Principles of the OCEAN College Writing Course
          2008-2009
 1.

The OCEAN College Writing course will develop the critical writing, reading, and thinking skills of high school students.  Students will demonstrate an understanding of audience, facility in academic discourse and conventions, rhetorical flexibility, and an appropriate sense of rhetorical forms and prose conventions. 
            2.

Instructors in the OCEAN College Writing course will provide detailed syllabi for their students, listing all major assignments and due dates.  The syllabi will include a statement of course goals; they will also delineate the grading policies both of the course and of the OCEAN program.
3.

Summary, analysis, and argument are key to college writing; the writing assignments in OCEAN College Writing will engage students in these important tasks.  They may also involve students in comparison, classification, description, and narration.
4.

Information literacy will be integrated into writing assignments.  By the end of the semester, students will conduct research and integrate outside sources in their writing, with proper documentation.
  5. Students in OCEAN College Writing will complete weekly writing assignments and at least four major papers of 3-8 pages.  Drafts and revisions of student writing are mandatory; the major papers will be developed through multiple drafts and revisions.  Assignments in the course will be sequenced to encourage revision and recursive thinking.
6.

The OCEAN College Writing requires college-level readings through the use of a supplementary reader.  Additionally, students will have access to rhetoric and a handbook; these can be on-line resources.
7. Students will develop critical reading skills through their engagement with these college-level readings as well as through learning how to read and respond helpfully to the writing of their peers.
8.

Teachers will schedule at least one 15 minute individual conference with students for each major paper or give extensive written feedback.   Teachers will also offer mini-conferences as needed.
9. OCEAN teachers will use the Oberlin College Criteria for Writing Proficiency as a rubric to assess individual pieces of formal student writing.  Assessment will also privilege risk-taking and improvement; nonetheless, not every piece of writing needs to be evaluated.  Final assessment will be based on portfolios that students turn in at least twice during the course.  These portfolios will include all drafts and written work for the course.
10. Students in the OCEAN College Writing course will visit the Oberlin College campus at least once during the school year.  The Oberlin College-OCEAN faculty members will also visit each high school campus at least once.
11.

Students will make up missed class time at the instructor’s discretion, in a manner that complements missed class time.  This includes field trips, excused and unexcused absences.  Out-of-school suspensions are subject to the usual school policies.
12.

OCEAN teachers will introduce students to the Oberlin College Honor Code and to their own school policies on cheating, plagiarism, fabrication, and multiple submissions.  (For definitions of these terms see section B 1- 4 of the Honor Code, see http://www.oberlin.edu/students/links-life/rules-regs.html#honor.)

        
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