Learning Outcomes

The Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) are the intended outcomes for all UNM composition students. It should be both a demonstration, a reflection, and an argument for what you learned and how you accomplished each SLO.

Outcome 1: Rhetorical Situation and Genre

Outcome 1 consists of the ability to be able to analyze, compose, and reflect on arguments in a variety of genres, considering the strategies, claims, evidence, and various mediums and technologies that are appropriate to the rhetorical situation. While composing project 1, I had to incorporate all of these elements, from analyzing peer projects, to composing the project. There were many different analytical techniques I tried incorporating. I followed all questions asked on the review sheet, but always made sure to thoroughly detail anything I felt my peer needed to know about their project. While composing, I carefully followed all given directions, and reviewed to make sure I had all needed content that had to be included. Before practicing these outcomes this year, I had previously experienced them in school before, so I am very familiar at what it takes to achieve all outcomes.

Outcome 2: Writing as a Social Act

Outcome 2 consists of being able to describe the social nature of composing, particularly the role of discourse communities at the local, national, and international level. Working with Outcome 2 was very apparent while working on Project 2, the Profile Project. Project 2 consisted of exploring discourse communities in ways that would be interesting to an audience who has never really entertained it. For example, the discourse community that I focused on was the Twin Discourse Community. It is a community that not many people are intimately aware about. Throughout my Profile Project, I focused on researching the role the twin discourse community has on not only just me, but on others who identify within the community, and other people who may be interested in learning about it if they haven't had any previous knowledge about it. This project is an example of a positive yet interesting way of discovering different communities that you may not have known about by delving into the ideas, and hearing a direct interview with someone who identifies within the community, and hearing how it affects them overall in their life.

Outcome 3: Writing as a Process

Outcome 3 consists of the ability to be able to use multiple approaches for planning, researching, prewriting, composing, assessing, revising, editing, proofreading, collaborating, and incorporating feedback in order to make your compositions stronger in various mediums and using multiple technologies. Outcome 3 is very important when composing a project like the ones we did, due to the amount of research needed beforehand. My memoir project didn't need much research, just due to the fact that it was basically about events that I had experienced already in my life. Project 2 was the most research-intense project. I had to research all kinds of different facts I hadn't already known about the twin discourse community. Prewriting was also very important in regards to each project. Before each project, we would have workshops in class, which really helped me a lot, in the process of thinking of ideas, and incorporating those ideas that I had developed into the full length final project.

Outcome 4: Grammar and Usage

Outcome 4 consists of two different avenues of outcomes. The first set of elements consists of the ability to improve your fluency in the dialect of Standardized Written American English at the level of the sentence, paragraph, and document. There were many examples of different dialects in readings we did while working on the Profile Project. The Profile Project consisted heavily on one's dialect incorporated into the project. I believe I gained knowledge about dialect that I hadn't explored before, not just from the examples reviewed in class, but by incorporating it into my own projects. The other part of Outcome 4 consists of having the ability to analyze and describe the value of incorporating various languages, dialects, and registers in your own and others’ texts. An example of the value of incorporating various language & dialect into other's texts were the interviews conducted within the Profile project. Everyone had to incorporate an interview of someone who identified with the discourse community of choice to work on, and by interviewing them, it gave an in-detailed glimpse of the person's experience, personal language, and their dialect of choice by how they conducted their interviews with the fellow interviewee.

Outcome 5: Reflection

Outcome 5 consists of the ability to comprehensively evaluate your development as a writer over the course of the semester and describe how composing in multiple genres and mediums using various technologies can be applied in other contexts to advance your goals. After each and every project we did in class, we always wrote a reflection or a look back at that project, and identified some things we were proud of, and also some things we struggled with. In every one of those reflections, I always tried to give a detailed explanation to each and every component in order to go back and look at my draft, then compared it to the overall final outcome that I'd ended up having.

Outcome 6: Research

Outcome 6, our sixth and final outcome also consists of two different parts. The first part of Outcome 6 consists of the ability to use writing and research as a means of discovery to examine your personal beliefs in the context of multiple perspectives and to explore focused research questions through various mediums and technologies. The profile project is a perfect example of incorporating multiple perspectives into a project in order to explore focused questions. The second part of the outcome consists of the ability to integrate others’ positions and perspectives into your writing ethically, appropriately, and effectively in various mediums and technologies.