Faculty Resources
Attendance
Writing Program Attendance Policy Draft
There are two kinds of absences possible, official (students are participating in a university-recognized activity) and unofficial. Here is the BSU policy concerning official absences. In the past, students engaged in military or fire-fighting service have also fallen under the official absence policy; address your questions about individual cases to the Writing Program office.
Students considered officially absent cannot be penalized and should be allowed to make up assignments and tests they have missed. Such students should provide instructors with documentation concerning their absence at least ten days in advance. If students anticipate official absence for more than 2.5 weeks of the semester, they should inform instructors as soon as possible. If it is early in the semester, instructors may advise such students to postpone enrolling in the course until they have sufficient time to devote to its work. Although students with long periods of official absence may not be penalized, the quality of their work may suffer as a result of missing so much class time.
For absences other than official, composition instructors are free to make individual judgments about their attendance policy.
What's important:
- Official absences are always allowed.
- For other absences, a balance must be maintained between students' educational needs and their lives. Students must be in the class to learn but should have some time available for illness, family emergencies and other events, etc. without being penalized.
- Students should have clear information available about absences and should have the opportunity to explore (through discussion, examples, etc.) the consequences of the decisions they make about attendance.
As regards absences other than official, the following guidelines represent the position of BSU's Writing Program and its faculty.
For classes that meet once a week:
The instructor has sufficient grounds to fail any student who misses 3 or more classes without an acceptable excuse.
For classes that meet twice a week:
The instructor has sufficient grounds to fail any student who misses 5 or more classes without an acceptable excuse.
For classes that meet three times a week:
The instructor has sufficient grounds to fail any student who misses 7 or more classes without an acceptable excuse.
What's important:
- A student who is failing for any reason still has the right to attend class.
- The phrase "acceptable excuse" encompasses a wide range of meanings and is subject to the instructor's interpretation.
- Consider not penalizing but working with (grading more flexibly, conferencing more, giving extra assignments to) students who miss or will miss more than 2 weeks of class but maintain contact with you and make a good-faith effort to keep up with the class's discussions, reading, and writing. (These students are rare, but they exist.)
- Consider adopting a sliding scale of absence-related grade drops due to lack of participation: one grade after missing 1.5 or 2 weeks of class, then dropping the grade one letter on each subsequent absence.
Sample explanation for students:
The following explanation about why attendance in a composition course is important may also be useful to adapt for your syllabus:
Attendance is required in all the composition courses. Here's why: Our instructors create a community of writers in their classes through group work, sharing of student work-in-progress, and open discussion. Sporadic attendance signals, among other things, that you don't take your membership in that community seriously.
Insights about your writing process emerge from discussion with other writers, including your instructor. These discussions most often occur in class. If you miss them, you'll be missing the course. All of us try to make each class engaging and productive for you. We ask that, at the very least, you be there.
Sample attendance policies:
Devan (for a Tuesday-Thursday class): Attendance is required in all composition courses. That said, it is also true that you may on occasion be absent. Here's what you need to know:
- For official absences (participation in an official university-recognized activity), your absence is permitted. Here are your rights and responsibilities and procedures that should be followed.
- For absences other than official, you have 4 "sick leave" days (300 minutes of class). I do not care why you miss on those days, but I suggest you save them for times when you actually are sick or there is a family emergency.
- Nota bene: My interpretation of a family emergency may be different from yours. Your son's missing homework is not an emergency, nor is your car's breakdown. Take the bus, take a cab, call your friend. But sitting in the hospital with your father who has just had a heart attack is an acceptable excuse for absence.
- Always let me know why you are absent, beforehand if possible.
- After the fifth day of absence other than official, you have failed the course. This is Writing Program policy. If you believe you will probably miss 5 classes, please talk with me as soon as possible.
- When you are present, you should be present for the full class period; portions of classes missed will add up.
CompTalk
There are several ways for BSU writing faculty to keep up the conversation with their colleagues about teaching writing. The best way is to attend regular faculty development meetings, usually held twice a month. But there's also a on-going conversation online. If you've got access to a computer at school or a computer with a modem at home, then you can subscribe the writing program's listserv, CompTalk. This discussion group takes up a range of questions about teaching composition at BSU; discussion threads develop every week at the initiation of list members. If you teach in the program, we strongly encourage you to subscribe to CompTalk and participate actively in the discussions. Here's how.
To subscribe for the first time:
- Get into the email program on your computer. If you're on-campus, that will likely be GroupWise. If you're at home, you'll likely need to use the email program provided by your Internet service provider, like America Online. You can subcribe to the list both at home and at school if you like.
- Address an email message to listserv@listserv.boisestate.edu .
- Leave the subject window blank, but in the body of the message write the following: Subscribe CompTalk Your Name (e.g. Subscribe CompTalk Bruce Ballenger)
That's all there is to it. You will receive a message from the listserv confirming your subscription to the list
To send messages:
- Messages that you initiate to the list (those that are not a reply to an existing post) must be sent to a different address than the one you used to subscribe. Address your message to CompTalk.
- You can also send a message to the list by simply replying to an existing post. Make sure that you send your reply not just to the individual whose message you're replying to but the entire list.
To unsubscribe, simply send an email message to listserv. Leave the subject line blank, and in the body of your message, write SIGNOFF COMPTALK.
Sample Syllabi
Sample Exercises
Befriending the Library
Befriending the Internet
Revision Strategies
The Rock Exercise
The Watercolor Exercise
Teaching Leads and Ends
Teaching Reading Strategies
Some Methods for Helping Students Find a Thesis
Theories About How Writers Develop
Course Design
Primer for Teaching Writing at Boise State University
Approaches to Teaching English 102
12 Steps to Syllabus Design
Structuring the Writing Course
Tips on Conferencing
Annotated Bibliography on Teaching with Technology
Approaches to the Diagnostic Essay
Because we have little confidence in multiple choice tests as a means to determine writing ability, we strongly encourage all English 101 instructors to give their students a diagnostic essay in the first week of classes. These need not be elaborate assignments. Just a short essay in response to some interesting prompt should give you a good sense of whether a particular student might struggle in your class. While you cannot drop a student who you believe doesn't have what it takes to pass English 101, you can strongly encourage them to take ENG 10, developmental writing, or if appropriate, any of the ESL courses we offer. At the very least, a diagnostic essay will alert students from the very beginning that they'll have to work hard to meet the course's minimum competencies. The diagnostic essay can also simply give you an early record of all your students' abilities, and a really useful standard against which you- and they- can evaluate their development as writers.
Assessment
Students often tell us that they were happy with their freshman writing courses. But we know that they can be even better. In fact, because English composition is the only course required of all students, we have a responsibility to constantly evaluate and assess how well the class is serving the needs of Boise State students. That's why we instituted an annual assessment program several years ago. The program, coordinated by long-time writing instructor Stephanie Cox, involves collecting a random sample of portfolios of student writing every semester from every section of English composition on and off-campus. These portfolios are then read and evaluated by trained reviewers who then determine how well the Writing Program is doing meeting its course goals.
But it doesn't end there.
If the assessment program highlights a weakness in instruction, we schedule faculty development sessions that focus on ways to improve our teaching in that area. The annual assessment might also suggest new course goals, or revisions in our minimum competencies for a course. The result is that the curriculum is constantly undergoing review and revision to better meet the needs of our students.
These links provide more information about the Writing Program's assessment efforts, including annual assessment reports, results of surveys, and other information. We'll be frequently updating this page to give our instructors--and our students--continuing snapshots of the freshman writing experience at BSU.