Syllabus

Fall 2004, Tues. and Thurs. mornings, 9:30 - 10:45 in Campus Center 42. Section 001, Course number 43373, Course home page: http://www.d.umn.edu/~cstroupe/f04/5250/

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

Solitary writers began experimenting with digital networks as a medium in the 1990s—an historic change in communication practices that English and Composition departments are still working through. Much of this process was initially mediated by a free Internet browser called Netscape, originally conceived in 1994 by Silicon Graphics founder Jim Clark and recent university-graduate Mark Andreessen not for the Internet, which many then considered the “CB radio craze” of its time, but to compete in the emergent, interactive-television business. While Clark and Andreeseen were making their plans, however, competitor Time Warner had already begun developing a prototype cable network for its interactive television system in Orlando, Florida, and Clark soon decided there simply wasn’t time to catch up. Netscape from the start was thus an unstable compromise: a high-stakes commercial venture intended to engage the mass market in two-way, TV-style entertainment, which ran on the slower, text-based World Wide Web that Tim Berners-Lee, “an academic with an anti-commercial streak,” had originally invented for sharing particle physics research.

The creative possibilities of Netscape’s mixed genealogy of text and television proved intoxicating both to readers and writers, juxtaposing categories of word and image, author-composed pages and interactive links, academic inquiry and commercial entertainment, personal and mass forms of presentation. Though writing remains the glue that holds all these elements together, considerations of voice, rhetoric and verbal creativity have been overshadowed by more recently available, but less fundamental issues, of visualization and design. How do we approach and understand the challenges of creating New Media from a writing perspective?

This course is designed to give you skills, practice and understanding toward realizing the following goals:

1. repurposing print discourses creatively and appropriately into New Media environments;
2. using writing to conceive, visualize and design New Media texts
3. discussing your work in critically informed ways;
4. writing critically and knowledgeably about issues and questions raised by digital culture and New Media, particularly the relationship of the online world to the social, civic, professional and political experiences of physical space;
5. conceiving and carrying out writing/design projects that engage potential audiences on a variety of levels;
6. participating in and contributing to a community of writer/designers; which are especially necessary in the creation of texts for institutions, businesses, and civic organizations;
7. using a variety of software to create New Media texts for electronic delivery, especially via the Internet.

Purpose | Expectations | Resources Needed | Grades | Top

Expectations

Exercises and Projects

This course is essentially 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. Four of the projects are Web sites/hypertexts. Two of them are essays about the New Media.

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.

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 should be sent to the Webx discussion board, and all the pages printed out and handed in. Be sure to number the pages of your printout.

Annotated Printouts

You should also "annotate" the pages of your printout before you hand it in. This means typing up a series of comments about particular features in the project.

Each of these comments should be labled to refer both

1. to the page number on the printout and
2. 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.

Purpose | Expectations | Resources Needed | Grades | Top

Resources Needed

• Tarin Towers, Dreamweaver MX for Windows and Macintosh, Peachpit Press
• Janet Murray's Hamlet on the HoloDeck, MIT Press.
• 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 six 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%

Purpose | Expectations | Resources Needed | Grades | Top