UNIV 200 revamped for students’ benefit
During the summer of 2012, the notorious Writing and Rhetoric Workshop class, better known as UNIV 200, underwent a total redesign.
Amir Vera
Staff Writer
During the summer of 2012, the notorious Writing and Rhetoric Workshop class, better known as UNIV 200, underwent a total redesign.
Newly appointed director of the core writing curriculum, Patricia Strong, has been working to change the structure and reputation of a required course many students dread.
“I want them to learn the skills of writing the research paper, of course, but what I want them to leave with is a sense of what it means to effectively argue, whether it’s a text argument, a visual argument (or) a performance argument,” she said.
The course is now designed to be more interactive with student research. Students not only learn to conduct research and write a long paper, but Strong has placed emphasis on translating that information into different mediums as well, such as making a video or powerpoint for a presentation.
Strong was appointed to the position of director in the beginning of the fall semester to head the pilot program of the new UNIV 200. Before accepting the directorship, she was — and still is — the director of the University Writing Center. Because of this, Strong said it was easy to make the transition into her new role.
“What I’m doing now is merely a natural extension of what I’ve been doing the last 15 years at the university,” Strong said. “It just brings things together for me. It allows me to work with faculty whereas before I’ve been primarily working with students. So that’s a big change for me.”
It was a big change for the University College as well. Ten University College faculty members, including Strong, came together over the summer to redesign UNIV 200 to make it more student friendly. According to Strong, students believed UNIV 200 was just a class to write a long paper.
“That’s really one of the reasons we wanted to shake it up,” Strong said. “We wanted to modernize it, make it more contemporary. I would hope that we could breathe some new energy into student’s perception of the class. So we can get rid of the myth of UNIV 200 as being some sort of obstacle to overcome.”
The new version of UNIV 200 is broken up into four units: critical analysis and understanding argument, research inquiry, paper writing and translation of research into a new medium for a non-academic audience.
The new curriculum has already shown positive results. According to Melissa Johnson, curriculum coordinator for the University College, withdrawal rates have gone down as the student success rate has gone up.
Students are now engaging in multiple processes and producing multiple products, so the work is distributed more evenly over the semester,” Johnson said. “We continue to adjust and revise the curriculum in response to student and instructor feedback.”
Strong, who also teaches UNIV 200, saw positive reactions to the pilot program. She said that students are more aware now of the real purpose of the course instead of seeing it as a chore.
“Students saw more utility in the course objectives,” Strong said. “An increased connection between what they were learning between UNIV 200 and how they can apply that learning to their upper division courses. That’s really the main goal of UNIV 200.”
