Syllabus: WRT 351
Students entering the workplace of the twenty-first century face the challenge of communicating through electronic media. Electronic media is a new rhetorical environment, similar in some ways, but significantly different from print media in other ways.
This course will explore the unique constraints of writing on the World Wide Web. Our emphasis will be on discovering new graphic and rhetorical structures for thinking and writing which are best suited for the nonlinear environment of the web. This course will apply techniques of professional writing for real world audiences, both community-based and commercial.
My instruction will assume most of the knowledge of writing and design that you have learned in WRT 200 and WRT 251. This course is a prerequisite to the Advanced Writing for the Web course that I will be teaching in the Winter semester. In that course you will develop advanced technical skills in Drupal configuration and build a website for a company or nonprofit as a service learning project.
Please see the weekly schedule for more detail about this course.
This course is primarily a writing course. As such we are concerned with traditional rhetorical matters of content, audience, and persuasion. And as in most writing courses, we are also are concerned with matters of document design, language, correctness, and style. Yet writing to the web throws these concerns into a new and challenging context.
The visual and hypertextual opportunities of the web require that we rethink many traditional notions handed to us from print media. You can’t learn everything you need to know about writing for the web in one semester. If you work hard, however, you will complete the course with a solid conceptual framework and basic knowledge of what it takes to communicate effectively on the web.
Grades
10% Reading Responses (blogs) (normally due each week)
20% Rapidian Projects
30% Drupal Site Project (your Drupal site due in complete form the last class period of the semester)
10% Final Exam (based mostly on course text; mostly multiple choice, T/F, and short answer).
10% Two technical writing projects that explain some technical aspect of content strategy and site development.
20% Website analysis project.
If you miss three class periods, you'll not be able to earn better than a C in this course. If you miss 4 classes, you cannot pass this course. If you leave the class significantly early for any reason (or arrive significantly late), you should consider that as an absence. Much of the learning that goes on in this class involves lecture, discussion, working together, participation, asking questions, practicing skills in a learning environment, etc. If you are absent from class, you are not learning. Again, note the absence restrictions in the first sentence of this paragraph.
Academic Integrity
Plagiarism and cheating will not be tolerated in this course. If you use the words, images, or research of another writer (including your classmates), document that material appropriately. All material you submit in this course should be your own work written expressly for this course; please do not simultaneously submit assignments from this course to another professor without explicit permission of both instructors. If you are uncertain about what constitutes plagiarism, please see me.
You are responsible for making yourself aware of and for understanding the policies and procedures that pertain to academic integrity. To that end, be sure to familiarize yourself with the GVSU Student Code [Section 223.01] related to academic integrity.
Disability
If there is any student in this class who has special needs because of a learning, physical, or other disability, please contact me and Disability Support Services (DSS) at (616) 331-2490. Furthermore, if you have a disability and think you will need assistance evacuating this classroom and/or building in an emergency, please make me aware so that the university and I can develop a plan to assist you. It is the student’s responsibility to request assistance from DSS.
