Overview

This three-credit, paced-learning course engages students in writing at a graduate level and helps them develop the research, composition, and argument skills they need to succeed in graduate programs. It is intended for MAIS students who have been identified through the MAIS English Language Assessment as requiring remediation. MAIS 606 is a course for graduate students who need to improve their writing significantly, and it will support and provide practice for those students who want to enhance their academic writing skills.

Writing is a process. Specifically, learning to write in the academy is in part a process whereby students are socialized into the conventions and requirements of their disciplines. Consequently, when learning to write in an academic context, you must identify the conventions of academic writing through exposure and analysis, practice applying those conventions, and through feedback from peers and instructors. This course, through readings that make graduate-level reading and writing processes explicit, and by requiring practice in a number of genres typical to graduate assignments, provides necessary tools for the development of writing skills needed in graduate work.

The course will focus intensively on academic literacy: fundamentals of composition, argumentation, critical thinking, and research skills. You will practise these fundamentals by drafting, workshopping, and submitting two assignments: a critical review and a literature review. These assignments are divided into smaller tasks that comprise the learning objectives and activities of most of the course’s weekly sections. You will also have opportunities to discuss assigned readings about academic writing with your classmates, and you will reflect on the readings and your own writing process in an individual writing blog.

Course Objectives

When you have successfully completed this course you will be able to:

1. understand and recognize strengths and weaknesses in your research and writing processes
2. write a critical review and literature review, and understand the purpose of and relationships between these genres in graduate work
3. identify academic genres (summary, research essay, book or critical review, literature review, etc.) and develop research and writing strategies appropriate to the genres
4. assess your own writing for patterns of errors that come up frequently
5. state and demonstrate the role that critical thinking plays in research and graduate writing
6. design an editing guide to improve your writing and identify where to find resources
7. demonstrate the use of informal logic to construct a cogent argument

Student Evaluation

To receive credit for this course, students must participate in the online activities, successfully complete the assignments, and achieve a final mark of at least 60 per cent. Students should be familiar with the Master of Arts—Integrated Studies grading system. Please note that it is students' responsibility to maintain their program status. Any student who receives a grade of "F" in one course, or a grade of "C" in more than one course, may be required to withdraw from the program.

The following table summarizes the evaluation activities and the credit weights associated with them.