English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

Topic Choice

Some students have had questions about what topic to cover for the Instructions Project. This is a legitimate issue, and indeed part of the project is demonstrating your ability to identify an applicable object or process. The range of topics you can cover is quite wide. As the project description states, any technical object or process you are familiar with is fair game, and you can cover a specific operation or general use.

Note: Remember that the deadline for final drafts is Friday, February 20, at midnight.

In addition to the specific feedback about your cover letter that was emailed to you by your instructor, Nathaniel and I would like you to be aware of these general points.

1. Use Instructor Blog #3: Cover Letters as your main guide. It provides an explicit structure that will help your cover letter meet standard conventions.

As you revise your resumes, Jeremy and I want to draw your attention to a few things:

1. Resume drafts were not graded. We assigned provisional grades that indicate what a draft would receive if it were turned in as a final version without changes. (The purpose of drafting is to help you produce the best work that you can for the final version.)
2. We cannot mark or comment about every possible beneficial revision to your draft. Do not assume that all that is required for a perfect document is to fix only what we have marked. You are responsible for addressing our comments as well as incorporating the principles outlined or discussed in any of the readings.

Not to belabor a point that Jeremy and I have made in comments to individual reading responses, but the "Kairos and the Cover Letter" piece offers the final four openings as moves NOT TO MAKE. In fact, the author explicitly positions them as things not to do:

As you revise your resumes, Jeremy and I want to draw your attention to a few things. As we mentioned in several comments to this week's reading responses (which focused primarily on the "contradictory" advice found in the world of resumes, the fickle nature of HR, and the impossibility of creating the perfect resume - here and here), the success of a given resume is tightly bound to its particular situation. There is no "perfect" resume because there is no singular situation: what works in one setting may not work in another. As Jeremy and I argued, this does not mean that "anything goes" or that it does not matter what you do with your resume. It means you have to do the work of knowing the situation your resume will enter and then do your level best to make it fit. It also means that for each job you apply for you will want to consider creating a modified resume.

You might notice that now there are a few buttons above the entry blank when you make blog posts or comments. You can use these buttons to add simple formatting to your posts (insert link, boldface, italics, headers, lists). You just have to highlight your text and click. When you preview your post the formatting will appear.

Now that we've had a couple of weeks to get our feet wet, Nathaniel and I want to make sure that everyone is comfortable with our expectations for Reading Responses and comments. All students should have received feedback from their instructor about their first Reading Response (Nathaniel and I both emailed ours). We have been very impressed with what we have seen so far. The conversations seem to be productive and developed. There are many examples of great conversations. Linked below are three example threads that we think serve as good models:

This is the course site for Technical Writing Online (19010-ENGL 42100-Y02) and (19011-ENGL 42100-Y03) with instructors Tirrell (jtirrell@purdue.edu) and Rivers (nrivers@purdue.edu). Two sections share this course site and will collaborate on some activities. However, grades will be assigned by each student's instructor of record.

Virtually all of the course flows through this course website. As such, you should take some time to familiarize yourself with it. The first place to go is the Course Description. Next, you should read through the Course Handouts, particularly the "Getting Started" documents that explain the basics of creating an account on the site. As this is an online course, the instructors assume a basic understanding of and familiarity with various online technologies (email, blogs posts, etc.) as well as regular access to a computer and the internet. It is each student's responsibility to access the site and participate online throughout the entire sixteen weeks of the semester. (The site may be slow or a little flakey at the beginning of the semester, so make certain that you read ahead in the calendar and are always prepared.)

Finally, you should become familiar with the Course Calendar. The Week 1 page outlines what needs to be accomplished immediately.

Welcome to the course! This class can be a lot of work, but your instructors are dedicated to your success. If you have any questions, feel free to post them to the course FAQ or contact your instructor directly.

Attach a comment to this post wherein you introduce yourself according the guidelines listed under Week 1 on the calendar page.