Please Read Through As This Has Important Course Policy Information

Please read through as this has important course policy information

(Last update Aug, 7, 2015)

Instructor: Pam Orel

How to reach the instructor:

(preferred)

(both are checked each day)

732-996-5379 (cell, accepts text messages)

This semester I am teachingfoursections, all of which will use this digital class space. Note that the Testudo.umd.edu says there is an online meeting on Wednesdays butthere is no need to show up in class that day or log in at a particular time. There are assignments and readings. These will be sent out via "Friendly Reminder" emails on Sunday night and due in most cases no later than midnight on the following Sunday.

Here are the in-person meeting times:

Online office hours can be arranged with me through the conference setting or via Google chat; please email or text to set up a mutually agreeable time.

In-Person office hours can be scheduled via appointment; I am generally in after 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Monday if youwish to drop in.My office is located in Tawes Hall's Professional Writing Wing. From the front door (the one facingCampus Drive), make a slight right past the stairs and follow that hall to the end; the office, 1236, is on the right in the back.

Please plan on attending mandatory in-person Wednesday afternoon conferences held at the midterm and final stages of our major project work. The tentative dates are early October and Monday or Tuesday of the week of Nov. 16.

Timeframe:Most calls/emails are returned within 24 hours; if for some reason you don't hear back please check up again - not all emails get where they are supposed to go.

BEFORE THE FIRST DAY, If you have not done so already, please navigate to the top right side of the elms.umd.edu page, which has your name and global settings for courses. To the right of the box is a “settings” tab. Please fill in or update your profile information. Also, please use thenotifications tabat left of the settings page to set up the way in which you would like to receive course announcements and related information.

This will set up how you wish to be contacted for ALL your various courses. If settings are not established, or are not frequent enough to meet your needs, you may not get announcements, deadline notices, etc.for this or other courses.For notices relating to course activities, please click on the check mark or the clock. The check mark will send notifications as they are sent; the clock sends a daily summary. If you feel overwhelmed, you can change these if you wish. You can have notifications for any email you list. You can also select texts to your cell, your Twitter feed, etc. This gives you a great deal of flexibility in how you receive updates for your courses! However, it is still up to you to keep track of these announcements, so please plan accordingly. Make sure you are selecting a notification system that you check regularly.

The calendar you’ll see has notifications and deadlines for all your courses in one space. Make sure you can see the calendar, and that it appears to have information from all the courses for which you are registered.

For our first meeting (Aug. 31) we will gather in our sections but there is no class meeting the following Monday, which is Labor Day. Please text or send email if you miss that first class in August.

“Help! It doesn’t work!”

Canvas is a multifaceted system, and it has its bad days. Some of you may be coming in from another academic environment that used a totally different course platform. Expect that there will be a glitch every now and then, and that you will make a mistake when using it. Email is an acceptable alternative if you try to upload an assignment and it does not work. You can also respond to questions posed as discussions via email if the other option appears closed out.

Unless otherwise noted, you can resubmit assignments right up to the date that they close; I grade only the most recent version in the assignment tool.

Prerequisites:

ENGL101; students who have taken courses with comparable content may contact their respective department. Restriction: Must have earned a minimum of 60 credits. (from the Course Catalog)

To succeed at technical writing requires a mastery of the process of writing: learning and developing skills that will assist you in communicating highly specialized content to a variety of audiences. I expect that for most of you, this class will take a significant amount of time and energy, and you may have inferred from these pages that I have high expectations in regards to your dedication to this course. However, it is likely that an effort on your part to meet – and exceed – the requirements set forth for you this semester will successfully prepare you for professional communication in the world beyond our classroom.

Class Description

This class is designed to prepare you for the type of professional communication you will encounter as you transition to your first job and beyond. We will focus on technical communication – learning how to present specialized information in an accessible way to a variety of different audiences. Audiences differ, but they all expect clarity, accuracy, and professionalism from you.

Please note: This is a Blended Learning course, which meanswe will meet in person only once a week. The blended learning component of the course most closely matches what you will see in the professional world, but it does require that YOU give the class the time you need. As I mention in my welcome, this is not the “easy” version of this class. All assignments are the same as if you took this class without an online component.

This class stresses the key skills that highlight a successful professional technical communicator. Specifically, we focus on the process of writing (including the planning, drafting, and revising stages) and look carefully at the work that goes into the final polished product. As collaboration is often a key part of the professional realm, you’ll spend much of the semester working with your classmates – which will include participating in brainstorming sessions, providing constructive criticism, and preparing for your final projects together. Successful students can expect to meet thesecourse outcomes:

• Analyze a variety of professional rhetorical situations and produce appropriate texts in response.

• Understand the stages required to produce competent, professional writing through planning, drafting, revising, and editing.

• Identify and implement the appropriate research methods for each writing task.

• Practice the ethical use of sources and the conventions of citation appropriate to each genre.

• Write for the intended readers of a text, and design or adapt texts to audiences who may differ in their familiarity with the subject matter.

• Demonstrate competence in Standard Written English, including grammar,sentence and paragraph structure, coherence, and document design (including the effective use of graphics) and be able to use this knowledge to revise texts.

• Produce cogent arguments that identify arguable issues, reflect the degree of available evidence, and take account of counter arguments.

(These are listed in the Course Outcomes tab at left as well.)

Course Materials

There is no textbook for this course; readings and videos are provided in each of the modules. There are a number of helpful resources from a set of modules offered this semester by the University of Maryland Libraries. Please note that the required readings from the Library materials are in the module under that particular heading but the ENTIRE package is available at the bottom of the modules page for your convenience. There are quizzes in this libraries collection but they are not required and not tied in to your grade page at this point. Quizzes on crowd funding and group processes are required for the course.

Please bookmark the University of Maryland Libraries Course Guide for the Professional Writing Program at

This has a lot of helpful resources geared to the specific needs of the Writing Program curriculum.

Also bookmark the Purdue University Online Writers Guide at

You are free to use any other grammar or style guide to help you identify proper citations, and to assist with your grammar, diction, and syntax issues. I recommend the Purdue OWL as it includes a wealth of (free!) information from an authoritative source on everything from the job-search process to preparing academic resources to common grammar errors.

More on the Blended Learning Environment: If you did not use Canvas regularly last term, or just need a refresher, there is one at is available from the ELMS login screen. This will have a lot of information on how to use the technology and how to deal with common problems. There is also a refresher on getting to Canvas via your mobile device of choice in the Help Desk.

Please use a cloud or portable digital storage device of your choice.Please back up EVERYTHING you submit and download and retain the returned, graded materials until your final grades are posted. Classroom online software is wonderful, but it has its flaws! To back up grades, you will need to call up your individual grade as it's listed in the "grades" tab and print that page. This is not a bad idea -- no system is foolproof.

Below is a tentative schedule of what we will be doing each week. While I make an effort to keep to schedule, it is subject to change.

Assignments and Grades

Your semester grade will be based on a variety of assignments, some individual and some collaborative, accounting for roughly 25 pages of final, polished writing. The specific breakdown is as follows:

•Defining a Term for a Specific, Targeted Audience: (10%)

• Journal Entries(Beginning, Middle and End of Course) (8%)

•Midsemester Project Proposal (15%)

•Survey/Interview Questions (6%)

•Creating Instructions / Group Processes (15%)

•Career Writing (10%)

•Final Project (25%)

• Overall Attendance, In-Class Writing, Quizzes, Peer Edits, Related Class Participation (11%)

Copyright notice: Class lectures and other materials are copyrighted and they may not be reproduced for anything other than personal use without written permission from the instructor.

Extra Credit

I encourage all students to take part in theWriting Center tutoring program,and encourage you to have your tutor write a short report (one sentence is OK) to me on the visit.For each visit up to four, you can get one extra point at the end of the semester, which isadded to your final grade.This will not lift an F to an A, but many students in the B Plus range have used their writing center points to move into A minus range with a few visits to the Writing Center.

Last semester our group of about 78students logged in more than 70 visits -- it's one of the better offers around here, and it can be a huge boost even if you are doing OK.

Grades

When grading each of your assignments, I will ask one overriding question: “Does this document do its job successfully?” The “job,” or purpose, of each document will be explained on the individual assignment descriptions I distribute to you during the semester, and we will spend ample time in class discussing how you can create a successful text for each assignment. Canvas relies on an automated rubric system for grading, and those rubrics will be provided with the assignment. However, in general, I will use the following criteria to evaluate your major writing projects:

Guidelines for Online Assignments

All out-of-class assignments must be sent in via the myelms.umd.edu. To the extent possible, I want to use our Monday meetings for discussion and review of your drafts, but some will be done online as the semester progresses. For in-class collaborations or draft reviews, I prefer that you bring two or three paper copies to share. In my prior teaching experience it was common for students to bring in laptops or other digital media to share. While I don’t forbid this, I have found that handing your computer around may increase the chances it might be dropped or otherwise damaged accidentally. Please note that, if you bring a cell phone, the screen is too small for someone to evaluate your work effectively. You are free to use Google or the Canvas collaboration tools, as well.

Assignments must be handed in when they are due. I’ll subtract a letter grade from the paper for each class day it is late (i.e., a B+ paper due Tuesday but handed in Thursday would receive a C+).Assignments that are more than a week (five business days) overdue may not be accepted.