ENGL 102 Student Posts-A Little Help from Your Peers

At DACC, students in ENGL 102 are offered the opportunity each semester to further their understanding of the academic research process through a guided project before undertaking independent research projects for the remainder of the semester.  The topic of the guided project is usually determined by the instructor, although some instructors leave it to the students to choose a topic they wish to explore as a class.

This spring the students in my ENGL 102 classes looked at literacy--both the denotative and connotative definitions of it.

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Through the reading of source materials and their own narrative writing, they explored how literacy in its variety of forms leads to inclusion or exclusion in different social, economic, and academic communities.

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At the end of their investigative and reflective period, each collaborative learning group created a research based argumentation paper covering an interest of theirs which was related to our overall topic as well as an informative blog post appropriate for their peers which is related to their academic paper topic.

This project not only helped students practice their research and writing/editing skills, but also their skills and expand their knowledge in critical thinking and reading, source evaluation, and source citation/copyright. 

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The students hope, that by sharing their blogs, the process of writing and what is expected in a college level course is more transparent to their peers so that the experience of DACC students will be less like this:

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And more like this:

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