4350 Essay

Writing for GENB 4350

Introduction (0:22)
Welcome to You Improved, Writing for GENB 4350. In this presentation you will learn
how to improve your business writing, and improve your grade in this course.

Overview (0:47)
Not only is this presentation important to your performance in this class, but it is also
important to your career as a business professional.

First, this presentation will guide you through an introduction through the course and its
written assignments.

Second, the presentation will provide four tips of improvement for the writing
assignments. Mastering business writing will help you get better grades, and ultimately
more successful in your careers.

At the end, you will take the self-quiz to test how well you understand these concepts. I
also suggest you go through these slides in order. You can always come back and review.

So, let begin.

The Writing Assignments
There are five assignments in this course, each with a different purpose. Some are
intended to assess only your critical thinking and writing skills. While others are intended
to assess your critical thinking, writing, and your understanding of the course content.
Lets go over these in more detail. Select the first tab on the right side of the notebook.

(1:36) Assignment 1 requires you to describe an ethical dilemma you recently
encountered. You will need to describe the dilemma and how you analyzed the situation.
Some things to consider:

§ What made it an ethical dilemma? For example, some ethical
decisions might force you to decide between one value, such as
trust, over another value, such as honesty.

§ What were your reasons for your decision? In other words, how
did you decide?

The purpose of this assignment is to provide you an opportunity to reflect on
ethics in your personal or professional life. And to demonstrate your critical thinking and
writing skills. You don’t need any special knowledge to begin.
Finally you must think about this issue deeply. You should spend about one-third
of the paper explaining the event, and about two-thirds of the paper explaining the
reasons for your decision. If your paper is about 500 words, then you probably analyzed
the situation deeply enough. However, points will not be deducted for papers over or
under 500 words, this is merely a guide.

(1:36-2:49) Assignment 2 asks you to apply two ethical theories to a case. This
assignment will require you to apply your understanding of the concepts studied in the
course, as well as your understanding of what constitutes good critical thinking and
writing style for this course. The depth of thought for this assignment should be
significant. Therefore, you should aim for writing 500 to 700 words. Again, points are not
being deducted for being over or under; this is just a guide for your convenience.
One of the complaints I often receive from students about the suggested word
guide is they feel they have to leave out important arguments in order to fit in this range.
But when I read the papers, I see that students could have included the arguments, but
edited much more, and ended up with the same number of words. So, the suggested word
guide is really to force you to engage in several editing processes, so that you end up with
a version that contains only the most important information.

Assignment 3 will ask you to do the same thing as assignment 2, except that you will use
two different theories.

(2:49-3:39) Assignment 4 is your opportunity to practice revising. This assignment is
weighted more heavily than the others because it is your final paper. This should
represent your best effort and take into account the feedback provided in prior
assignments, as well as any other necessary changes.
One question students often ask is that, “I scored well on assignments 2 and 3.
Does that mean I can just add the papers together and I should score well on assignment
4?”
Well the answer is not so simple. When you combine the assignment 2 and 3, you
will need to consider all four arguments together. This means, that your conclusion may
change because you are now seeing the case from four different perspectives.

(3:39-3:50) Ah, assignment 5. Assignment 5 should be a fun one because now you have
the opportunity to apply what you’ve learned in the semester by re-writing your
experience told in assignment 1 into another assignment using any two of the ethical
theories we studied during the semester.

Submission, Feedback, and Grading

Submitting Assignments

• Save with a proper file name (0:44)
o It is extremely important for you to save your word doc with the proper

title. Doing so will help the course operate as smoothly as possible.
o For each assignment, you will save your document as the following

format: First name SPACE last name SPACE Peoplesoft Number
UNDERSCORE A and the number of the assignment. For example A1.

o If you forget to save your paper with the proper name, points will be
deducted from your paper.

• Upload properly into Turn it In (0:45-1:21)
o You will submit your papers to TurnItIn.com within Blackboard

o Each submission link is located under the appropriate week under course
content.

o The most important part to know is that you must click twice when
uploading your paper.

o And when you have properly submitted your paper, you will see a Paper
ID number. Write this number down. Without it you will not earn credit
for your paper even if you completed it.

o A practice TurnItIn submission link is provided under Week 1 in case you
would like to practice this process.

Feedback
• How to access feedback

o You can access on your paper by going to the feedback TurnItIn Link
under the course content in which you submitted your assignment.

o For example, if you submit your assignment in Week 3, your feedback
will show up in Week 3 under a folder called Assignment 3 Feedback.

o Feedback is usually available about a week after the late due date for the
paper. This applies to assignment 1, 2, and 3.

o Feedback might come a little later for assignment 4 because it is longer
and for assignment 5 because it is the last assignment.

o To view your feedback in the proper format, be sure to click on the paper
icon when going into TurnItIn.

o You will see your paper with added comments at the end and also
throughout the paper.

• Purpose of feedback
o It is important to distinguish feedback versus editing.
o Feedback consists of noting some areas within your paper that may

represent thinking and or writing problems.
o Feedback is designed on how to provoke your own thoughts on how to

improve your own thinking and writing
o You are both the writer and the editor.
o The person providing feedback, this is your instructor, TA or writing

center, should only be considered a guide on your journey to improve your
own critical thinking and writing. You should expect the person providing
feedback to provide comments on only parts of your paper. However, the
best papers take note of feedback and apply those principles throughout
the paper.

o Finally, feedback is not designed to be comprehensive, whereas the
purpose of editing service is to provide comprehensive and detailed
recommendations for improvement.

o And, in this class you are both the writer and the editor and are solely
responsible for writing clearly, concisely, and directly with professional
tone and no grammatical errors.

Grading
• How grades are determined

o Your grade on each paper is determined solely on the grading rubric for
each assignment. So you should review each of those rubrics as you
prepare the assignments.

o Grades are determined by the course administrator, and not by the writing
center, the person providing feedback, or any other person.

• Grade disputes
o Grade disputes are handled by the course administrator.
o Now, before considering brining a grade dispute, you should review the

feedback that you received on your paper along with the grading rubric
provided in the assignment instructions. Nine times out of ten, when
students review this they realize and understand a little better how they
earned their grade.

o Refer to the syllabus for proper procedures and timeline because there is a
deadline for submitting grade disputes for your writing assignments, as
well as for your exams.

o And finally, note that grade disputes may result in an increase or a
decrease of your grade. Depending on the application of the grading
rubric.

4 Tips to Improve Performance

• Tip 1
o The first, and perhaps the most important, tip is to fully understand the

writing subject and the assignment instructions.
o Every reading assignment or item assigned to watch online is important to

the assignments. Additionally, coming to class each week is often
overlooked, but critical part to completing these assignments.

o You should also understand how you will be assessed on each assignment.
You will find a grading rubric or grading chart in each assignment.
Review these before starting your assignment. They will tell you what is
required for an A, B, or C-level paper.

o And finally, there is a wealth of resources posted on the homepage, under
a folder called “writing resources.” You’ll even find a sample paper with
feedback and a revised version of the paper showing you how to
incorporate feedback for improvement.

• Tip 2
o The second tip is to understand what critical thinking means for GENB

4350.
o In a nutshell, critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-

monitored, and self-corrective thinking. Notice that all of these
descriptions relate to the self. The reason for this is because it is the self
that attempts to convey the ideas, so it is the self that needs to be directed,
disciplined, monitored, and corrected.

o Now here are some other descriptions of what is critical thinking. And
these come from the miniature guide to critical thinking concepts and tools
by Dr. Richard Paul and Dr. Linda Elder in association with the
foundation for critical thinking on page 2.

§ Number 1: You raise relevant questions to the problem and
describe the question clearly and precisely. For this class, it means
CLEARLY stating the ethical issue and describing why it is an
ethical issue (and not just a regular business decision).

§ Number 2: You assess the relevant information using alternative
ethical theories, recognizing and assessing, as needed, the
assumptions, implications, and practical consequences and
criticisms of the different theories. You think open-mindedly and
without bias during this process.

§ Number 3: You provide a solution that is supported by your
analysis. For this class, your final decision must make sense. It
must be based on consideration of all of the theories you analyzed.

o For examples of different levels of critical thinking, please view the
Critical Thinking presentation posted on the course website.

• Tip 3
o The third tip is to convey your ideas with effective written

communication.
o Improvement in this are comes with practice, which is one of the reasons

we have multiple writing assignments and the reason for the relatively low
stakes of the grades on the first few assignments.

o My experience teaching this course is that most student writing would
benefit from better organization and/or writing more clearly and concisely.

o First, let’s talk about the organization issue. By far the best way to
improve your organization is to create an outline while you are
researching and thinking about the paper. The outline serves two purposes:

§ One is to help you organize your thoughts in a logical manner, and
§ The second is to help ensure that you have discussed all of the

issues and points necessary in the paper.
o Outlining is the hardest part of writing because it is the thinking part.

Writing is the communicating part. Although thinking and writing are
intertwined, it is really difficult to write well if your thoughts are not
rational. So before you start to communicate by writing, be sure that you
have thought deeply enough about the situation and that your thoughts are
represented in your outline.

o Second, let’s talk about writing clearly and concisely. One of the most
difficult aspects of writing (at least for some) is knowing that our writing
is not clear. I know what I am trying to say, but I need to make sure
everyone else knows that too.

o The best way I know to help ensure that my writing is clear is to put the
paper aside for a while and then come back to it. Distance from the issues
seems to help clear my mind which then helps me write more clearly. Of
course, this requires setting aside ample time to think and write before the
due date. Waiting until the last minute to start the assignment almost never
results in an A paper.

o And writing concisely requires that during your editing process you ask
yourself whether each paragraph, sentence, and word is absolutely

necessary to your argument. If it is not, delete it. Doing so makes your
ideas come across even more clearly.

• Tip 4
o The last tip is to understand who is responsible for your writing

improvement and grades on assignments.
o Ultimately, it is your responsibility to take charge of your own writing

improvement process. Improvement only occurs with thoughtful, self-
directed practice.

o When I reflect on the ways I improved my writing during my educational
and professional careers, I realize that the person who helped me the most
by far was me! I taught myself how to write more clearly because I spent
lots of time thinking about my own writing and whether I was conveying
the ideas I wanted to convey. So take responsibility for your improvement.

o That said, there are several resources to help you improve your writing.
§ First, your instructors are here to help you better understand the

content. If you don’t understand a particular theory, please ask for
clarification.

§ Second, the feedback you receive on your papers is designed to
help you better understand where your writing is not clear, where
you may miss key arguments, or when you might benefit from
better organization or grammar, for example.

§ Third, the UH writing center is always there as a resource for you
(for any of your classes). The consultants are students who have
good writing skills who have been trained to help you address
some of the written communication concerns you might have on
your papers. Just remember that the consultants are not subject
matter experts, and therefore, may not understand what represents
good critical thinking on these assignments.

o One final note, the course administrator is solely responsible for issuing
grades on the assignments (not the person providing you feedback and
initial assessment, not the UH writing center, or your TA).