English 516: Computers and Writing Theory and Practice

Dr. Steven D. Krause

Office: 614G Pray-Harrold

Office Hours: Fridays, Thursdays, 11 am – 4 pm, and by appointment (Appointment is by far the best way to meet with me)

Email: skrause@emich.edu (by far, this is the best way to get a hold of me)

Office phone: 734-487-1363 (I do check my voice mail)

Web Site: http://engl516.stevendkrause.com

Texts:

• Wysocki, Anne et al. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2004.

(I order my textbooks exclusively through the bookstore in the EMU Student Center, which means you aren’t likely to find them at the other stores. However, I would strongly encourage you to order your books through an online service like amazon.com).

Most of the readings for the course, required or recommended, will be available via the course eReserves site or the class web site.

Course description:

The title of the course says it all (almost): English 516 is about the theory and practice of computers and writing. The one thing not included in the title of but explicitly part of the course description is that English 516 is concerned with the teaching of writing in computer mediated environments at all levels, from elementary school to college and beyond.

The balance between “theory” and “practice” is an important one for this course. On the one hand, it’s necessary to understand the theory behind electronically-based pedagogy and discourse to recognize the significance of writing (and the teaching of writing) with computer technology. At the same time, studying the many theories of “cyberspace” without a clear understanding of how the technology works is less than enlightening. Our goal here is to strike some sort of balance between the two: while we’ll be reading and discussing a fair amount about computers and writing, we will also be spending time with our hands on the keyboards and the tools for making electronic/cyber/multimedia texts.

Online Responsibility:

This class is offered completely online (although see below about the  strongly encouraged but optional face to face gatherings). This has certain advantages and disadvantages.  Most of the advantages are self-evident:  scheduling flexibility, participating from the comfort of your home and/or anywhere with internet access, etc.  But there are at least four significant disadvantages to online classes that students sometimes forget:

• Online classes require you to be more self-motivated. Because there is no fixed class time meeting, you must plan for yourself on attending/participating in the class.
• You must be actively engaged to demonstrate participation and presence. In a traditional face to face class, it is possible to appear to be participating in class by simply listening carefully to others.  In contrast, the only way that your classmates or I will know you are involved in the online class is if you are actively engaged by posting comments.
• Online classes typically take more time. This is because of both of the advantages of flexibility and also because our primary means of communicating– written text– is flat-out more time consuming than speech.
• Online classes require extremely regular and robust internet connectivity. Again, perhaps obvious, but the entire interface of the class takes place online.  In my view, this means constant, regular, and high-speed internet access, and a modern/current computer (e.g., a computer purchased new within the last four years) capable of handling the modern media of the internet (e.g., images, audio, video, etc.).  And, again perhaps obvious, it requires a more than basic level of expertise with the technology at hand.

I want everyone enrolled in my online classes to be successful and I will help in any way I can to make the course a valuable and important experience.  However, I think it is very clear that online classes are not for everyone, and I feel an obligation to prompt my students to consider the pros and cons.  Towards that end, be aware of the following:

• You MUST be comfortable and confident in working with computers before beginning this class (I will help when I can, but I cannot come to where you live to fix your computer);
• Only YOU can be responsible for your computer and internet access; and
• I WILL NOT accept under ANY circumstances allow problems with your comfort or access to computer technology as an excuse for completing class activities.

Course activities and requirements:

The course is made up of four parts:

• Participation (30%)
• Book Review (20%)
• Research Project (30%)
• Final (20%)

Participation, 30%

Your participation and collaboration in this class will be critical for its success.

This is not a class where I can deliver content that you reproduce for a test and/or an essay. Rather, this is a course in which all of us will work together.

It is true that there are significant elements of the course over which you have little control– grading, the assignments, the basic direction of things, and so forth. And it is also true that I do possess a certain level of expertise in the subject matter that you (probably) don’t possess (yet). Nonetheless, for this class to be successful, we have to see this as a collaborative learning experience, one where you need to make contributions to discussions and taking on leadership roles, one where you feel empowered to do so, and one where I encourage that to happen.

So, toward that end, “Participation and collaboration” is primarily about diligently engaging in the readings and discussions on the class web site/blog. This is what will make this whole class work (or not!), because when all is said and done, this is a course about close reading of the texts, about raising questions, about making connections, and about letting go and keeping an open mind about new ideas.

The logistics of the discussion should make sense soon enough; basically, I will initiate discussion about particular readings and activities (questions, observations, etc.) on the class blog, and expect each of you to enter into the conversation in the comment section of the blog. I expect everyone in class to participate in this activity! Again, the only way you can demonstrate “presence” and that you are paying attention is to participate in the conversation.  So if you are someone who is used to “just listening attentively” as a form of participation, well, that’s not going to work this term.

When it comes to encountering the readings, I’d like you take this basic strategy for engaging in readings and discussions:

• Read the text first for understanding. Don’t judge! Don’t form an opinion! That comes later! Rather, read to get a hold of just what in the heck the writer(s) is(are) saying.
• Ask/Note questions about the text. Some of this will be things you can do on your own– for example, simply looking things up in a dictionary can help a great deal, not to mention a bit of basic internet research. But much of this will be the energy of the online discussions we have. That cliché “there’s no such thing as a stupid question” is not true. However, I do think that almost any engaged question, even something as basic as “I don’t understand the point here at all,” is an excellent way to enter into discussion.
• After all this, then make an opinion. And there are at least two ways you can share your opinion:  in the class discussions on the blog, or as part of your own blog entries reflecting on the week’s readings and activities (see below).

On the challenges of the readings: Few of the the texts we will be encountering this term are what might be described as “light” reading, the sort of thing you might encounter in magazines, newspapers, novels intended for the beach. These are difficult texts, ones that can sometimes take multiple readings to understand, and ones that many scholars in the field have had strong disagreements. Toward this end, be mindful of these three pieces of advice:

• Reading these things will take you longer than your average John Grisham(or “name your favorite best seller writer here”) novel. A lot longer. Be sure to budget your time accordingly.
• Print the readings out! Even though this is an online class and I am making most of the readings available to you electronically, I think you should print them out. Reading on the screen often makes it too easy to skim (and not really understand), whereas a print-out allows for notes in the margins, slower reading, etc.
• Don’t worry if you don’t get each and every word in each and every reading. No one does the first time through. Just keep pushing ahead, understand what you can, and come to class and/or post to your blog questions about the rest. It is better to complete (or come close to completing) the reading and, at the end, not “get it,” than it is to give up a few pages into the reading and never give it a chance.

Blogging. Each of you will create and keep an ongoing blog this term. Many of you have probably heard of blogs before as spaces where writers keep diaries, write about politics, report news, etc. Some of you may read such blogs, and a few of you might even keep one of your own.

The blog you keep for the class will be slightly different from these sorts of blogs in that I will be asking to post specifically about the course itself. Specifically, I will ask each of you to post to your blog at least twice a week: once about the assigned readings/activities of the course, and once about your ongoing research project.

The details of this will become clear as the term goes along, but a few basics for now: We will be using WordPress.com to facilitate this. WordPress.com is a free and easy to use service. If you keep a blog of your own, either with WordPress.com or another service, you will need to set up a specific blog for this class.

A few small projects the equivalent of short essay projects. Some of these writing responses published on your blog (which itself will be both a “short essay”-type project and a resource for your research project), some will be short “homework” projects presented on paper, and all will be brief—the equivalent of two or three pages. I will provide details on each of these projects as the semester goes along, but in general, these are relatively short and small writing projects.

The usual things: You know what I mean: participating earnestly in the discussions, participating diligently in in-class activities, being helpful in peer review, and so forth.

Optional face to face gatherings: I will schedule a few face to face gatherings this term.  Basically, these will be informal opportunities for folks in the class to see each other in “real space” and “real time,” which often can resolve questions and other issues, and which can also even be kind of fun.  I want to emphasize the optional part of it; however, my experience has been that most students in my online classes do welcome the opportunity for at least some face to face interaction.

Grading for participation: At midterm, I will have an email conversation with each of you about your progress in terms of participation, and we will do this again at the end of the term as well.

Book review/presentation, 20%

Each of you will give a brief presentation on a book that has to do with the subject matter of the course, teaching English studies with technology at all levels. In addition to the brief presentation, you will also hand in and ultimately publish on your web site a brief (four or so pages) essay that offers a review of the book.

For more details about the assignment, be sure to read the “book review” page on this site.

Research project, 30%

Your research will focus on some connection between technology, writing, reading, and/or culture. The goal of this project is to introduce you to the scholarship in the field, perhaps laying the groundwork and interest for a future scholarly project– an MA project, a conference presentation, an article, etc.  Your project will involve contributing to an annotated bibliography wiki, presenting your progress to your classmates in the middle of the term, and a 2500-3000 word text (or its hypertextual/electronic/multimedia equivalent) which makes an argument about a specific topic concerning the theory and practice of “technology” as it pertains to the teaching or practice of writing.

The final version of this project is due on what will be the last day of the class, April 16, 2010.

Of course, there is a lot more to say about the research project assignment and its components. See the “research project” page for the details.

Final, 20%

There will be a take-home final distributed on April 16 and it will be due a week later, April 23, at 5 PM Michigan time. It will be an open book, “open web” essay exam where I will present a choice of questions for you to write on. The final will be about the assigned reading in the class, those we discuss in detail and those we don’t discuss at all. If you do a reasonably good job in keeping up with the reading material, this should be a fairly easy exam.

Grading:

Given all of this, grading for the course is straight-forward:

Participation: 30%

Book report and presentation: 20%

Research Project: 30%

Final: 20%

The grading scale I’ll apply 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

The “Fine Print”

Here are a few technicalities I like to include on any syllabus. Most of these are common sense, but most of them merit repeating.

Access Services. If you have a documented disability that affects your work in this (or any other) class, Access Services can provide support for you. Call them, or let me know and I can help you to call them, at 734-487-2470 to make necessary arrangements to ensure you success in this course.

Plagiarism. As the Council of Writing Program Administrators puts it, “Plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately passes off another’s words or ideas without acknowledging their source. For example, turning another’s work as your own is plagiarism. If you plagiarize in this class, you will likely fail the assignment on which you are working and your case may be passed to the university for additional disciplinary action.” Don’t do this. If you plagiarize in this class, you will likely fail the class and your case may be passed to the university for additional disciplinary action.