University of Calgary

Faculty of Communication and Culture

An on-line course

COMS 363: Professional and Technical Communication
Winter 2008 (Lec. 09)

January 14 - April 18, 2008

Instructor:  Ms. Jo-Anne Andre     ( 220-7429     Social Sciences 110     E-mail:  andre@ucalgary.ca

 

E-mail - If you have any questions or need to request an extension, please e-mail the instructor. Be sure to include "363" in the subject line for your e-mail or your message may be missed.

Office hours -  By appointment (anytime except Monday mornings & Tuesdays after 3:00 pm.)
While I may be able to see you if you drop in, it's best to make an appointment by e-mail.

Note: The week before the final report is due, I will schedule some drop-in hours to review drafts. JA

Tutorials & Markers- There are no face-to-face tutorials in this class; however, all students will be in one of four tutorial (marking) sections on Blackboard. An announcement will be posted in each section verifying the marker's name.

T09: Stephanie Rakowski-Reid  ( reidsl@telusplanet.net )         T10: Matt Gray ( mailto:mjlittle@ucalgary.ca )

T11: Shane Halasz ( sdhalasz@ucalgary.ca )                              T13: Gina Grosenick ( gcgrosen@ucalgary.ca )

An on-line course on the Blackboard system: https://blackboard.ucalgary.ca/webapps/login/

This section of the course will be offered entirely online. There will be no virtual class meetings or lectures. Please check the Blackboard (BB) site twice a week for course materials & announcements.

Course description and objectives:

An introduction to professional and technical communication. This course will introduce you to general concepts and tools to help you make sense of workplace writing situations as they arise. The course  will help you develop

• § a rhetorical approach to crafting documents--one in which you critically consider your purpose in
  writing, the needs of your audience(s), and relevant features of the context in which you are writing;
• § an understanding of current theories of genre and familiarity with the conventions and composing strategies for a range of written genres, including business correspondence, proposals, and reports;
• § document design strategies to ensure that your documents look professional, promote easy retrieval of information, and use visuals to communicate information effectively;
• § writing strategies to keep your writing focused, coherent, and readable;
• § a sound command of the mechanics of writing and the skills to edit effectively to eliminate common errors in sentence structure, grammar, word use, spelling, and punctuation;
• § competence in the use of a standard style of documentation (e.g., APA or IEEE);
• § familiarity with a range of resources for professional writers, including tools for online research, for online composing, and for collaborative writing;
• § competence in preparing PowerPoint presentations.

 

The course will also give you the opportunity to develop your skills as an effective member of a collaborative writing team in an online setting.

Prerequisite: Second year standing and completion of the University of Calgary Effective Writing Requirement.

 

Required materials & academic support:

Graves, H. & Graves, R. (2007). A strategic guide to technical communication. Peterborough ON: Broadview Press.

• § Used copies of the textbook may be available.
• § Additional readings and resource materials will be posted on the course Blackboard site.

Technical requirements & support:

TO DO (1): Before the course begins, please visit the e-learning student help page: http://elearn.ucalgary.ca/elearn/blackboard/students   Here, you will find helpful resources for Blackboard plus links to information about obtaining an IT account, changing your password, and updating your e-mail address in the system. Note that you must have an IT account in order to access Blackboard. If you already have an ....@ucalgary.ca e-mail address, you have the necessary IT account in place. Once you enter the Blackboard platform, check out the help resources located under the HELP button on the menu. As you'll see, these help resources include a list of frequently asked questions. If you run into problems, please check this area first.

 

TO DO (2): Before the course begins, please go into the Blackboard site and send an e-mail to yourself. If you do not receive the e-mail, it is your responsibility to update your e-mail address in the system (at the link provided on the e-learn page). If you neglect to update your e-mail address in the system, you will miss important messages related to this course.

 

Be sure to check your e-mail often and to keep your e-mail box cleaned out. If your e-mail box is full, you may miss important messages and returned course work as messages bounced back to the instructor because of full e-mailboxes will normally not be resent. (Returned messages because of full e-mail boxes tend to be a problem with Hotmail accounts.)

 

TO DO (3): If you do not have PowerPoint or MS Word on your computer, please visit the Microsoft download centre to download the PowerPoint and Word viewers: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/Search.aspx?displaylang=en

You must have composing software that can generate files readable in Microsoft Word 2000 or higher. If you are not using Microsoft Word, please save your files in a Word-compatible format.

 

Please keep copies of all assignments you submit. If your marker has trouble opening an assignment file, he or she may request that you resend the file in .rtf or another format.

 

If you encounter technical problems, please contact the IT support desk (phone 220-5555 or e-mail itsupport@ucalgary.ca)

Assignments:

 

12%    Quizzes on reading and editing (each quiz will be a multiple-choice test in Blackboard)

• o Jan. 16 - Quiz 1: Graves & Graves Chapter 1 (2%)
• o Jan. 23 -- Quiz 2: Editing I (punctuation, apostrophes, & spelling) (2%)
• o Jan. 30 -- Quiz 3: Editing II (parallelism & pronouns) (2%)
• o Feb. 6 - Quiz 4: APA format (2%)
• o Feb. 13 - Quiz 5: Editing III (style & coherence) (2%)
• o Mar. 12 -- Quiz 6: Graves & Graves Chapters 5 & 8 (2%)

  8%    Short discussion board (DB) postings on Blackboard

• o Jan. 23 -- DB Posting #1 - Writing in the workplace (4%)
• o Mar.19 - DB Posting #2 - Assessment of a graphic and a table (4%)

 

15%    Project proposal                                          Wed., Feb. 13   (individual or group)

20%    Writing in the workplace                               Wed., March 5

• § Option 1: Memo on wikis
• § Option 2: Writing in the workplace blog article
  

10%    PowerPoint presentation & notes                  Wed., April 9     (individual or group) 

 

35%    Final report with Letter of Transmittal            Wed., April 16 (individual or group)

                                                 

Note: all assignments (except quizzes) must be completed in order to pass this course.

Further information about course requirements and assignments is included below.

Notes & Advice on Course Work

• § Please download and follow the Weekly Syllabus of readings posted under SYLLABUS on BB
• § For detailed information on the assignments, including information on how to submit assignments,
  please see the Assignment Guidelines in the ASSIGNMENTS section on BB.
• § Please check out all the menu buttons and familiarize yourself with all the course materials posted
  on Blackboard. Course readings and other materials will be posted under the COURSE DOCS
  menu button.
• § Aim to manage your time effectively. Try to schedule at least five hours every week for reading and work on this course. Break your assignments down into manageable chunks and set a schedule for completing them. Your success in this online course will likely be a measure of your ability to be a well-organized and self-directed learner, a skill that you will bring with you into the workplace.
• § If you have questions, don't hesitate to e-mail the instructor. However, if you have a question of potential interest to other students, you may post it to the Q&A forum on Discussion Board 1.

Group Project Option

The proposal and final report may be done individually or in a group of up to three members. If you know someone in L 09 whom you'd like to work with, you may form a group. If you'd like to form a group but don't know any of your classmates, you may advertise for group members on discussion board 2 (or respond to an ad posted there).

Once you've formed a group, have one group member e-mail the professor, indicating (1) the names of all group members, (2) which marking section each group member is in, and (3) whether you'd like a group space in BB enabled for your group. (Group spaces include a private discussion board, a file exchange tool, and a group email feature.)

For the PowerPoint assignment, you may work in the same group or form a different group.

Note on group grades: All group members will receive the same grade on group assignments. It is up to each group to ensure that the group's workload is distributed fairly among members and that all group members have a chance to review the final draft of any group document before it is submitted. Note that if a group member's name appears on an assignment but that group member did not contribute to the document, he or she is guilty of plagiarism. Group assignments should include only the names of members who contributed to the document.

Due Dates, Late Policy, Return of Assignments, & Grade Appeals:

• § Assignments are due at 7:00 pm MST on the due date (but may be submitted early).
• § You have an automatic 48-hour grace period on all assignments, including the quizzes and the final report. Once the grace period has elapsed, late assignments may be docked one letter grade level (e.g., from B to B-) for each day the assignment is late (including Saturdays and Sundays). For example, an assignment due Wednesday but submitted the following Tuesday would have a four-level grade deduction for late submission.
• § Extensions will be granted only by the instructor and only with good reason. If you require an extension, please e-mail the instructor, explain your reason, and include the name of your marker.
• § Assignments will normally be returned within two weeks. Assignments submitted via the BB assignments portal will be returned the same way. Discussion board postings will be responded to via e-mail.
• § If you wish to appeal your marker's grade on an assignment, please e-mail the instructor explaining exactly why you think the grade should have been higher. (The fact that you put a lot of work into an assignment is not in itself a reasonable basis for appeal.) Note, however, that grades may be lowered as well as increased on appeal.

Research Ethics

For both the final project and the Writing in the Workplace Blog Article (if you choose that option), you will be undertaking research involving human subjects. Whenever you perform such research, whether it be conducting surveys, interviews, usability tests, or observations, you are responsible for following university research ethics guidelines. These guidelines, along with a template for a participant consent form and for information to include in anonymous surveys, will be posted under the ETHICS DOCS button in Blackboard.

 

Because your instructor (or marker) must review and approve of your research plans when you undertake research with human subjects, it is important that your research proposal (due Feb. 13) clearly set out exactly how you plan to comply with the research ethics guidelines.

 

For more information about your research ethics responsibilities, see the U of C Research Ethics "Information for Applicants," sections 3.0 to 9.0, inclusive: http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/research/html/ethics/info_undergrad.html

Grades:

Assignments will be assigned a letter grade, which represent the following percentage range equivalents:

 

A+ (96-100)- midpoint: 98%              A (92-95) - midpoint: 93.5%              A- (86-91) - midpoint: 88.5%

B+ (81-85) -- midpoint: 83%             B (77-80) - midpoint: 78.5%             B- (71-76) - midpoint: 73.5%

C+ (65-70) - midpoint: 67.5%           C (62-64) - midpoint: 63%                C- (59-61) - midpoint: 60%

D+ (55-58) -- midpoint 56.5%            D (50-54) - midpoint: 52%               F  (0 - 49) - midpoint:   0%

 

Except for F grades, the midpoints of the percentage ranges will be used for calculating final grades.

Plagiarism

Feel free to discuss your ideas with others and to have someone review your written work to point out weaknesses and typos. These practices are common in the workplace and do not constitute plagiarism as long as you do the corrections and the rewriting. All of the following, however, constitute plagiarism:

• Ÿ using wording, ideas, information, or graphics from published material or from the internet without acknowledging the source.
• Ÿ borrowing wording from published or online material without using quota­tion marks (or formatting long quoted passages according to documentation conventions)
• Ÿ passing off the work of others as your own OR submitting work that you have done previously or that you are now doing for another course) as if it were new work done for this course

In other words, using any source whatsoever without clearly documenting it is considered plagiarism.

 

Note that you must document not only direct quotations but also paraphrases and ideas where they appear in your text. A reference list at the end is insufficient by itself. Readers must be able to tell exactly where your words and ideas end and other people's words and ideas begin. These requirements apply to assignments submitted in non-traditional formats such as Web pages or visual media, and material taken from such formats. Information about documentation styles is included in your textbook and is also available at http://www.ucalgary.ca/~efwr  If you need further guidance about whether or how to document a source, please contact your instructor.

 

Plagiarism is a serious offence: it can result in failure on an assignment, failure of the course, or even suspension or expulsion from university.  (See the University of Calgary Calendar.)