This course is designed to meet the WPA Council's outcomes for First Year Composition (FYC), the Utah Board of Regents outcomes for ENGL 1010, and the LEAP outcomes established by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. These outcomes provide students and instructors with assessable goals and benchmarks for charting progress.

We also have a number of goals for this course. Students who complete this course will learn to:

Produce a variety of formal and informal writing, demonstrating knowledge of academic literacy conventions, such as summary, synthesis, and citation.
Demonstrate an understanding of how rhetorical expectations vary from discipline to discipline.
Understand the rhetorical situation.
Adapt writing to a variety of purposes, audiences, and composing situations by selecting and using the most appropriate genres.

Of course, learning to research, read, and communicate responsibly and skillfully is central to the wider enterprise of liberal education. Students should understand that--in addition to their short- and long-term educational aspirations--the skills acquired in English 1010 are relevant to their lives beyond the university.

To that end, English 1010 supports the core values of higher education, reflects the ideal of the citizen scholar, and emphasizes the importance of life-long learning.

While not necessarily assessable in the strictest sense, the following values inform every aspect of this course:

Practicing Inquiry-Based Learning: Genuine learning is the result of asking thoughtful questions about issues that matter. Research that seeks only to reinforce previously formed opinions fails to meet the standards of the university. More importantly, it is unlikely to produce better understanding or new insight. ENGL 1010 foregrounds inquiry-based learning by asking students to discover and understand others' ideas without imposing their own beliefs. When students begin by asking "What don't I know?" and "What have others already said about this issue?" they open themselves to new perspectives that enrich their understandings of complex issues.

Recognizing Power Dynamics in Communication: In our dealings with others we should adhere to the democratic ideal of human equality. At the same time, we should be aware that not all people have equal economic and educational opportunities, social standing, or access to the workings of our political, legislative, and judicial systems. These disparities of power manifest themselves in acts of communication, affecting the who, what, and how of arguments over important issues. Teaching students to recognize how power dynamics influence communication contributes to their development as citizen scholars.

Practicing Ethical Communication: In the context of ENGL 1010, being ethical means much more than not plagiarizing. We want our students to recognize the ethical dimensions of every aspect of research and writing. We want them to explore issues that matter, and we want them to ask difficult questions about those issues. They should choose to consult the best sources, not just the most convenient or agreeable ones. Their citations should be accurate because they understand the spirit of scholarly conversation, and they should choose their words carefully out of respect for those with whom they communicate. In short, students' work should reflect their commitment to their individual, institutional, and communal ethos.

Responding Openly to Diversity and Difference: Universities challenge students by exposing them to a wide range of perspectives and asking them to consider their own beliefs in that broadened context. If students are willing and able to engage with diversity and difference, they are more likely to reap the full benefits of liberal education. ENGL 1010 encourages students to recognize, understand, appreciate, and respond thoughtfully to difference.

Developing Critical Self-Awareness: Being critically self-aware means being willing to examine one's own beliefs in a complex world. Treating writing as a process; recognizing that real issues have multiple competing perspectives; summarizing others' ideas accurately; revising one's work in response to constructive criticism; reflecting on the production of knowledge; and examining the sources of opinions: All of these activities are central to ENGL 1010 and are designed to help students develop critical self-awareness.

Community Awareness and Participation: ENGL 1010 sits at the core of the university curriculum because the skills it teaches benefit every student in every discipline. More broadly, ENGL 1010 serves the ultimate goal of our educational system: To cultivate an informed, thoughtful, self-aware, self-critical, and engaged citizenry. Students who successfully complete ENGL 1010 are better prepared to contribute to their local, national, and global communities.