Dr. McIver is a great teacher. She's helpful, understanding, and approachable. The reading isn't too difficult or lengthy, and the class is almost entirely discussion based. She uses a portfolio system, which means that you don't turn in anything for a grade until the very end. You end up writing 2 papers that are 7-10 pages each. However, drafts are still due every so often so you do have to stay on top of things. It's a decent amount of work, but not unreasonable as long as you don't procrastinate.

80% of your grade is based on your portfolio, and 20% is based on class community, which is basically just participation in discussions, so make sure you at least skim the readings and speak up in class! You usually don't have to read too heavily or in depth as long as you can bounce ideas off other students in discussion.

I found Dr. McIver to be really engaging and caring about her students. The reading workload was very minimal: we didn't need to buy any books as our readings were all from pdfs she posted, and all she expected was that we printed, read, and annotated the assigned readings (though she only checked annotations once early on) so we could discuss them in class. For my quarter we had 9 total readings (most of which were short), usually one for every class. The other classes were either writing conferences during a time slot that we signed up for (30 minutes, 2 students at once) in place of class, writing workshops on days we submitted working drafts, or a library workshop to help us for our research paper.

The grading scheme is 80% portfolio and 20% participation. The participation should be easy as long as you skim the readings, and the portfolio consisted of three major essay assignments plus a learning letter. She assigns due dates throughout the quarter for a working draft and revised draft of each essay (usually about one week apart), and though the final drafts aren't due until the end of Week 10, it's best that you try to put your best effort in so you don't end up with three complete essays to write during Week 10. The essays were an explication (750 words; kind of rhetorical analysis), a research paper (1800 words), and a personal manifesto (no word limit; this will probably vary later since the topic of our class was manifestos, but probably won't be in future quarters). I found writing pretty time consuming since I'm a math major who hates English, but I feel that with a reasonable amount of effort anyone can get an A. For the learning letter, she expected us to explain how our writing progressed between each draft of each essay (e.g. quoting specific passages that improved) which would be how she approached grading our final portfolio.

She encourages students to come to office hours, which were pretty helpful; she helps students one-on-one and tries to guide you towards the ideas she wants you to express in your final draft. Also, since she's a teacher union leader, she sometimes has us read and discuss articles on learning and college education in general.

I have really mixed feeling about Dr. McIver. She is one of the most helpful teachers I've ever seen and her classes are engaging and interactive with various forms of group work. However, when I look back at the whole quarter, I found the lectures, reading materials, and writing assignments (which are graded) are somewhat unrelated because you'll only need to read 2 manifestos to finish the writing. Also, she does not give specific scores during the quarter and you'll never know how you are doing. (Even if she gives a rubric for every revised draft, it doesn't reflect what grade you would expect.) Moreover, I'm not sure whether the advice from her to revise my essays was actually helpful because, if you ask for feedback, it's always even more advice but not how your essays already are. I received "you're all good and you only need to ..." all the time, but after I fixed all the stuff she mentioned I finally got an A-.

Dr. McIver is one of the nicest people ever. For the fall quarter, she had her class revolve around the Black Lives Matter movement, which I seriously appreciated. She's very clear about what she expects and how to get an A in the class. I knew walking in that she was a good professor, but now I can tell you 100% that she lives up to the expectation.

Dr. McIver did an amazing job making my first quarter of college such an easy transition! She is beyond kind and despite this course being asynchronous, she scheduled one on one Zoom conferences to meet with us three times throughout the quarter: the first to introduce ourselves, the second to discuss our first essay, and the third to discuss our final essay. Overall, the material is easy to keep up with and to do at your own pace. The final grade was based on three separate papers, the first being an analytical essay on police brutality, the second was an argumentative essay on one way to potentially eliminate police brutality, and then a letter to her about your growth over the quarter! She was very understanding of late assignments and was always willing to give feedback on different drafts of the essays or to answer any questions you might have. Definitely recommend taking her class!

I have very mixed feelings about this class. To start with the good, it was pretty easy with only three real assignments, all papers, required throughout the quarter: An argumentative essay, a persuasive essay, and an informal "learning letter" where you outline your progress and growth through each of your essay drafts during the quarter. Taking the course, I feel like I did improve my writing chops. Dr. McIver is incredibly qualified to teach this class, and can provide amazing help and feedback for each of your essay drafts, especially when you ask her specific questions about different parts of your essay. When she has the time, she's dedicated to her students and schedules meetings with us and community office hours. She's extremely forgiving of tardiness as well.
On the other hand, the transition to remote learning was rough. Dr. McIver has a two year old, whose daycare was closed due to COVID. Possibly because of this (and probably a whole lot of other factors that I don't understand), you could tell it was tough for her to stay on top of this class. She didn't post a couple of minor assignments, so we never did them. She was a bit late with emails (though with scheduled zoom meetings her advice is great). She didn't post all of the lectures outlined in the syllabus past Week 5. I understand that she can't devote all of her energy to this class during these times, but there were periods where I wouldn't check in to English Comp 3D for a week or two at a time, and face no consequences. Still, I was able to get everything done, partially since this isn't meant to be too hard of a class, and I felt like I benefitted from the effort that I did put in.
Overall, if you're looking to become a better writer, I can't really recommend you take this class online, since it's just so easy to get lost and lose all motivation to do anything if you know that there's nothing really forcing you to stay on top of things. Judging from the times I was able to meet with Dr. McIver though, I'd guess that the in-person, non-COVID edition of this class is MUCH better, and I'd totally recommend choosing her as your Professor.

Dr. McIver is a genuinely good teacher and nice person, she was always super energetic and positive during class. The class was primarily readings as homework then in class discussion questions and sometimes a writing workshop in class. The only thing to keep in mind is that you DONT get a grade until the end of the year but she is very fair and if you take your time and write quality essays and are respectful/participate in class you will do just fine. 100% would take again, Dr. McIver is phenomenal!

Professor McIver is incredibly smart and very kind. The course is extremely flexible, and you can write about what interests you within certain constraints. Dr. McIver gives great writing advice, and the workload isn’t too much if you stay on top of it. The course culminates in a final portfolio where you include your drafts and writing s that you are most proud of.