Syllabus

Spring 2004 , Tuesday/Thursday mornings, 9:30 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. in Solon Campus Center 42. Section 001, #65970. Course home page: http://www.d.umn.edu/~cstroupe/sp04/5230/

Dr. Craig Stroupe, 726-6249, Humanities 424
cstroupe@d.umn.edu; Office hours Tues and Thurs mornings, 11:00-noon or by appointment

Purpose | Expectations | Resources Needed | Grades

Purpose

In his 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida examines the rise in the global economy of a group of people whom most of you will likely join. The function of this emergent group, says Booklist in its review of Florida's study,

is to create new ideas, new technology, and new creative content. In general this group shares common characteristics, such as creativity, individuality, diversity, and merit. The author estimates that this group has 38 million members, constitutes more than 30 percent of the U.S. workforce, and profoundly influences work and lifestyle issues. The purpose of this book is to examine how and why we value creativity more highly than ever and cultivate it more intensely.

(You can see more on this book from amazon.com.)

The purpose of this course is to help ensure that you are well prepared to join this group whose work adds creative value not only to the economy, but to our civic and cultural lives. This course emphasizes, therefore, creative and cultural problem solving in Web design, rather than just the mechanics of producing HTML pages and Web sites. While I assume you have no prior knowledge of Web design, and will provide you with introductions and resources to master to the basic skills, this will be a class dedicated to the creative and effective use of these tools, rather than just their functions.

The goals of this course are to enable you to gain practice and expertise in the following areas:

1. applying principles of rhetoric, design, cultural theory and creative thinking to your Web-design work and writing;
2. discussing your work in critically informed ways;
3. writing critically and knowledgeably about issues and questions raised by the digital culture;
4. conceiving and carrying out writing/design projects that engage potential audiences on a variety of levels, especially socially;
5. participating in and contributing to a community of writer/designers;
6. learning to develop successful working relationships with clients and support teams, which are especially necessary in the creation of documents for institutions, businesses, and civic organizations;
7. using a variety of software to create documents for delivery via the Internet.

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Expectations

Exercises and Projects

This course comprises a series of exercises and projects. We'll do the exercises together in class to learn particular skills or techniques, and you'll have 24 hours after the class meeting to complete and post each exercise to the Web for credit.

As described on the Assignments Page, the projects are larger pieces of work that you'll complete individually over a period of two or three weeks using the skills you learned from the exercises and insights from the readings and class activities. Three of the projects are Web sites/pages. Two of them are essays about digital culture. The final, Web-based project is a"Client Project" for a real-life organization, individual, business, professor or campus unit of your own choosing.

There is a three-point penalty per day for late projects, including the annotations that are explained below.

Due dates for all requirements are included in the online schedule, which will be updated throughout the semester.

Annotated Printouts

I will give you specific directions for submitting the finished projects and exercises. All Web-based projects should be posted to the Web, the URL sent to the Webx discussion board, and all the pages printed out and handed in. Be sure to number the pages of your printout.

You should also "annotate" the printout before you hand it in. This means typing up a series of comments about particular features in the project which you want me to pay attention to or understand more about.

Each of these comments should be labled to refer both to the page number on the printout and to a number you've handwritten on the page to point to the particular feature. For instance, the banner on the first page of your site's printout might have a circled (1) next to it, and, on your typed comment sheet, the annotation on that banner should be labeled 1.1 (page 1, numbered item 1). Annotate items that

• show you understood and fulfilled the goals of the assignment, that
• you are especially pleased with, that
• show what you've learned in class, that
• you had trouble with, or that
• raise unanswered questions for you.

Other Writing and Design Work

In addition to the design, creation and writing of the exercises and projects themselves, you will complete:

• writings on our online Webx discussion board
• plans and preliminary writings or designs for your projects,
• peer critiques for workshops
• other writings.

Readings

On days when readings are assigned, please do the following:

• have the readings done by the beginning of class;
• expect brief quizzes or guided reading responses at the beginning or end of class. There are no make-ups on these responses if you are absent, late or leave early.

Attendance

Since this class will function as a community of writer-designers, your regular attendance is absolutely necessary.

• Absences in excess of 3 (over 10% of the class meetings) will deduct 3 percent each from your overall grade.
• These 3 possible absences can be spent however you wish and so there are no "excused" or "unexcused" absences. Save your "free" absences for a rainy (or snowy) day.
• If you are absent, you are responsible for all material covered in class.
• In the case of absences or lateness, some requirements like quizzes and guided in-class activities cannot be made up when timeliness or group interaction is critical.
• In addition to your budget of allowed absences, you also have 3 instances of arriving late or leaving early to use (with or without an excuse) if necessary. Instances in excess of 3 will decrease your overall grade by 2 percentage points each. If on some occasion during the semester you need to leave class early, even if it's one of your three allowed instances, please arrange it with me in advance.

Participation

A larger goal of this course is to establish a community or network of writer-designers--with a wide variety of backgrounds, expertise, and interests--to enhance your learning and enjoyment during the next sixteen weeks. The class is designed to provide a number of avenues for this community building, including peer workshopping and critiquing, in-class production work, support groups, and various Internet-based communications and collaborations. Your sincere and regular contributions to maintaining this collaborative environment will count in your grade, and of course will greatly benefit your final products in the course. Because your work is the subject matter for this course, turning in all projects and writings on time is critical; work turned in late will be assessed a 3% penalty per day.

Incompletes

Incompletes for the semester will be given only in the following very limited circumstances:

• you must contact me in advance of the semester's end to make a request for an incomplete;
• no more than one or two weeks of class, or one or two assignments, can have been missed;
• you must be in good standing in the class (not already behind, in other words);
• you must have a documented family or medical emergency, as required by university policy;
• you must arrange a time table with me for completing the missed work that is acceptablefor both of us.

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Resources Needed

• Jakob Nielsen's Designing Web Usability. New Riders Publishing, 2000.
• J. Tarin Towers' Dreamweaver MX for Windows and Macintosh. Peachpit Press, 2003
• David Trend (editor), Reading Digital Culture, Blackwell, 2001
• a UMD e-mail account
• Zip disk or pocket drive for saving and transporting your work (at least 100 Mg.)
• occasional access to a digital camera, or several high-density, IBM-formatted floppy disks for use in a digital camera to be checked out from UMD
• access to a printer, or funds for printing

Grades

• Your work on the five major projects and various exercises (weighed according to the size and complexity of the project): 75% total
• Participation in class generally, including in-class activities and contributions, online discussions, attendance, conferences, quizzes, peer workshop responses, Webx discussions, class discussion, promptness: 25%

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