| Course Description | English 503 : Written Communications in Organizations |
Spring Term, 2007 Students on-campus will have a meeting day and time for discussion and for presentations. Attendance is voluntary. Students on-campus will also have opportunities to meet and visit with local professionals in Flagstaff and surrounding areas. Attendance is voluntary. Flagstaff students will also have an opportunity to take a 5 day trip to Los Angeles, California, expanding the course readings and class discussions to our neighboring state. Attendance is voluntary. Details after the holidays. English 503 approaches writing as one ability of a larger communicative process. A good writer who is a poor team player, a disagreeable colleague, or a narrow-minded department lead, will quickly find him or herself isolated and avoided by their colleagues. When at work, your responsibility as a writer needs to fit into the larger department scheme and heirarchy as an essential role. But, a writer's role often has a history of stepping in at the end of a project or situation. If you are working for such a company, if you find that your office still has the hooks meant for the dust pan and the broom, you are not alone. If your company values your documents, then you are in a good position to present your case for being a team member from the beginning of all projects (such as, grants, quarterly reports, client contracts, in-house documentation). Strong grammar and punctuation skills are useful and basic, but a writer's common courtesy and professionalism will provide the skills that are indespensable to be a member of the team. Once recognized as team player, as the colleague who pays attention to the communication process and not solely to the written documents, the writer becomes a natural part of the entire project. The course is designed into 5 modules. The first 4 module have a focus leading to module 5. Module 1: Writing as Artifact, requires students to read and to apply classical rhetorical principles along with three other theorists' resarch (Bitzer, Street, and Gee). These theories will be the framework for the course. Module 2: Purpose and Ethics, will focus on current business-related discussions on the workplace. Students will interview an individual of their choice on how she or he approach writing at the workplace. Module 3: Approach and Presentation, introduces the similarities and differences of the nonprofit and for profit sectors via the web. Students will analyze 2 websites and write a short paper on their findings. Module 4: Digital Mediums, asks students to consider the current trends of blogging, podcasts, video-casts, powerpoint/keynote online, newsletter, and movies either online or as supplemental material for the workplace. Students will experiment with a chosen multimedia format ranging from powerpoint to a movie clip. Module 5: Reflections, asks students to complete their projects by discussing their topic choices and means of delivery. Students will also post a presentation (in print, audio perhaps) to their chosen audience and submit a final paper. There will be 2 quizzes, modules 2 and 3. Grammar and punctuation rules will be presented throughout all 5 modules. |
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Required Text
All other readings will be available in our Vista Course Shell. Required Media: Please Note: You will need Acrobat Reader, Quicktime, and Flash Player. All are free downloads. But, the downloading and actual playing of media are dependent on the amount of RAM you have on your machine. For a Detailed View of Deadlines, go here. |
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