Course Goals

1. To prepare you to communicate effectively, ethically, responsibly, and professionally in a business environment.

2. To provide you with skills, strategies, and conceptual knowledge to help you address a variety of communication tasks.

3. To help you understand the symbiotic relationships among form and content, and audience and purpose.

4. To give you practice in collaborating with other professionals in managing and completing group projects, and to improve your own individual communication and management skills.

  Course Calendar

This class is "internet-campus," meaning it is web-based without physical meetings after the first class.

Links (and url's) are fragile and sometimes transient items. If you have difficulties accessing the url for a link, let me know in a professional manner.
 

Week	Readings Due	Projects Due
1. 01/7	Collaboration, Start-Up, & Web-based Learning Environments	Within 48 hours of the first class meeting, you will complete a fact sheet & biography as rtf files and send both as email attachments.
2. 01/14+	Audience	Project 5.0: Discussion Leadership (Group Mythical) and Individual Participation (This discussion will be led by your instructor to help you visualize how Class Discussions occur. The Discussion begins no later than Monday 01/14 at noon and continues until midnight on Sunday 01/20.)
3. 01/21+	Style & Tone
4. 01/28+	Organization
5. 02/04+	Levels of Edit	Project 5.1: Discussion Leadership (Group #1: Cadmus) and Individual Participation (Discussion begins no later than Monday 02/04 at noon and continues until midnight on Sunday 02/10.)
6. 02/11+	Document Design and Usability	Project 1 (Individual): Writing for a Specific Audience  (Due Wednesday 02/13 by midnight)
7. 02/18+	Evaluating Documents
8. 02/25+	Evaluating Data/Information Displays	Project 3: Proposal Writing, Progress Report #1 (Group)  (Due Wednesday 02/27 by midnight)
9. 03/04+	Research Methods	Project 5.2: Discussion Leadership (Group #2: Anguissola) and Individual Participation  (Discussion begins no later than Monday 03/04 at noon and continues until midnight on Sunday 03/10.)
10. 03/10 - 03/17 Spring Break
11. 03/18+	Assessing Research	Project 2 (Individual): Revising an Existing Manual (Due Wednesday 03/20 by midnight)
12. 03/25+	Persuasion	Project 3: Proposal Writing, Progress Report #2 (Group)   (Due Wednesday 03/27 by midnight)
13. 04/01+	Review Audience, Style and Design	Project 5.3: Discussion Leadership (Group #3: Merian) and Individual Participation  (Discussion begins no later than Monday 04/01 at noon and continues until midnight on Sunday 04/07.)
14. 04/08+	Review Collaboration and Persuasion
15. 04/15+	Course Summary	Project 3: Proposal Writing (Group)  (Due Tuesday 04/16 by midnight)
16. 04/22+
17. 04/29+	Classes end Tuesday 04/30	Optional Project 4 (Individual Resubmission of either Project 1 or 2)  (Due Tuesday 04/30 by midnight)

Click Here for Organizing Help!

  Course Projects and Evaluation Process

Based on the Course Goals, we will complete four required projects and one optional project.
 

Project	Value
1. Writing for a Specific Audience (Individual)	100
2. Revising an Existing Manual (Individual)	100
3. Proposal Writing (Group)	100
4. Optional Resubmission of Project 1 or 2 (Individual)	variable
5. Discussion Leadership (Group) and Individual Participation	100
TOTAL POINTS POSSIBLE	400

Your total numeric evaluation will result in the following final course grade:
 

Points	Letter Grade
368+	A
328-367	B
284-327	C
234-283	D
less than 233	F

 

A Performance Summary will be provided when each assignment is returned. If you have any questions about the evaluation of your work, see the instructor at your earliest convenience. If you have any questions about the evaluation policies and appeal procedures, please consult your advisor. All assignments must be completed to pass the course.

For projects 1, 2, and 3 (also optional project 4), evaluations will reflect how well you have met a project's requirements (content and organization), your use of business style and tone, and your correct use of English. Papers that contain serious grammatical errors (sentence fragments, run-on sentences, comma splices, etc.) cannot receive a grade higher than "C". Other evaluation criteria are summarized in the table below.
 

	Meets Assignment Criteria	Maintains Professional Style & Tone	Evidence of Revision & Editing	Type(s) of Errors
A	outstanding	yes	thoughtful consideration	few & minor
B	satisfactory	yes	evident	some usage
C	satisfactory	not maintained	some evidence of	usage errors; some serious
D	not met	not maintained or lacking	little evidence of	serious usage errors or many minor errors
F	does not meet minimum criteria	lacks any evidence of style or tone	no revision or editing	many serious and minor errors

For project 5 (discussion), see the project description for details of how group leadership and individual participation are evaluated.

If your grade declines a letter grade (i.e. A to B, B to C) during the term, the instructor will inform you of this change on your Performance Summary. At that point, the instructor may request a conference to discuss your performance. If your grade continues to decline, the instructor may ask for, or require, additional conferences. At either your, or the instructor's discretion, such conferences may include additional faculty or your academic advisor.

  Course Procedure

During the term each group will initiate a discussion and we will, individually, participate in that discussion, sometimes actual, other times virtual. I will offer a starting point for discussions early in the term; but, during the term, I expect each group to assume a leadership role in promoting at least one discussion. See the description of Project 5 (by clicking here) for more information.

As you might imagine, these discussions will offer ways for you to think about impending projects. You will, however, soon discover that the focus for the course is on textual elements, and the production of those elements, at a fairly high level. That is, we will NOT spend much time on grammar and other aspects of "nailing" together words. Instead, we will concern ourselves with the "architecture" of communication: how do we create communication products for specific audiences and purposes? how do we envision how readers extract "information" and "meaning" from the welter of form and content? how do readers come to understand the rationale we have used to construct our communication event? Probably pretty unfamiliar territory for lots of folks!

I rely on your interest in the topics, and your dedication to presenting a credible performance for each project, to insure that the content of these discussions, and its importance, finds its way into your work. To support your work on projects, each project's description offers:

1. suggestions for further reading (usually from textbooks in a variety of fields),

2. links to helpful websites,

3. an example (at least one) of a previous student's work,

4. where possible, a list of topics previous students have used for subjects,

5. examples of my evaluation of selected projects.

Finally, you should feel free to contact me during either virtual or actual office hours.

  Textbooks

No books are required for this course. In fact, you may need only the website for this course. However, if you encounter writing difficulties, you may need a text such as Line by Line. If you wish to supplement the website content about other matters such as audience adaptation (communication strategies) or proposals (genres), you should purchase Science and Technical Writing: A Manual of Style.

Cook, Claire Kehrwald. Line by Line: The MLA's Guide to Improving Your Writing Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1985.

Rubens, Philip. Science and Technical Writings: A Manual of Style . NY: Routledge, 2001.

  Policies

Project Submission

All projects are due on the date and at the time indicated in the Class Calendar. If a project cannot be completed on time, contact the instructor, in writing (email is valid), before the due date to arrange an extension.

Late projects, without extension, will be subject to a five (5) point per calendar day penalty. All late projects, with or without an extension, must be presented to the instructor and must be accompanied by a written statement indicating the reasons for the late submission and, if applicable, the student's acknowledgment of the penalty process. If this procedure is not followed, the project will not be accepted.

All projects must be submitted to complete the course.

Formatting, Naming, and Transmitting Projects

• Format Projects 1 and 3 with 1.5 spacing, one-inch margins, serif type, and 11 point. Project 2 requires exception to this rule, but  you should demonstrate in the rationale why the formatting used is appropriate for that project.
• Save As a Rich Text Format (RTF) file.
• Name file with the last five digits of your social security number plus the number of the project followed by the rtf extension--831041.rtf (my naming of the project 1 file). Be sure to check the description of individual projects for any exceptions to this naming practice.
• Send the file as an email attachment to your instructor's campus address with the transmittal information asked for within the email message. Place all parts of project in one file separated with page break.

Detailed Explanation

Projects should be saved as Rich Text Format (RTF) Documents and submitted electronically as email attachments (preferred), on disk, or as paper copy. Several techniques will insure more successful and less frustrating file transfer:

1. Format your files exactly as you would for printing. That is, if you expect specific leading characteristics (Be aware of what spacing is required for each of the projects), include those in your file. Format your documents (unless you have a good design reason for doing otherwise) with 1-inch margins all around. Use a legible, eleven point serifed typeface, such as Times New Roman. Click here for a template you can use in your word processor.
2. Please do not incorporate visuals (drawings, illustrations, photographs, or scans) into your document, because of the memory demands of many such visuals. Tables created in word or excel normally do not require a lot of memory and, therefore, are acceptable. However, you should demonstrate that you know what visuals should be included by placing, at the appropriate spot in your document, a brief explanation of the visual and enclosed in brackets or box.
3. Use the Save As function in your word processor and save your file as an RTF (Rich Text Format) file; (See Resources, above, for a Tutorial on saving documents.)
4. Use the following file naming convention. Name the file with the last five digits of your social security number followed by the project number. Append the file type (.rtf) to that name. For example, if I were submitting project one, the file name would be: 831041.rtf. Inappropriately named or formatted files will NOT be accepted.
5. Do not submit multiple files. If a project has multiple parts, place all parts in one file and insert page breaks.
6. In the email message included in your email attachment, describe the structure of your file. For project 1, for example, you might say: "The original article occupies the first three pages and is presented as text-only; the remaining pages are my rewrite."
7. Submit your paper electronically by attaching it to an email message. Include the course number in the subject line of the email. (See Resources above for a Tutorial on using campus email.)
8. If you feel you must offer paper copy of all, or any part, of your assignment, you can send that material via surface mail (allowing for delivery time and due dates). (See Resources, above, for Help on contacting faculty and submitting projects.
9. If you elect to resubmit a project, name that file with the same conventions as described in item 6 above and add the letter "x" after the file name. Thus, if I resubmit project 2, it would have the file name 831042x.rtf. For more information on resubmitting a project, see the next section of this page.

When I receive a file, I verify its integrity and inform you of its condition by return email. If the file is unreadable, it is your responsibility to assess your file and resubmit it as soon as possible. While I do NOT assess late penalties for transmission difficulties, I do place these papers later in the evaluation process.

Resubmitting Projects (Optional Project 4, above)

I understand that my resubmission policy is not particularly liberal. While I would like to encourage students to demonstrate that they understand the nature of the communication issues they failed to demonstrate in their original project submission, I also feel that I need to respect the good, even excellent, efforts of those students who received higher grades on the same projects.

One project (selected from projects 1 or 2) may be resubmitted for reassessment, during the last week of class, by prior agreement with the instructor. Based on the computed class average on the date the original submission was returned to the class, any such review can result in:

1. No more than 50% of the point difference between your current grade (if it is lower than the class average) and the class average for that project. For example, if the class average for a project is 90 and your grade is 80, you could add a maximum of five (5) points to your grade by resubmitting.
2. No more than 25% of the remaining total number of points available for the assignment (if your grade is higher than the class average). For example, if the class average for a project is 90 and your grade is 92, you could add a maximum of two (2) points to your grade by resubmitting.
3. No change in the evaluation. Resubmission does not imply that you will automatically receive additional points. I must be able to discern some improvement in your communication ability to justify additional points.

Resubmission must be presented in a timely manner and, in any case, NO LATER THAN the last week of class.

Click here for a template you can use in your word processor.

Participation

Participation will be evaluated based on your efforts in the Class Discussions (Project 5) and Project 3. You are expected to take an active role in all course activities.

Failure to be an active class member, can, at the instructor's discretion, result in points deducted from your class average; or, if you fail to improve your performance, reduction of a letter grade for the course.
 

Academic Honesty

In this course, plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty, as well as unacceptable behavior, will be treated based on the East Carolina University Code of Conduct. I recognize that many students have only a vague idea of plagiarism and the like; if you are ever in doubt, best ask.
 

East Carolina University and the Americans with Disabilities Act

East Carolina University seeks to fully comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  Students requesting accommodations based on a covered disability must go to the Department for Disability Support Services, Brewster A-114, to verify the disability before any accommodations can occur. The telephone number 252-328-6799.