It was a privilege to take English Composition 3 with Dr. McIver. For Fall 2015, the theme of the course was "Rhetoric of World War I", which I found to be pleasantly enjoyable. She "requires" that you read 5 textbooks, which total to over $100. The class discussions were driven by the reading required from the syllabus, which ranged from 80-100 pages of dense material before each class period. The course was definitely reading heavy (You can get away with not doing the reading if you skim sparknotes and participate in class). It is imperative that you show up for class because a lot of the grade goes to "Class Community"(participation) and she is more likely to give you a better grade if you are more engaged in the class.
There were 2 essays for the course, which were to be turned into a portfolio that was turned in at the end of the quarter for a final grade. It was nice that she used this system because you could revise all of your papers and writing up until Week 10. There were no strict due dates for the papers except the last day of class.
The first essay was a Rhetorical Analysis essay and the second essay was a Research Paper. For the research paper's topic was very flexible and anything related to the course could be chosen.
Some tips for her class:
1. Go to office hours to develop a reputation and to get more feedback on your work.
2. Participate a lot in class
3. Get a lot of feedback for your essays because Dr. McIver will definitely steer you in the right direction.
Overall, I loved her class and I would definitely recommend that you take English Comp 3 with McIver if you are up for a challenge. My writing definitely improved as a result.

Selling Course Books for English Comp 3

1. The Bedford Handbook- $25

2. Cyrano De Bergerac- $5

3. Pygmalion- $5

4. The Awakening- $5

5. Bel Canto- $5

Text: 818-326-9420

Very good professor and you will learn a lot, however, the workload is very heavy for an ENG COMP 3 class. Not really a "GPA booster" professor.

Selling Course Books for English Comp 3

1. Testament of Youth by Vera Mary Brittain: $3

2. Regeneration by Pat Barker: $3

3. The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell: $3

Text: 213-814-8167

This was by far one of my favorite classes this quarter!!! Dr. McIver was so helpful and approachable throughout the entire quarter. I definitely feel like I improved immensely as a writer throughout the ten weeks. Dr. McIver led interesting discussions that never failed to enlighten me and constantly created an engaging classroom environment. Overall, I'm so grateful to have had Dr. McIver for english comp 3. 10/10 would recommend!!!

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!