English 328

Writing, Technology, and Style

(aka Writing: Style and Language)

Instructor: Dr. Steven D. Krause

Office: 614-G Pray-Harold

E-Mail: skrause@online.emich.edu (by far, the best way to get a hold of me)

Office Phone: 734-487-1363 (I do check my voicemail)

Office Hours: Mondays: 10 am to 11 am, 12 pm to 1 pm, and 5:45 pm to 7 pm; Wednesdays: 10 am to 11 am, and 12 pm to 1 pm. I'm also available by appointment.

Class WWW Page: http://krause.emich.edu/eng328

Course Description and Objectives

This class is currently undergoing a "facelift" in terms of the title and description that appears in the catalog, a change that makes more explicit the notion that the subject of the class is the relationship between "writing," "technology," and "style." Among other things, this will involve for our class the study of different style guides; Internet newsgroups, email, and web pages; and it will involve instruction in how to make and maintain "good" personal/professional web sites.

Texts

Strunk, William, and E.B. White. The Elements of Style. Third or Fourth Edition. (The Fourth Edition is likely to be available in the usual campus bookstores, though you can probably pick up a copy of the third edition at many second hand stores, if you’d like).

Booher, Dianna. E-Writing: 21st Century Tools for Effective Communication. New York: Pocket Books, 2001.

There is also a required course packet available at Mike’s Bookstore in Ypsilanti. The first reading assignments are from this packet so get it asap! There will also be a number of assigned readings available only on the World Wide Web.

Class Requirements/Stuff You Need to Do

Regular and Diligent Participation, 30%. This part of the grade consists of the following components:

Attendance. Since you can’t regularly and diligently participate in most of our class activities if you’re not here, attendance is a key component of the participation grade. You can miss three classes, a week's worth of class, with no penalty. For the fourth abscence and each abscence after that, you will lose 20% of your participation grade for each class missed. I do not accept any sort of excuses, medical or otherwise, so do not bring me a note of some sort. Under extreme circumstances (catastrophic medical emergencies, for example), I am willing to make arrangements. But by and large, there are no other exceptions to this policy.

I also think it’s important to "attend" in an appropriate, mature fashion. That means you shouldn’t show up late (if you’re more than about 15 minutes late, I’ll count you as absent), and it means you should participate in a mature fashion. I feel a bit foolish in spelling this out, but just to be clear: you should treat others (your teacher and your colleagues) as you would hope to be treated. Among other things, you shouldn’t read newspapers or magazines, talk loudly with others in a fashion that disrupts your colleagues, do homework from other classes, sleep, or generally goof off. When working with the computers, you shouldn’t consider it an opportunity to check your email, log in to a chat group, or do other things that generally don’t have anything to do with the class activities of the moment. Doing any of these things will mean that in my definition of things you are "absent."

If you know at the beginning of the semester that you will miss three or more classes, you should drop the class.

Participation on the Class Emailing List. Each of you will need to sign up for and participate in the class electronic mailing list. We will discuss how to sign up for this mailing list in class, and a link to the information is available on the class web site. For the most part, this emailing list will be used to discuss class readings and activities, though we will also use it for announcements and other purposes as well.

As the schedule indicates, post your messages to the mailing list BEFORE the class where we will be discussing the reading that is the subject of your posting. Posting them BEFORE class will mean that we will be able to incorporate them into our class discussions and it will be one of the indicators to me of the extent to which you have completed the assigned reading.

Because both sections one and two will be using the same emailing list, it is important for you to "manage" your email on a very regular basis. Simply put, before each reading assignment, you can expect around 40 messages in your "in" box. You certainly don't have to study each of these messages in great detail and you don't have to save them, but you will need to "deal" with these messages.

Group Work and Peer Writing Review Work. We will be doing a lot of collaborative work in small groups throughout the term. Some of this group work will be tied directly to the journal writing activities, and some of this work will consist of peer writing work on one of your three essay assignments for the course. Everyone in class is expected to participate in all aspects of group work at different times, including taking on the role of "leader" and/or "presenter" to the rest of the class, taking notes, offering suggestions, listening to others, etc.

Learning and Teaching Your Colleagues About Using the Computers. We will be doing a fair amount of stuff on computers this term. For some of you, this may represent an additional "challenge" because you don’t feel comfortable with the technology, while others will find this part of the class "easy." In either case, that’s okay. If you are less than comfortable using computers, look at this as an opportunity to learn something new and valuable. If you are more experienced with computers, look at this as an opportunity to share with me and your colleagues something you already know. In either case, being willing to learn or willing to teach about using the computers for our various class activities will be appreciated.

All the other usual class participation stuff. You know what I mean: participating in discussions, not interrupting people when they are talking, being generally nice to me and your colleagues, etc.

I plan on assigning a midterm and a final grade for this part of the class based on both my and your qualitative and quantitative assessment of the work you do. In other words, I’m not planning on keeping a detailed grade book that records value for each and every exercise and project (though I will keep track as to whether or not you actually do the work). Rather, the way this will probably work is that around mid-term, you will send me an email where you explain what sort of grade you think you deserve for this part of the class and why. I will review your message and your work and determine a midterm grade. We'll repeat this process for the final part of this grade. 

Web-Based Portfolio of Writing Projects, 70% The bulk of the grade is made up of the major writing projects of the term, all of which will (ultimately) be presented as part of your personal/professional web site. This will all become clear as the term progresses; in brief, the assignments are:

An essay about the discursive practices and "style" of a newsgroup discussion

All of these writing projects will ultimately be published as part of your personal/professional web site, which will itself be an ongoing project that you will begin early in the term and which you will complete by the time of our scheduled final.

Generally speaking, all of the writing projects must adhere to the style guidelines of the Modern Language Association in terms of formats for citing sources within the text, a works cited page, etc. We’ll talk about this briefly in class, but given that this is a 300-level writing class, I am working from the assumption that you are already familiar with MLA style. If you’re not, you might want to purchase The MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (available at just about any book store).

For late writing projects, I generally deduct a letter grade for each class period the project is late. There is one exception to this: if you tell me BEFORE the class in which a project is due that you are having problems finishing a project in a timely fashion, I will generally offer an extension.

In order to pass the course, you must complete all of these portfolio writing projects, regardless of your grade for any of the other components of the course.

Grading

Given all this, grading is pretty simple:

Participation: 30%

Portfolio of Writing Projects: 70%

The overall grading scale for the class is equally straight-forward:

A=100-93; A-=92-90; B+=89-87; B=86-84; B-=83-80; C+=79-77; C=76-74; C-=73-70; D+=69-67; D=66-64; D-=63-60; E=59-0

I will base my rounding of points on attendance.

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