193 F20 Morton

ENGL-193/SPCOMM-193: Communication in the Sciences Syllabus 

Fall 2020 

Instructor: R. Travis Morton 

Contact E-Mail: rtmorton@uwaterloo.ca 

Course Description

Hello everyone and welcome to Communication in the Sciences! This course will focus on your ability to communicate information from an esoteric field in effective ways and which will serve to strengthen your relationships both in your field and around it. In this course, you will work both with me and your peers to better understand how and why your ability to express these complex concepts in a digestible way will benefit you. You will also learn some new ways to do so in practice, with plenty of experience with your classmates to help you along the way. Finally, and most importantly, you will begin to understand how it is that language not only structures and informs the world around you, but also structures your sense of personal and social values that, in turn, organize your sense of why your work is important, and how to share it with others. 

Expectations 

Each of us is better learning how classrooms must adapt to changing global conditions. Rest assured, I am here to help you, and I am always prepared to work with and communicate with students in order to ensure their success. To that end, I will emphasize two things to keep in mind that go a long way with me in ensuring your success: 

  1. Communicate - I can't stress this enough. You will find that in going through the syllabus, there are several aspects to it that will involve talking with me. If you have questions, please ask them! There are no stupid questions, and you aren't expected to know everything going in. That's what makes you a student. If you need accommodation, don't hesitate to ask! There are mechanisms through the school, such as AccessAbility that will help, but also I can work with you to adjust things in the course to suit your needs as well, but your open dialogue with me is always going to help--I can and do take your personal circumstances into account when considering your performance in the course. 

  1. Take Things Seriously - I will always endeavour to make the classroom, virtual or otherwise, a welcoming place where you can feel free to share, debate, and speak freely. All I ask is that when you do so, you take the things we are looking at and discussing seriously, in good faith, and on their own terms. That might be difficult to grasp at first, but don't stress too much! I'm happy to help, and I always endeavour to be patient. 

Those things out of the way, I would like to ensure that this course has just enough to keep you engaged without taxing you too much in terms of weekly expectations! On a weekly basis, you will be expected to do the following: Listen to the lecture I provide, Read a section of your selected text, and discuss it and those of your group mates in discussion groups through LEARN. There will be three major assignments in the course, which will be detailed in the next section. That's all! 

Mark Breakdown

Your grade breakdown for this course is as follows: 

The Pitch - 10% 

The Report - 20% 

The Presentation - 35% 

Engagement - 20% 

Completion - 15% 

Details

I have endeavoured in this section to break down each grade item as comprehensively as possible. While each may appear a little overwhelming, we will go over them in lectures and we will have lots of opportunities for clarification as well. Try to bear with me as I go through each one, and if there are any points that are at all unclear, make note of them and ask me--I'm more than happy to field questions!

  1. Completion (Weekly Group Discussions) - 15% This course will heavily value your ability to communicate with myself and other students, not just in following instructions and adhering to procedure, but also in your effectiveness in communicating. To this extent, I have divided what we would normally call a 'participation' grade (assessing your level of engagement with the class as a whole) into two categories, one of which is 'completion', which is the grade you will receive for having done what was asked, independent of its relative quality. The second, 'engagement' will assess the quality of your work. Principally, these grades will be based on the following weekly assignment: In our first class, you will select a text from a short list of books I will detail at the end of this syllabus. At that time, you will break up your book into 12 equal portions, one part for each week of the course (less the first, which is introductory and organizational), rounding to the nearest section break in the book you can find. Those might be of differing lengths, depending on the book you have chosen. On Thursday of each week you will be required to read that section, and break it down in no more than 200 words in a discussion post in your discussion group's personal forum. Your task will be to simplify what you have read, and phrase it simply enough that your group mates can understand what you had read, but nuanced enough to impart everything that is necessary from what you have read. You will then read each of those posts that your group mates have also composed, and then to pose two questions of them. Each question should be clear and respectful, and each must be posed in response to two different classmates' posts. There is to be no more than two questions posed per post, and how you wish to divide that labour up is between you and your group! By the end of the following day, you will be expected to answer the questions your group mates have posed to you about your summation. This grade will be based on your having posted, your posing questions, and your answering those posed to you! (This sounds much more complicated than it is.)    

  1. Engagement (Weekly Group Discussions) - 20%: As stated above, engagement is a measure of your acumen in participating in the course--how well you did in insight and communicating in your posts, your questions, and your answers. This will be a measure of your demonstrating engagement with the course material, the texts, myself, and your classmates. In practice, this will be a summative grade representing the quality of your posts in the discussion boards on the LEARN system, but it will also involve the quality of your communications and your demonstration of engagement with the material outside of the discussion forums as well, such as through email with me. 

  1. The Pitch - 10%: The three major assignments in this course involve your ability to distill works of scientific and academic complexity into a more easily digested and understood form. The first (which I am informally calling "The Pitch"), is an assignment which will involve your submitting a proposal that summarizes a concept or theory from the sciences that you wish to focus on in the final presentation component of this course. You will be expected to write no more than 1000 words, presenting the claim, theory, or concept you wish to explore and report on fully in a larger, more comprehensive presentation. For the purposes of this assignment, you will be expected to treat the reader as if they were, in effect, a hypothetical future work supervisor. While that person might have any number of different titles and characteristics, what is important is that for the purposes of this assignment you must assume they are both in a position of power over you, and that they have no practical knowledge of the scientific field from which your proposal is derived. The proposal shouldn't have a practical goal in this hypothetical scenario that eclipses the information you are looking to present. For example, presenting a concept like quantum entanglement shouldn't be about what you might do with it, say, because you imagined the reader to be a tech development firm coming up with technology for teleportation. It should just be that for whatever assumed reason, the supervisor or manager has the final say as to whether or not you can present this information to a larger body of people in a more comprehensive way. You will want to demonstrate deference, clarity of prose, and a balance of professionalism and familiarity that shows respect, but also shows commitment and confidence. Above all, it must prove the relevance and significance of the information in a public context. That means that the private concerns of the hypothetical organization that serves as the conceit of this project are not why the information is important--it is important that a wide range of uninvested people know about it. The project must include a byline formatted as stipulated below, and a Works Cited section for any relevant texts you are referencing in your proposal, each of which are not part of the requisite 1000-word length. Part of the assessment for this assignment will involve my approving of the topic for the final presentation. In practice, I will only reserve the right to request that you do not use it for the presentation. If I do not do so, you may carry on using what you have proposed in the final! 

  1. The Report - 20%: The second assignment, The Report, will exercise your ability to break down the text you have been reading in this class (the same as the one you will be using for weekly discussion posts) into a more easily comprehensible form. That means I'm looking for you to A) read as much of your text as you can to the point in which the assignment is due. As the structure of the course involves regular reflection on differing components of the text, this will likely mean you won't be finished reading the book by the time you are handing this assignment in! That is important--you will not always have the benefit of complete information when called upon to present a project or concept in your lives, and so part of the assignment will be to use what information you do have, but also the information you can only hypothesize. B), I am looking for you to break down the work you have been reading into more commonly understood language that lay people (i.e. someone with little to no knowledge of the field from which your text emerges) can understand; C), summarize the project or concepts succinctly in a relatively short report format, no more than 2000 words; and D) do so in a way that uses language to effectively sort and prioritize the information according to its relative value. Assessing that value is a major part of your task, and cannot be overstated. Not all the information your book contains is equally valuable! The report can be organized however you imagine it to be most effective, but should contain any or all of an abstract, a background, relevant points or claims that the book is making organized under separate subsection headings, and/or a summative conclusion which reviews the relevant pieces of information and provides a clear sense of direction for how the reader should process this information and/or do something appropriate with it. The report will require a byline, as detailed in formatting policies below; succinct and appropriate quotations which can be emphasized in your report to support your breakdown; and a Works Cited section with an entry for the text you have been summarizing. (Phew!) The purpose of this assignment is to assess your ability to communicate the principal points of a project or concept that is not your own--it is the author's, which they are presenting in long form in the text you are reading--but also to demonstrate your ability to prioritize that information and advise readers accordingly. 

  1. The Presentation - 35%: The final assignment for this course will be a presentation you will prepare in a digital format, based on the proposal you submitted in the pitch assignment. Whether or not I approved of the pitch, you are free to email me and discuss your topic, for example, if you wish to change it. The presentation can take on a wide array of modes and methods, however you wish. You may want to use a slideshow presentation, you may wish to record yourself in different formats (I must admit, I do like hearing your voices and/or seeing your faces), you can use visuals of many kinds, you can use quotations, a digital 'handout' you may include, meant to accompany your presentation, this assignment is where you have free reign to break down the information you wish to present as you like. I will be looking for a byline in some way, shape, or form, organized according to formatting standards, as well as a Works Cited section which must include citations for all quotations, images, information retrieved externally, sounds, songs, or anything else that has contributed to the presentation in some way. A major part of the assignment's ability to be persuasive is the use of persuasive sources--hence, they should be appropriately credible! If you have any questions or concerns about your approach to this assignment, do not hesitate to ask! The presentation should be roughly thirty minutes, though excessive length or brevity may penalize your grade. You must also assume that for the purposes of this assignment, your audience is a diverse and lay public--meaning they will not know more than an average high schooler might about this field. Most will probably not know more than an average grade schooler would! This assignment should reflect the concepts and themes we have explored at length in this class and should represent the sum of your understanding these concepts. Once again, I wish to stress that anything in this assignment (or indeed any of the others) that you don't understand, are concerned about, or have questions about, please don't hesitate to ask! I want to help and I want you to succeed. The best way to do so is to ensure that you ask clear and directed questions so I can better aid you!

Schedule

Week 

Title 

 Topic

Assignments 

Notes 

1: Sept. 8th-12th 

Unit 1: Language 

Syllabus 

    

2: Sept. 13th-19th 

  

Ideology 

    

3: Sept. 20th-26th 

  

Diction and Simplicity 

    

4: Sept. 27th-Oct. 3rd 

  

Valuation 

Oct. 9th - The Pitch Assignment Due 

  

5: Oct. 4th-10th 

READING BREAK 

  

READING BREAK 

  

6: Oct. 11th-17th 

Unit 2: Audience 

Internal vs. External 

    

7: Oct. 18th-24th 

  

Expertise 

    

8: Oct. 25th-31st 

  

Public, Professional, and Private 

    

9: Nov. 1st-7th 

  

Place 

Oct. 13th - The Report Assignment Due 

  

10: Nov. 8th-14th 

Unit 3: Goals 

Principles 

    

11: Nov. 15th-21st 

  

Distilation 

    

12: Nov. 22nd-28th 

  

Public/Private Action 

    

13: Nov. 29th-Dec. 5th 

  

Results 

Dec. 11th - The Presentation Assignment Due 

  

Policies 

Formatting

Each of your written assignments should be double-spaced, in a legible 12 pt. font. Assignments should have page numbers (pagination) in the top right of the page. They should also have a byline on the first page of the assignment in the top left corner. That means that your first page should have a small, single-spaced series of lines in the top left corner that look like this: 

ENGL-193 

Leon Kennedy 

#00085941 

Report Assignment - The Emperor of All Maladies 

22 June 2020 

That’s the course code, followed by your name, your student number, the title, and the date. When the essay then begins, it’s double spaced and in proper paragraph structure. I am fine with different file formats, but not google docs or another cloud editing equivalent, please. The file names must be in the following format: 

Kennedy, Leon - Report Assignment.DOCX 

That’s last name, comma, first name, space-dash-space, assignment name. This might not seem like a big deal, but it is, as it helps me keep you all accounted for and gets assignments back to you quite a bit faster. When you are submitting your assignments, please do so in the appropriate assignment dropbox on LEARN.

Late Assignments

Where it is not specified otherwise, assignments are due at 11:00 PM on the due date listed. These due dates are useful for organizational purposes, both yours and mine, but I do not assign late penalties under most circumstances, provided assignments are turned in no more than two days before my internal grade deadline at the end of term. One caveat, however, is that if assignments are turned in after the stated due date, they will not include feedback. Exceptions and other circumstantial issues may be discussed with me with reasonable notice and given appropriate circumstances, though I reserve the right to request proof of any such mitigating circumstances. Please don't hesitate to ask for assistance in general, I want to make sure you have the opportunity to hand in something that you're happy with, and I want you to have the freedom to do so. 

Contact

I am always available to field any questions or concerns you may have via email. I maintain a schedule policy about emails. I generally only check email no more than once a day, and typically not during weekends or holidays. This is a policy I maintain based on principle. There is a big difference between being 'on call' and 'off the clock', and the constant pressure to monitor email effectively puts both you and me into a state of stressful hyper vigilance. I believe it is unreasonable to ask this of you or of myself. I encourage you to do the same! This may result in your experiencing some issue with your assignments, class, etc. that occur during times that I am unavailable. In those instances, go ahead and email me as usual, and I will retroactively accommodate you in any way I can. Just do your best to respect my time and attention, and I will endeavour to do the same, and do all I can to help make things easier--this policy will not impede your ability to succeed in this course. 

Marking and Feedback 

Assignments in the arts do not often possess a concretized idea of a perfect score in which you have done all that is theoretically required, and made no errors. There are frequently criteria, about which we attempt to be clear as instructors, but it can rarely be easily said that a student has or has not embodied them perfectly. This means that as we grade, we build upward, observing what you've accomplished and assign a grade based on how much and how well you have developed that which you have been working on. This means that in this class, an 85% on a paper is an excellent grade, and a 95% is almost unheard of. Strive to do as well as you can, but temper your expectations accordingly! Like chess, you can learn to communicate well, but mastering it takes a lifetime, and even then, you will likely never master it fully. 

It is my natural inclination to write a great deal, and given both space and free time, I would write extended monologues to each of you as feedback for your assignments, but this is tremendously taxing and inefficient, so I must be measured. Assignments submitted on or before the deadline will be issued general feedback detailing where many of the common errors and successes are in the class' submissions, though I am more than happy to explicate more fully each individual grade with an email request. I do ask that students wait 24 hours after receiving grades to inquire further, and to do so with specific questions in mind. Thank you!   

University Policies

Cross-listed courses 

Please note that a cross-listed course will count in all respective averages no matter under which rubric it has been taken. For example, a PHIL/PSCI cross-list will count in a Philosophy major average, even if the course was taken under the Political Science rubric. 

Academic Integrity 

Academic Integrity: In order to maintain a culture of academic integrity, members of the University of Waterloo are expected to promote honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. See the UWaterloo Academic Integrity webpage for more information. 

Discipline: A student is expected to know what constitutes academic integrity, to avoid committing academic offences, and to take responsibility for his/her actions. Check the Office of Academic Integrity for more information. A student who is unsure whether an action constitutes an offence, or who needs help in learning how to avoid offences (e.g., plagiarism, cheating) or about “rules” for group work/collaboration should seek guidance from the course professor, academic advisor, or the Undergraduate Associate Dean. When misconduct has been found to have occurred, disciplinary penalties will be imposed under Policy 71 – Student Discipline. For information on categories of offenses and types of penalties, students should refer to Policy 71 - Student Discipline. For typical penalties check Guidelines for the Assessment of Penalties.

Grievance: A student who believes that a decision affecting some aspect of his/her university life has been unfair or unreasonable may have grounds for initiating a grievance. Read Policy 70 - Student Petitions and Grievances, Section 4. When in doubt, please be certain to contact the department’s administrative assistant who will provide further assistance.

Appeals: A decision made or penalty imposed under Policy 70 - Student Petitions and Grievances (other than a petition) or Policy 71 - Student Discipline may be appealed if there is a ground. A student who believes he/she has a ground for an appeal should refer to Policy 72 - Student Appeals. 

Accommodation for Students with Disabilities 

Note for students with disabilities: The AccessAbility Services office, located on the first floor of the Needles Hall extension (1401), collaborates with all academic departments to arrange appropriate accommodations for students with disabilities without compromising the academic integrity of the curriculum. If you require academic accommodations to lessen the impact of your disability, please register with the AS office at the beginning of each academic term. 

Mental Health Support 

All of us need a support system. The faculty and staff in Arts encourage students to seek out mental health support if they are needed. 

Note: Due to COVID-19 and campus closures, services are available only online or by phone. 

On Campus 

  • Counselling Services: counselling.services@uwaterloo.ca / 519-888-4567 ext. 32655

  • MATES: one-to-one peer support program offered by Federation of Students (FEDS) and Counselling Services

  • Health Services Emergency service: located across the creek form Student Life Centre 

Off campus, 24/7

  • Good2Talk: Free confidential help line for post-secondary students. Phone: 1-866-925-5454

  • Grand River Hospital: Emergency care for mental health crisis. Phone: 519-749-4300 ext. 6880

  • Here 24/7: Mental Health and Crisis Service Team. Phone: 1-844-437-3247

  • OK2BME: set of support services for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning teens in Waterloo. Phone: 519-884-0000 extension 213 

Full details can be found online on the Faculty of Arts website 

Download UWaterloo and regional mental health resources (PDF) 

Download the WatSafe app to your phone to quickly access mental health support information 

Territorial Acknowledgement 

We acknowledge that we are living and working on the traditional territory of the Attawandaron (also known as Neutral), Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples. The University of Waterloo is situated on the Haldimand Tract, the land promised to the Six Nations that includes ten kilometres on each side of the Grand River. 

For more information about the purpose of territorial acknowledgements, please see the CAUT Guide to Acknowledging Traditional Territory (PDF). 

On a personal note, while I think on balance it is better to include such statements than it is to keep silent about critical Canadian history, particularly for the sake of those students that might otherwise be unaware of the lasting cultural tensions in this country, it is also possible that, for the above peoples, this statement might be seen as adding insult to injury. I’m afraid I have no resolution to offer, other than to acknowledge this Catch-22, and to encourage that students seek out more information on the ongoing epidemic of MMIW in particular for themselves. 

Academic freedom at the University of Waterloo 

Policy 33, Ethical Behaviour states, as one of its general principles (Section 1), “The University supports academic freedom for all members of the University community. Academic freedom carries with it the duty to use that freedom in a manner consistent with the scholarly obligation to base teaching and research on an honest and ethical quest for knowledge. In the context of this policy, 'academic freedom' refers to academic activities, including teaching and scholarship, as is articulated in the principles set out in the Memorandum of Agreement between the FAUW and the University of Waterloo, 1998 (Article 6). The academic environment which fosters free debate may from time to time include the presentation or discussion of unpopular opinions or controversial material. Such material shall be dealt with as openly, respectfully and sensitively as possible.” This definition is repeated in Policies 70 and 71, and in the Memorandum of Agreement, Section 6. 

About Me

I am a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo. I have been a TA and adopted various roles in teaching for eight years now, and have taught several courses in Shakespeare, Business Communications, and introductory English Writing as well. I have taught Introduction to Game Studies several times in the past, and I have also taught Fantasy Literature as well. My areas of study include Discourse and Text Analysis, Games, Folklore, Shakespeare, and American Literature. I am thirty-five years old (updating this paragraph every year feels like watching grains of sand in my life's hourglass and is mildly terrifying), and am native to Southern Ontario, born and raised in Whitby, having completed my undergraduate degree and my MA at Trent University in Peterborough. I am usually longwinded, though I consider it respectful to be as candid and clear as I can be. Foremost as an instructor I try to be respectful, polite, and to possess and demonstrate integrity as much as possible. My interests include reading and writing, of course, on all kinds of subjects, but I also enjoy fine dining and like to experiment with cooking. I like trying interesting scotch and beer, painting, and I very much enjoy games of all kinds as well. 

While I consider myself left-leaning politically, to the best of my ability my views will not influence how I assess what you write about, positively or negatively. It is about how you argue, not what you argue for, and I encourage you to keep this in mind, as I try to keep my teaching and scholarly ambitions largely apolitical. Your position on something doesn't earn or deduct you anything, only your argumentation. My pedagogical philosophy is built upon embracing both the online classroom and my interactions with you as a contact zone for you--a place in which you will likely encounter new concepts and ideas and in which you must work with others that may or may not agree with you to develop your understanding. This means I consider this online space a classroom, and a challenging environment. I expect that anything you do not understand you will ask about, or use what resources are at your disposal to try to understand. I will also always take your questions seriously and treat them with respect, as nothing should make you look or feel stupid in a classroom--only challenged. Classrooms are mediated spaces, but they are not "safe" spaces, per se. They are places to challenge and adapt, because that is what it means to learn. 

As a final note, I design courses with a physical classroom in mind, and it has taken some work to adapt to an online format in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This will have an impact in diminishing our level of contact with one another. Keep this in mind that this kind of asymmetric communication removes access to three critical aspects of engaging with others: body language, tone, and most importantly, time. What people say in one moment is a product of that moment--it reflects their relative fatigue, hunger, emotional state, etc., and this can influence how we interact. Mitigating these limitations will likely be the work of a lifetime for those of us coming of age with the Internet, and we all have yet to fully adapt, much less understand what its impacts will be. I can't present perfect solutions to these challenges, but I will be doing everything I can to restore and maintain as much of our communicative capacity as possible, for instance, by responding to emails with audio files that I have recorded, for example, so that you might hear tone and intuit body language. Remember, we need others, not just as voices or images, but as bodies with whom we share space, and we will get to where we have more of that again! In the meantime, take heart, and I will try to keep us on an even keel!

ENGL-294 Reading List

In this course, there will be relatively little you need to read, as much of what you will be learning about communication will be derived from inter-group discussions and writing assignments, but each of you will have one major work you will be expected to read throughout the term. In the first week of class, we will be signing up for books and reading over the syllabus, but also arranging groups once books have been selected, but in logging on to the LEARN system in the first week, have a list ready of three books you might like to look at from this list in order of preference, and we shall try to accommodate everyone if we can! 

Readings

These are the books available to choose from for this course. Each can only have so many students reading it to spread around the topics we will be covering, but each is a book devoted to a concept or theory in the sciences that is being prepared for a broader audience, so you should be able to grasp or see how it is that they are valuating and breaking down the important parts of what they are trying to impart, to a greater or lesser extent. Not all of these books are of equal length, complexity, or ease of reading, but that should allow for a variable experience that will encourage adaptation! I am confident however that they will at least all be interesting. These are, in no particular order: 

  1. Wilson, Edward O. The Social Conquest of Earth.

  2. Pikkety, Thomas. Capital in the 21st Century.

  3. Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene.

  4. Mukherjee, Siddartha. The Emperor of All Maladies.

  5. Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time.

  6. Fainaru-Wada, Mark and Steve Fainaru. League of Denial.

  7. Grusin, Richard. Premediation.

  8. Blaser, Martin J. Missing Microbes.

As most of these books are issued by popular presses and are not hard to find through Amazon or bookstores, so I don't feel inclined to issue them to the campus book store (mainly because I know you can find them far more cheaply elsewhere). I would recommend resources like Abe Books, Book Repository, or BookFinder.com (the last of which is an aggregator site for many major book sources online and helps to find you the cheapest deal on them). If there is any difficulty you are experiencing in finding these books, just let me know and I will help you how I can!