Syllabus

Syllabus * Wendt * Fall 2009 English 202 * Digital Rhetoric required materials

All readings will be posted or linked to on the wiki (wendtenglish202f09.wikispaces.com/Readings)

course description This course is designed to help you learn to understand, analyze, and compose critically in a variety of digital environments. Through analysis and evaluation, you will become a more informed consumer of texts (broadly defined here) as well as a more critical thinker about the texts to which we are constantly exposed. You will understand theoretically the various elements of digital rhetoric and how it differs from print and verbal rhetoric alone. You will also become a critical producer of a variety of texts in various modes and media.

course goals • To help you become more confident in your writing for various audiences and purposes • To improve your ability to engage thoughtfully with materials, have a clear and interesting purpose, develop adequate support and analysis, and have an effective, efficient structure • To prepare you to understand both the verbal and visual elements of rhetoric and how they work together • To understand digital texts change the way we read • To improve your ability to constructively evaluate your own rhetoric and the rhetoric of others • To demonstrate how purpose, audience, and visual elements affect your rhetorical choices • To enhance your writing with stylistic tools • To expand your idea of “text” and how we persuade

vocabulary (100 pts) During this semester, it will be a goal of this course to help you expand your tech vocabulary. While many of you may already be familiar with many of the terms we will use, it is important to be able to use these terms with ease in order to be able to join in digital discourse. We will talk about and use these terms during the semester, and we will have a wiki page where you can post words you come across with which you are unfamiliar. Post the word, look it up, and provide us a definition. Then give us the sentence and context where you encountered the word. I will of course be adding to this as well. By the end of the semester we should have a large and robust vocabulary with which everyone should be familiar. There will, of course, then be a little vocab test. The vocab test is worth 100 points; however, for every word you add to the wiki you get an extra point, provided that the word you add is relevant to our purposes.

Reading Responses - 100 pts You will be required to read several articles connected to various elements of digital literacy. Most of these articles are short, but you will required to respond to them in the "discussion" thread on the readings page. Content here is most important; you should be thinking carefully and write either in response to the prompt, to respond to someone else's response to the prompt, or starting a new thread with a new question (to which you also must respond). Either way, each response should be a decent-sized paragraph that demonstrates you working through the ideas in the text, agreeing, disagreeing, explaining, and struggling with these ideas and QUOTING FROM THE TEXT. At the end of your response be sure to add your name or you will not get credit. There will be 10 readings and each response will be worth 10 points. Check the schedule for the day reasing responses are due. Any late response will automatically be worth 5 pts.

Project 1 – 200 pts Your first project is a digital literacy autobiography. There are several purposes to this project. For one, it will get you thinking about the role technology and digital writing plays in your life. This kind of metacognition is important as we head into this semester, thinking of our cyborg selves, our digital identities, and our futures with technology. This also provides you with material to get you thinking about your digital identity and your final project. More in a later handout.

Project 2 – 200 pts Your second project is a rhetorical analysis where you will choose a piece of digital media to explore, research, and analyze. The purposes of this project are to help you think more critically about the various elements of digital rhetoric and how they work in context and with one another. This analysis will also help you as you make decisions about the rhetoric of your final project.

Project 3 - 200 pts Your third project involves re-mediating your first project and creating a website that will serve as a digital portfolio. This will require an understanding of hypertext theory; condensing your autobiography; using images, sound, and moving images; and a host of other things. This will be difficult and extremely time consuming, so do not put this off. More in a handout later.

presentations - 200 pts You will be doing several projects in class, some of which you will have to share with the class. These small presentations will be graded on a 4.0 scale and averaged together for 10% of your grade. You will also have a major presentation at the end of the semester, worth 100 points or 10%. This presentation will be graded both on your presence—voice, tone, poise, etc—and on the content of the presentation. More on this later.

Modules - 100 pts each A significant portion of this course requires your familiarity and comfort with several software programs that you may be familiar with or not. Some of you may be experts at photoshop, for example, and have never designed a website, while others may have done a PowerPoint but have never done a very good one. Each module will require you to walk through several small projects to get you to a level of relative comfort with each of several programs. If you are already an expert, these should be fun and a breeze. If you are a novice, they may take you much longer. Either way, completing the modules will give you the practice, hopefully, that you need.

semester points vocabulary - 100 pts reading responses - 100 pts project 1 – 200 pts project 2 – 200 pts project 3 – 200 pts presentations– 200 pts modules – 100 pts each (500 total) Total – 1500 pts

grading scale A 4.0 1410 – 1500 pts AB 3.5 1320 – 1409 pts B 3.0 1250 – 1319 pts BC 2.5 1170 – 1249 pts C 2.0 1100 – 1169 pts CD 1.5 1020 – 1099 pts D 1.0 950 – 1019 pts DE 0.5 870 – 949 pts

moodle and course wiki I use Moodle as a place for you to turn in your work electronically, which I require at the end of the semester. At that time, you will submit your papers on Moodle by clicking on the “Drop Final Drafts Here” link and following instructions. Please save your documents in the required format.

I use the course wiki for everything else (http://wendtenglish202f09.wikispaces.com). Here you will be able to see what work you have missed, know what is due the following class period, access any handouts you may have lost, and a host of other things. We will spend some time familiarizing ourselves with this wiki so you are comfortable using it.

Plagiarism It is a crime, literally, to say you wrote something when you didn’t. Plagiarism means using someone else’s words and calling them yours. And you would be surprised how easy it is to plagiarize without realizing it. If you get something off the Internet or from a book, or write what someone else said, you must cite the source. In this course, it will be particularly tempting to “steal” from other websites. We’ll talk about this issue, but remember that any time you use something—even a little icon—from some other website, you must keep the URL and cite this. It is also plagiarism if you take someone’s words and shuffle them around or change them a little and call them yours. Paraphrasing without citing the source is still plagiarism. We will work on this to avoid it. And you’ll want to avoid it, because plagiarism can result in an F on a project, failing the course, or expulsion from school. (For details on AC’s academic integrity policy, see page 30 of the Academic Catalog). Plagiarism is a serious issue. Don’t do it.

late work For many reasons, it is important for you to turn your work in on time. If you won’t be able to come to class the day a draft is due, let me know and we’ll make arrangements for you to turn it in on time in another way. If there are extenuating circumstances, these should be communicated to me well in advance; it isn’t an extenuating circumstance, for example, if you put off the paper until the night before and then don’t get it done. Vocabulary cannot be made up, nor can draft due dates or journal dates. If you are absent on days these are due, I expect you to take responsibility and electronically get these documents to me.

attendance It is very difficult to succeed in this course without regular attendance. So I’ll give you 3 freebees—you don’t need to tell me anything at all. Let me make this clear: illness is NOT an excused absence. I expect you all to have a day or two that you don’t feel well. The three freebees are for these sick days, so be sure not to use them right away or take them lightly. Because for every absence beyond three, I will lower your grade by one-half letter grade: e.g. If your course grade is a “B” and you have four total absences (3 freebees plus 1 more), your final grade will be reduced by one-half letter grade to a “B/C”; five absences would make it a “C”, etc. Please contact me promptly if you are having problems and cannot attend class. If you know you will be absent on a particular day, please see me at least one week in advance to make arrangements. Only pre-arranged absences or issues discussed with me prior to the absence will be excused.

the writing center Although I will be available for conferencing at any time, additional help is available—and advisable—at the Writing Center. The Writing Center is located on the first floor of the library back by the computer lab. Please visit the Writing Center wiki to make an appointment at http://acwritingcenter.wikispaces.com. You will greatly benefit from this resource, so be sure to take advantage of it.

remember: save everything