The standard assignment sequence for ENGL 216 at DeVry University (during the May 2018 session, at least) states that students will “evaluate and integrate outside research to create a well-organized and documented formal analytical report or proposal using at least six sources, including books, articles, interviews with subject matter experts, and websites or databases, and prepare a set of presentation slides to accompany the proposal.” While course material makes some suggestions about topics and audiences, it does not prescribe them so narrowly as other courses on offer do. Experience teaches me, however, that students tend to do better on such projects as the course requires when they have more overt guidance on topic and audience–hence this page.

For the section of the class I teach, the available topic is curricular reform (as is the case for my March 2018 sections of ENGL 135 and SPCH 275, from which information I borrow freely for this page). That is, each student will select an item from one of the DeVry curricula–likely a class–and argue that a particular change needs to be made to it. The most likely options are that a class needs to be added, removed, or substantively altered.

It is expected that students will address this topic. Alternatives are available only by explicit instructor permission.

The primary audience for such a presentation would be the DeVry administration–not at the campus level, but at the University level. Secondary audiences would be campus administrations and accrediting agencies.

Primary sources would include the DeVry course catalog, as well as course catalogs from similar universities and colleges. Secondary sources would involve educational research, such as is found on the ERIC database, as well as in the journals and trade publications of the various disciplines and professions. Tertiary sources would be those speaking to philosophies of education and cognition.