English 444: Course Description

Course Description for English 444: Writing for the World Wide Web

Instructor: Dr. Steven D. Krause

Office: 614G Pray-Harold Hall

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

Office Phone: 487-1363

Office Hours: Tuesdays, 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm; Wednesdays, 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm; and by appointment

Class WWW Page: http://www.stevendkrause.com/academic/eng444

Course Description:

This is a course about writing and the World Wide Web in at least two different and related ways. First, we will be reading, "browsing," and writing about the World Wide Web in order to understand how the web works rhetorically. Second, we will be creating web sites that are good examples of effective web sites.

Texts:

Lynch, Patrick and Sarah Horton. Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites. Second Edition. New Haven: Yale UP, 2002.

Macdonald, Nico. What is Web Design? Rotovision, 2003.

Meyer, Eric. Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide. Second Edition. OReilly, 2004.

I order my textbooks exclusively through the EMU bookstore in McKenny Union. This means that you are unlikely to find these books at the other stores around campus. If I were a student in this course, I would probably buy these materials online.

Not surprisingly, there will be a number of online readings as well.

Hardware, Software, Computer Experience:

While there are no prerequisites in terms of hardware, software, or computer experiences for this course, it should be fairly obvious that in a course where the focus is the World Wide Web, all of these things are quite important. You will need to have very regular access to a personal computer less than about three years old that can make a connection to the Internet. Either a Macintosh or a Windows-based computer will work fine since almost all of the applications we'll be using are "cross-platform." If you don't have regular access to a computer and were considering buying one anyway, now is the time.

Similarly, while there are no software requirements for the course, I would strongly encourage you to consider purchasing Macromedia's Dreamweaver. You can buy it from the EMU Computer Store (in the basement of the library) at a greatly reduced price, and you can download a demonstration copy for free. We'll be using a few applications in our computer classroom, and, as we will discuss, there are some good free options to help you make web pages, such as Mozilla. However, if you are serious about making web pages beyond just this class, I would encourage you to invest in one of the major professional HTML software packages. We will talk about and use Macromedia's Dreamweaver a bit in class, and I think you will agree with me that it is a very worthwhile product.

And then there's the issue of previous computer experience/knowledge. Our main goal and focus for the course will be on issues of "writing" and the web: that is, while we will be making modest web pages and talking about basic design issues with the web, we'll be spending most of our time studying and writing about how different sorts of writing genres work on the web. In other words, while we will certainly be using computers and making visually appealing web sites, this is not a computer class nor is it an art class.

That being said, there are a number of activities we'll be doing this semester that will require a certain level of computer experience beyond using email and a word processing software, and web sites are inevitably visual as well as textual mediums. So, while this isn't a computer class or art class, we will indeed be spending a fair amount of time discussing computer hardware and software and graphic design in a fashion that is not typical of most writing classes. We're walking a fine line this term.
If some of these more advanced computer and design activities are new to you, that's okay, but you should probably plan on spending some extra time getting up to speed on the computer technology. I'm always willing to help people with problems in my office and via email, and there are plenty of other resources on campus and within our class to help you as well. If you are someone who feels particularly comfortable with these computer and design activities, consider it as an opportunity to help your classmates and your teacher learn what you know.

Stuff You Need to Do:

Participation is worth 40% of the grade.

Here is the department policy on participation:

"Students enrolled in English Department classes are expected to participate in daily interactive activities. They will, for example, routinely discuss reading assignments, write in class on impromptu topics, participate in collaborative activities, or engage in peer review of drafts. Students who miss these activities cannot reasonably make them up. As a result, students who do not participate regularly should expect to receive lower grades in the course, and students who miss more than the equivalent of two weeks of class should consider withdrawing and taking the class in a future semester. Students who know that other commitments will make it impossible to attend at certain times (early mornings, nights, Fridays) should enroll in classes that do not meet at these times."

So, here's how this policy plays out for the class:

Attendance. Simply put, you can't participate effectively in the class if you don't actually attend our face-to-face meetings, and considering that we will be spending a lot of our class actually working on web sites and such, I think you will quickly see the value of our face-to-face class meetings. Missing more than the equivalent of two weeks of class for any reason will likely mean you won't be able to pass the class.
Diligent in-class work on projects. Because of the nature of the class, we will doing a lot of work during class. In order to make this aspect of the class useful, you will need to actually make use of this time to work on web sites, learn about software, help your colleagues, collaborate with writing projects, etc.
The class blog space. We will be using a collaboratively written web log (or "blog") this semester as a means of talking about the class readings, activities, assignments, and just about anything else that crosses our minds. We will be using blogger to do this. I will explain how the blog space works during our first class meeting, but I think you will all agree with me that working with blogger is quite easy to do.
Graduate student presentation. Those of you taking the course for graduate course will also be expected to give a brief presentation on a significant chunk of reading material (probably a book, though possibly a web-based resource) that has to do with the broad category of "Writing for the World Wide Web." To facilitate this, each graduate student will have to locate an appropriate text and consult with me about it by January 26. These presentations should be well-prepared and last about 15 minutes. Graduate students will also write a brief essay about the reading materials presented (see below).

The writing projects are worth 60% of the grade.

There will be four major writing projects for the term. In brief, they are:

Professional/Personal web site, which will serve as the "home page" for all of the other work of this semester. This site will be revised several times and will eventually include professional information, academic information, (perhaps work from other classes), personal information, links to important things, and so forth. It will also include a space for the portfolio of all of the work that you will complete this term.
Collaborative "redesign" of the class web site, where (working in small groups) you will propose a redesign of the first draft of the class web site into a better web site that takes advantage of what we've learned about "good web design."
Collabortive "redesign" of the English Department Graduate Studies web site, where (working in small groups) you will propose a redesign of that site and present templates and a plan for implementing that design.
"Print-based" into "Web-based" project, an assignment where you will transform a short piece of your own writing that you completed in a traditional print form into a web-based writing project, and then writing to reflect on that process.
Web genre analysis writing project, where each of you will need to write an analysis of a particular genre of web site, describing the features of the genre and comparing and contrasting the effectiveness of different sites within that genre. This project will be realized as a six or so page word processed essay.
In addition, graduate students will need to write a brief review essay about their presentation materials. This should be a brief (the equivalent of three or four pages) review essay published on the web site as part of the portfolio that discusses the reading material that was the subject of the presentation.

All of these projects will be "handed in" electronically and published as part of your web site-- I won't be collecting any paper this term. You will have a chance to revise all but the collaborative project by the end of the term-- we'll discuss the details of this process in class.

Generally speaking, late projects will be docked one letter grade for each class meeting they are late. However, if you make arrangements with me before the assignment is due, I will generally grant an extension.

In order to pass the course, you must complete all of the Web site projects, regardless of the grades you receive on any of the other work of the course.

Grading:

So, given all this, here's how grading works:

Participation: 40%

Web writing projects: 60%

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

English 444: Writing for the World Wide Web