Week ZERO
Resources for creating orientation modules for your courses
Week ZERO

Sample Module: Expository Writing

This is the orientation module for the in-person English 120 course taught by Prof. Kathie Cheng. It includes the sections of:

  • welcome
  • course expectations
  • required resources
  • navigating the course site
  • interacting with each other
Walk through video of English 120 orientation module

Welcome

Welcome (back) to English 120, and for those of you who are new to Hunter College, welcome to the college as well! I’m Dr. Kathie Cheng, and I’ll be your Expository Writing instructor this Fall. Please address me by any of the following based on your comfort level: Kathie, Professor, Professor Cheng, or Dr. Cheng.

I hope to get to know all of you and that you will get to know each other throughout the semester – we’ll begin with introductions to each other through the icebreaker on the next page. The rest of this Learning Module will explain the basics of this ENG 120 section and how it will be conducted. Please try to read through this module and complete the Padlet icebreaker as soon as possible before our first class meeting this Friday on August 26th.

Our classroom is a computer lab (D) on the tenth floor of Hunter North. When you exit the elevator, turn right, and then turn left at the reception desk. If I’m remembering correctly, the door to Lab D should be the third to the right.

If you are currently in any way feeling lost at the start of the semester, check out the webpages for Student Support, OneStop for Students and/or the Division of Student Affairs, which should address most concerns for Hunter students. You are also welcome to email me with any questions.

Course Expectations

English 120 is a research and writing course required for all Hunter students, and all sections require a Reading Response, Reflective Essay, Documented Paper, and Annotated Bibliography (for this past year, the annotated bibliography has been replaced with a Working Bibliography and Research Journals). These assignments and others are due at the end of the semester in a Portfolio.

Our class meets twice a week in a computer lab. You will need your NetID to log into one of the desktop computers and/or to connect to the campus’s wireless internet on your own device.

  • Because you will all have access to computers in class and almost all coursework is submitted on Blackboard, Homework is due by ten minutes into our class time.
  • Classwork is due by the end of class, unless a later deadline is provided.

There is a Module for every week of the semester (accessible by clicking on Weekly Modules on the navigation menu). All the coursework (readings, assignments, etc.) will be accessible from the modules. No need to search for assignments – just look for the relevant date in Weekly Modules. Most Classwork will not be available in their respective module until we are in class. Because most Classwork is based on the Homework, make sure Homework is completed on time and accessible in class to be well-prepared for the Classwork. More details about the Homework and Classwork assignments and grades are explained further in the syllabus (attached here, but found in the ENG 120 Info & Syllabus folder on the navigation menu).

You will be notified via Blackboard announcement of any changes to our in-person meetings (e.g.: for safety reasons).

Required Resources

The below is also covered in the syllabus.

COMPUTER
As a large portion of this course is online, if you do not have easy access to a computer to complete coursework, request a laptop from the college for the semester. While the campus remains open, you could check the schedule for computer labs for student use. Please contact me if you foresee and/or run into any difficulties with computer access for class.

BOOKS (NONE!)
This is an Open Educational Resources section, which means no books are required to be purchased.

SOFTWARE AND ONLINE TOOLS

All of our coursework is accessible through Blackboard (see Blackboard Learn Help for Students if you are unfamiliar with it). The best internet browsers for Blackboard are Firefox and Chrome, so if you do not have either on the device you will be using for Homework, download one of them. Any other web resources or services used will also be free, and you will be explicitly notified if any registration for access is required.

TO READ ASSIGNMENTS:
All readings, as well as assignments and resources, are accessible through Blackboard either online or as a PDF file. If your electronic device does not read PDF files, download Adobe Reader.

TO WRITE AND SUBMIT ASSIGNMENTS:
For the coursework, you need to have access to a word processing program and the internet.

  • If you do not already have Microsoft Office, subscribe to Office 365 for free with your Hunter email address.
  • If you insist on using Pages, convert assignments to a Word document or a PDF before submitting on Blackboard. Pages files will not be accepted as completed work.

Navigating This Blackboard Course Site

The sections of our Blackboard course site that you should be accessing regularly from week to week are within the top portion of the navigation menu:

  • The Announcements menu item is the landing page for our course site. Announcements are also emailed to all of you, so you can search your email or the running archive of announcements for previous posts.
  • The syllabus and course schedule can be accessed from the ENG 120 Info & Syllabus menu item.
  • All readings and assignments for Homework and Classwork can be accessed from the Weekly Modules menu item.

I will walk you through how to navigate our course site during our first class meeting, but generally everything you will need to complete coursework will be accessible in the relevant Learning Module in Weekly Modules.

How to interact with each other

As we will be communicating with each other online, it is important that we all have a shared understanding of how to interact with each other respectfully and effectively. Click on the image below or the “click to launch” above if you prefer to read text as opposed to an infographic. Our syllabus contains additional details in the “Requests and Expectations” section.

Link to infographic.