This is the introductory course in American Government, with the main focus on the national level but some attention to state and local levels as well. This OpenLab site contains course materials as well as links to news sites and a discussion board to exchange ideas. Please keep disagreements friendly, and please keep in mind that our main purpose is more to analyze than to react and fume.
When the course is over, as long as you still have an OpenLab account at City Tech, you are invited to continue posting on this discussion board.
To access course materials, click “Visit Course Site” at the right of this page.
City Tech’s ENG 1101 course prepares you for the kinds of communication, research, and literacy that you will use throughout your academic and professional careers. Furthermore, it develops students’ understanding, application, and critical awareness of two big ideas: 1) Communication is rhetorical, and 2) Communication is multimodal, or WOVEN (written, oral, visual, electronic, and nonverbal). Through a series of process-driven projects, some of which are individually based and others collaborative, you will gain a deeper understanding of effective and persuasive communication techniques while developing your critical thinking skills and multiple literacies.
Each ENG 1101 class is unique, because while each one has the same basic outcomes, each is taught by an instructor with his or her own research and pedagogical approach. In our class, we will use the interdisciplinary field of the neurosciences as a way to focus our conversations and projects. Of course, communication is about the transference of information via the senses and processed by each audience member’s brain. In addition, the brain and its embodied perception systems define how we are most receptive to receiving communications, thinking about communications, and being persuaded by communications. If we understand how the brain/body works, we can apply this knowledge to being more effective communicators and successful professionals.
