In one affordable online platform, Connect Composition Essentials provides all the elements needed for a first-year composition course regardless of the approach, including McGraw-Hill's popular Power of Process tool for critical reading and rhetorical analysis, a collection of 88 reading selections, an online handbook, and LearnSmart Achieve for personalized instruction in the writing process, critical reading, research, and grammar. Students have 24-hour, 4-year access to Connect Composition Essentials from their PCs, tablets, or smartphones.
•
Power of Process
gives students the ability to annotate, comment on, and reflect on readings, with before-, during-, and after-reading questions that instructors can use as they are or adapt to align with their own course objectives. Instructors can choose the process they want to employ, then upload readings in the tool, assign students to upload readings, or choose from 88 selections that are filtered for level, word count, theme, mode, genre, and discipline -- and apply the provided strategies that are appropriate to their selected process. Power of Process offers unparalleled support for critical thinking and reading as well as a springboard for students’ own writing.
LearnSmart Achieve
, a personalized learning tool, continuously adapts to a student's strengths and weaknesses. It also provides instructors with reports that include data on student and class performance. LearnSmart Achieve offers units on the writing process, critical reading, research, and argument in addition to units on grammar, punctuation, mechanics, and issues for multilingual writers. Instructors can assign topics for students to work on outside of the classroom, thus freeing up valuable class time.
•The
bank of readings
available both within the
tool and from the "Question Bank,” consists of 88 classic and contemporary reading selections, including over 50 argument selections, 10 student essays, and 12 short stories. The readings include pieces by Frederick Douglass, Gloria Steinem, Thomas Sowell, George Will, Ian Frazier, Naomi Shahib Nye, Nicholas Carr, Frank Rich, Rebecca Moore Howard, Kurt Vonnegut, Sojourner Truth, and Dana Gioia, as well as classic short stories such as "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin and "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane.
•Easy to access, navigate, and use, the
handbook
provides on-the-spot help with research, documentation, grammar, punctuation, and mechanics, as well support for writers whose first language is not English. In addition, six new chapters (Chapters 1-6) cover critical reading, the writing process, and argument. Activities, most of them autoscorable, are available for each chapter within the Add Assignment tab. Pre- and post-tests at two levels - covering grammar, punctuation, and mechanics - are also available from the Add Assignment tab. The handbook has an easy-to-use search function and supports annotating and bookmarking.
•Other tools include a
Writing Assignment
function, with the option of setting up peer review and
Outcomes Based Assessment
; the ability to set up
blog
and
discussion board assignments
; and the ability to assign individual chapters and sections from the eBook.