Syllabus
Course Information:
Title: Introduction to Professional Writing
Number: ENG 204-001
Location: MO 204
Time: MWF 10:00-10:50
Instructor: Jeremy Tirrell
Office: MO 150
Office Hours: MWF 2:00-4:00 (and by appointment)
Overview:
Students in this course will engage core professional writing concepts, including audience analysis, research, document design, usability, and ethical composing practices. Students will produce works including technical instructions, usability tests, and public relations documents in both printed and digital formats. Individual and group projects are a feature of this course, as is directed service-learning interaction with community partners.
This course attempts to uphold the standards and expectations of a professional environment. All class members are expected to treat each other with appropriate courtesy and respect, and all coursework is expected to be completed in a professional, timely fashion. All students must read and understand the policies articulated in this syllabus and sign the course contract in oder to remain in the class.
Required Texts:
- Technical Communication Today, 3rd ed., Richard Johnson-Sheehan. This book may be obtained from:
- Online readings provided on the course website
Course Policies:
Technology Expectations:
- ability to interact with the course website
- access to word processing, visual design, and web design software
- a suitable email account checked regularly for course-related business
- a Flash drive or other means to backup coursework
Routine work with technology is a component of this class. Students need not be technological experts to succeed in this course, but digital technology interaction is integral, and computer problems are not valid excuses for incomplete work. Practice the core principle of digital data work: redundant backup. Digital technology will fail you; be prepared for that eventuality.
Laptops may be used in the classroom, but please do not answer cell phone calls in class or send/receive texts. Phones should have their ringers turned off, and if a student must take a call, he or she should exit the classroom before doing so. All students are expected to participate in current class activities, and should not become distracted by unrelated computer usage. This course takes place in a computer classroom, but because we live in a technology-rich culture, we all must learn to focus on priority tasks.
Availability of Online Material:
Because of the nature of the course, some material posted to this website will be publicly accessible through the Web. (A student's grades and personal information will not be shared publicly, but students may opt to have their grades accessible privately online.) Additionally, any material posted to the course website may be used anonymously for teaching or published research purposes. For these reasons, students are encouraged to select usernames that are different from their real names.
Collaborative Work:
Teamwork and group projects are required elements of the course. Student teammates are responsible for updating each another and me about project development and progress. In addition, student teams also are responsible for negotiating all aspects of their work, including planning, drafting, revising, file managing, scheduling, and leading workshops and presentations. When a group project is assigned, students will complete activities that foster successful collaboration. After the conclusion of group projects, individuals will complete forms to assess the contributions of group members and the global performance of the team.
Service Learning:
This course requires a service learning component. This means that students will be creating documents in collaboration with community partners. Students function as representatives of UNCW in this capacity, and should act accordingly. Community partners will have input in student assessment for service learning projects.
Attendance and Punctuality:
Because this is a workshop and discussion-driven class, class attendance is crucial. Role is taken shortly after class begins. If a student is not present when role is taken, he or she will be counted absent. If there are extraordinary circumstances that will prevent a student from attending class, he or she must contact the instructor beforehand. There is no separate attendance component of the course grade, but any student that misses more than six class meetings will fail the course automatically. Additionally, any work missed because of an absence cannot be made up. This includes project assignments. The class abides by the maxim that all members of the class should show respect to one another by meeting at designated times and places prepared to work.
Late Work:
Late work is not accepted.
Grading:
This courses uses the plus/minus grading system. Pluses/minuses will appear on coursework feedback and final grade reports. The scoring breakdown is as follows:
- 92-100 = A
- 90-91 = A-
- 88-89 = B+
- 82-87 = B
- 80-81 = B-
- 78-79 = C+
- 72-77 = C
- 70-71 = C-
- 68-69 = D+
- 62-67 = D
- 60-61 = D-
- 0-59 = F
Grade Components:
Engagement Assignments = 20%
Midterm Exam = 20%
Corporate Communication Project = 20%
Instructions Project = 20%
Service Learning Project = 20%
Engagement assignments include all the work necessary for the progress of the course, such as in-class activities, out of class short assignments, reading responses, blog posts, comments, etc. Most of these assignments are worth two points each. Students must produce professional, thorough, insightful work to receive full credit on engagement assignments. The final engagement assignment grade is a cumulative score based upon how many points a student gained against how many were possible for the semester.
The Midterm exam is a multiple choice/short answer test based upon terms and concepts covered in class readings and discussion.
All projects will go through drafting and revision processes before they are turned in for a grade. In order to reflect the conditions of a professional environment, projects have hard deadlines, and no make-up or second chance opportunities will be available. I will provide extensive comments on project drafts, but comparatively few comments on final versions. This is because the primary purpose of feedback is to improve student work rather than to explain why it earned a particular grade. Project grades will be sent via UNCW email unless a student specifically asks that they not be. Students are always welcome to visit office hours to discuss work at any stage, including after it has been graded.
Academic Honor Code:
UNCW students and instructors are expected to adhere to the guidelines set forth in the University Academic Honor Code. Students are expected to produce original work in this course. Collaboration and incorporation of external material and ideas into original work is of course acceptable and necessary, but all writers are ethically obliged to document external sources through appropriate citation practices. If you are uncertain if some element of your work constitutes plagiarism or another honor code violation, please speak with me. The point of any class is to educate, not to punish. Nevertheless, the consequences of honor code violations are appropriately dire. Please consult the "Academic Honor Code" information in the UNCW website and the Undergraduate Catalogue for more details.
Accommodation for Students with Disabilities
I and the university will make every effort to accommodate students with disabilities. If you require special accommodations, please feel free to see me privately during office hours to make arrangements or contact Disability Services directly. According to university policy, students must consult with Disability Services before classroom accommodations can be provided. Please make contact as soon as possible, as accommodations cannot be made retroactively.
Projects
The links below provide details about each of the main course projects.
Corporate Communication Project
Project Summary:
The Corporate Communication Project asks students working in groups to analyze and respond to a real-world corporate crisis. Groups will select a recent corporate crisis (within the last five years) and produce three separate but related texts from the company's perspective for three distinct audiences: a press release for news media outlets; an internal memo for employees; a recorded (audio or video) message for customers. These documents should address the crisis in a professional, ethical, rhetorically-effective manner. This project allows students to get practical experience with corporate communications in textual and multimedia formats both online and offline.
It is possible to identify recent corporate crises by searching outlets such as Google News. For learning purposes, the class will examine the grounding of several JetBlue airplanes due to ice storms in February 2007 as a case study.
Instructor's Note: It is likely that some of the corporate crises groups select already have corresponding responses online (such as press releases). This may present the temptation to borrow heavily from these documents while writing. However, this project requires groups to produce original documents as a learning experience, so I will check for similarities between any official and student versions of these texts. (This of course does not mean that groups are forbidden to draw rhetorical strategies from official materials or other professional models.)
Project Components and Grading:
- Crisis Analysis (10% of project grade, individual grade, due 1/15)
Each student will produce a two-page report that summarizes a particular corporate crisis and its effects. The audience for this report will be the affected corporation itself. (Students should consider themselves part of the corporation's PR team, and they should write as though the crisis is occurring now.) Students should research involved parties including customers, investors, and competitors. Reports should reference specific texts from these parties that react to the crisis—such as newspaper and periodical articles, television reports, YouTube videos, and blogs—as evidence for their statements. Reports should strive to characterize the overall crisis accurately by assessing the significance and prevalence of various perspectives. Excellent Crisis Analyses will succinctly portray the situation in an appropriate way, and will be in a finished, polished format suitable for a corporate readership, including appropriate grammar and mechanics. The class will select a limited number of corporate crises to pursue in groups. Selected authors will receive individual bonus points and function as group leaders.
- Gantt Chart (10% of project grade, group grade, due 2/10)
Each group will produce a Gantt Chart—a visual project management document depicting the division of labor. Gantt charts should clearly delineate project tasks and deadlines, and specify who is responsible for their completion (be it a particular individual or the whole group). Excellent Gantt Charts will be through, professional, and in keeping with the parameters covered in readings and class discussion.
- Design Plan (10% of project grade, group grade, due 1/27)
(Design Plan criteria available here.)
Each group will produce a design plan that explicates how its three documents address the crisis appropriately. The audience for this design plan will be the affected corporation itself. The design plan should incorporate rhetorical elements by discussing the documents' audiences, contexts, purposes, media, strategies, and arrangements. Essentially, this document argues that the group's approach will be effective by revealing the intended outcomes and showing how the documents accomplish them. Excellent design plans will account thoroughly for all of the rhetorical elements established in Compose, Design, Advocate and present a coherent narrative rather than a collection of disconnected parts. Excellent design plans also will be in a finished, polished format suitable for a corporate readership, including appropriate grammar and mechanics.
- Press Release (20% of project grade, group grade, due 2/10)
Using the reading materials and following the models provided, student groups will craft a press release for news media outlets. Student groups must make decisions about the tone, content, vocabularly and rhetorical strategies that will be both commercially and ethically effective. Excellent press releases will be between 200-500 words and follow the standards of clarity, conciseness, correctness, audience awareness, and professionalism discussed in the course.
- Internal Memo (20% of project grade, group grade, due 2/10)
Using the reading materials provided, student groups will craft an internal memo for employees that addresses the current crisis. Because they are targeted to a different audience, memos should be markedly different from press releases. Excellent memos should follow the standards of clarity, conciseness, correctness, audience awareness, and professionalism discussed in the course.
- Recorded Message for Customers (20% of project grade, group grade, due 2/10)
Student groups will record one audio or video message for customers that could be deployed in an appropriate venue. Group members may stand in as representatives for the company, customers, shareholders, etc. Excellent recorded messages will be long enough to demonstrate appropriate engagement, but still concise enough to fit the situation appropriately. Excellent recorded messages will be effective, and in keeping with the precepts and examples discussed in the course.
- Postmortem (10% of project grade, individual grade, due 2/10)
(The postmortem form is available here.)
Each student will produce a reflective postmortem that provides insight into the contributions of group members and the global performance of the group. Postmortems will be used to assign group members individual grades for this project component. Excellent postmortems will account thoroughly for all sections of the postmortem form, thereby providing valuable insight into project development, successes, challenges, and lessons learned. Excellent postmortems will be in a finished, polished format, including appropriate grammar and mechanics.
Instructions Project
Project Summary:
The Instructions Project asks students to produce two sets of clear, concise instructions on the same topic for two distinct audience groups. Professional writers are often tasked with producing such instructions, and despite common assumptions, helpful, audience-focused instructions are quite challenging to produce. A main goal for this project is for students to explore the distinct needs, values, and attitudes of separate audience groups.
Topic choice for instruction sets is wide open. Past subjects include creating histograms with Microsoft Excel, constructing a tournament-grade horseshoe court, using successful online play strategies in Call of Duty: World at War, cooking jambalaya, using smartphones on the campus wireless network, etc. The main stipulation is that the topic selected must be non-trivial and of genuine utility.
Instruction sets may be in any appropriate format (printed, online, audio, etc.), and all final instruction sets should be delivered in their actual format. Like all issues of design, format choice should be guided by the work's audience, context, and purpose. All instruction sets must contain some multimedia elements that are not written text, such as images, figures, video, audio, etc. Perhaps the most important aspect of this project is that a student's two instruction sets should be qualitatively different to address the needs, values, and attitudes of the two distinct corresponding audiences. Although some overlap is expected, instruction sets should be markedly different, and one set should not be a cut-down version of the other.
Instructor's Note: It is likely that some of the topics students select will have existing instructions. This is fine, but students should not simply replicate existing work, nor borrow extensively from existing materials (although students can of course glean strategies from them). If instructions already exist for a topic, a good idea is to shift the audience, context, and/or purpose. Such changes lead to different choices of medium, strategies, and arrangement. These shifts make a student's instruction sets distinct documents.
Project Sequence and Grading:
- Relevant Instruction Set Analysis (10% of project grade, due 2/15)
Students will locate existing relevant instruction sets and produce approximately two-page analyses of them using the rhetorical elements established in Compose, Design, Advocate (audience, context, purpose, medium, strategies, arrangement). Excellent analyses will provide thorough, insightful, well-supported information about the goals of the instruction sets and how they accomplish them.
- Design Plans (10% of project grade, due 2/24)
(Design Plan criteria available here.)
Each student will construct two design plans (one for each instruction set) based on the rhetorical elements identified in CDA that articulate the goals of the corresponding instruction set and how it will accomplish them. Excellent design plans will account thoroughly for all of the rhetorical elements established in CDA and present a coherent narrative rather than a collection of disconnected parts. Excellent design plans also will reflect the corresponding finished instruction set, and be in a finished, polished format suitable for a professional reader, including appropriate grammar and mechanics.
- Usability Tests (10% of project grade, due 2/22)
Students will provide their classmates and the instructor with drafts of their instruction sets and usability tests to perform on them. Instruction set drafts should be as complete as possible so that the information drawn from usability testing is maximally beneficial. Excellent usability tests will be thorough, complete, professional, and in keeping with the information on usability testing found in Technical Communication Today and the "Usability" Instructor Blog.
- Final Instruction Sets (60% of project grade, due 3/1)
Students will create two separate instruction sets on the same topic for two distinct audiences. Instruction sets should take into account information drawn from readings as well as that discovered through analysis, drafting, and usability testing. Excellent instruction sets will be qualitatively different to appeal to the needs, values, and attitudes of two separate audience groups, but both sets will be clear, concise, helpful, and user-centered. Excellent instruction sets will incorporate non-written multimedia elements (such as images, audio, video, etc.) and be of sufficient length to cover all necessary information for a non-trivial subject. Excellent instruction sets will be delivered in their intended format and of professional quality appropriate for an authentic production context.
- Postmortem (10% of project grade, due 3/1)
(The postmortem form is available here.)
Students will produce a reflective postmortem that provides insight into their process of design. Works that document how a person's time and energy have been allocated during a project are common in professional settings. Excellent postmortems will account thoroughly for all sections of the postmortem form, thereby providing valuable insight into project successes, challenges, and lessons learned. Excellent postmortems will be in a finished, polished format, including appropriate grammar and mechanics, such that the postmortem could be given as-is to a professional superior.
Service Learning Project
Project Summary:
For this assignment, student groups will work with a representative from UNCW's Professional Writing program to produce promotional materials (two per group) for the program's upcoming English in Action showcase which takes place on April 23 from 3:30-4:30 on the first floor of Morton Hall. All materials created for this project become property of the English Department. Materials selected by the Professional Writing program will be used to promote the event.
During the Service Learning Project, students will practice working collaboratively to produce real professional materials for an authentic client. In so doing, students will demonstrate their understanding of audience awareness, research, documentation, ethos, professionalism, and document design. Groups will be graded in part on their overall contribution to the PR campaign, so groups are encouraged to produce materials that have a real impact rather than materials that are easy to create.
The calendar is subject to change during this project, but I will keep students up to date via the online calendar and class discussion.
Service Learning Google Document
English in Action logo
Groups:
| Justin |
Joey |
Sasha |
Tyler L. |
Samuel |
| William N. |
Tyler H. |
Jessica |
William R. |
Ashley |
| Jessie |
Morgan |
Jaime P. |
Andrew |
Jamie R. |
| Marguerite |
Cara |
Lauren |
Kevin |
Kelly |
Project Sequence and Grading:
- Gantt Chart (10% of project grade)
Each group will produce a Gantt Chart—a visual project management document depicting the division of labor. Gantt Charts should clearly delineate project tasks and deadlines, as well as who is responsible for their completion (a specific individual or the group). Excellent Gantt Charts will be through, professional, and in keeping with the parameters covered in readings and class discussion.
- Proposal (20% of project grade)
Each group will produce a Proposal based on the information found in TCT that articulates the client's goals and how the group's documents will accomplish them. The client will use these proposals to understand how each group has contributed to the overall campaign. Excellent Proposals will reflect the information in TCT and present a coherent narrative rather than a collection of disconnected parts. Excellent Proposals also will reflect the corresponding finished documents, and be in a finished, polished format suitable for a client readership, including appropriate grammar and mechanics.
- Client Materials (50% of project grade)
Each group will produce two promotional materials in keeping with the needs, values, and expectations of the client. Excellent client materials should respond to the client's guidance, and should be in a finished, polished format suitable for an authentic professional situation. The client will have direct input on this component of the grade.
- Client Presentation (10% of project grade)
(The presentation rubric is available here.)
Each group's final materials will be presented to the client. (Presentations will be videotaped for clients who are unable to attend in person.) Presentations should discuss how the group's documents suit the client's needs, values, and expectations appropriately. Presentations need not feature all group members; one or more group members may handle the presentation. Presentations will last between 5 and 10 minutes. Please do not go over time. Excellent client presentations will be convincing, rehearsed, and on time.
- Postmortem (10% of project grade, individual to each group member)
(The postmortem form is available here.)
Each student will produce a reflective postmortem that provides insight into the contributions of group members and the global performance of the group. Postmortems will be used to assign group members individual grades for this project component. Excellent postmortems will account thoroughly for all sections of the postmortem form, thereby providing valuable insight into project development, successes, challenges, and lessons learned. Excellent postmortems will be in a finished, polished format, including appropriate grammar and mechanics.
