Instructor:  Paul Cummins

Writing Fellow:  Katie Uva

PHI 330: Business Ethics.

3 hours, 3 credits. Social responsibilities of business organizations. Analysis of ethical, moral, and social issues stemming from the interaction of individuals, businesses, and government. PREREQ:  BBA 204 or Departmental permission.

My involvement in WAC spurred an interest in the use of writing to facilitate learning rather than using it to assess what students have learned, and this conceptualization suggests that writing can help students to learn independently of the instructor. (If this is correct, then this form of learning can deliver dividends to students if they appreciate this fact and extend it to their other classes and personal interests.) So, the question that informs this report is:  In what ways does the use of low stakes summary assignments and in-class writing prompts empower students to decenter the authority of the instructor and to assume responsibility for learning critical thinking?

On the Letters to Students page you will find the letters I and my writing fellow, Katie, Uva, sent to my class to explain the role of writing in the course. On the Assignments & Student Work page you will find instructions for the summary assignments and several examples of the low stake writing my students did for the class, including a reflection on the value of the summary assignments. No student is represented more than once in the samples. I have also presented some preliminary graphic visualizations of the correlation between low stakes writing and student performance in the course in my relfective essay. The focus of this portfolio, though, is my reflection on how low stakes writing changed my perception of the class and transformed my experience teaching.