The grades are distributed with the intention of allowing you to practice and self-edit as much as possible free of anxiety and assisted by a writing team and peer reviews. The expectation is that your final writing projects will be professional and presentable outside of the academic situation.

The course also requires you gain expertise with digital literacies; some of you will have better skills than I, and some of you might be worried about the digital challenges —  and these are two good reasons to work as teams.

When it comes time to self-organize yourselves into writing teams of 4,  you will want to team up with people who have skills that you are lacking; in other words, the goal will be for each team member to offer some unique skill to that team. I will explain this in more detail of course, in the lesson.

• If you have not already done so, you should join our Face Book Private Group page now: https://www.facebook.com/groups/579486772161943/ This is where you will post your questions through out the course. This way, everyone benefits from my responses. This is the most efficient way to deal with how big we are, as a group. So, please do not be shy to use our Face Book private group page.
• And, if you have a private question you are always welcome to email me at: erika.paterson@ubc.ca

And, now it is time to proceed to the Introduction to Unit One, enjoy.

I hope you enjoy this course – and please, beware —  scheduling for timeliness is essential with this course. So, all assignments must be on time. If you are late, you will make your team members late as well.

One final note: you will see I have left up last semester’s team pages -I will leave the page up for awhile in case anyone is curious and would like to look to see how the writing teams work together.

Enjoy