University of Calgary

Faculty of Communication and Culture

COMS 363: Professional and Technical Communication
Winter 2008 (Lec. 10)

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

Please check the BB site at least twice a week for course materials, readings, & announcements.

There will be no virtual class meetings or lectures.

Instructor:  Dr. Doug Brent                                    ( 220-5458                   Social Sciences 110

E-mail:  mailto:dabrent@ucalgary.ca (Please put COMS 363 in your subject line or your message may be missed.)

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. If you have questions or concerns, please e-mail the instructor (dabrent@ucalgary.ca ). E-mail your marker only when necessary.

T14: Bob Scott

T15: Calvin Seaman

T16: Yuri Yerastov

T17: Andrea Hanslip

Course description and objectives:

An introduction to professional and technical communication. Note that this section of the course will be offered entirely online.

Every workplace calls for different conventions of writing and different generic forms.  This course is not intended to provide a cookbook of all the different recipes you might need.  Rather, it will help you develop general concepts and tools to help you make sense of workplace writing situations as they arise.

This 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.  However, a group project is optional, not mandatory

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.

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 (FAQs). 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 online 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.

 

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 and Graves Chapter 1 (2%)
• o Jan. 23 -- Quiz 2 - Editing (2%)
• o Jan. 30 -- Quiz 3 - Editing (2%)
• o Feb. 6 - Quiz 4 - APA format (2%)
• o Feb. 13 - Quiz 5 - style & coherence (2%)
• o March 12 -- Quiz 6 - Graves and Graves Chapter 5 and Chapter 8 (2%)

  8%    Short (two-paragraph) discussion board (DB) postings on Blackboard

• o Jan. 23 -- DB Posting #1 - Writing in the workplace (4%)
• o March 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)

                                

Notes:

• § Please download and follow the Weekly Syllabus of readings posted on the Blackboard site.
• § For detailed information on the assignments, including information on how to submit assignments,
  please see the Assignment Guidelines in the Assignments section in Blackboard.
• § Note that all assignments (except quizzes) must be completed in order to pass this course.

 

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 your marking section 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, which I will set up for that purpose. (Note that if you'd like to form a group with a student in another marking section of this course, you must first have the instructor's permission.).

If you form a group and would like your group space enabled on Blackboard, please email the instructor with the names of all your group members (and indicate what marking section you are in.) Group spaces include a private discussion board, a file exchange tool, and a group email feature.

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. Once the grace period has elapsed, late assignments will be docked one letter grade level (e.g., from B to B-) for each day the assignment is late (including weekend days). 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.
• § Assignments will normally be returned within two weeks.
• § If you wish to appeal your marker's grade on an assignment, please write the instructor an email explaining exactly why you think the grade should have been higher. Note, however, that grades may be lowered as well as increased on appeal.

Grades:

Work in this course will be assigned a letter grade, which represent the following percentage range equivalents:

 

A+ (96-100); A (92-95); A- (86-91); B+ (81-85); B (77-80); B- (71-76);
C+ (65-70); C (62-64); C- (59-61); D+ (55-58); D (50-54); F (0-49)

 

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 passing off the work of others as your own
• Ÿ 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
• Ÿ borrowing wording from published or online material without using quota­tion marks (or formatting long quoted passages according to documentation conventions)
• Ÿ using wording, ideas, information, or graphics from published material or from the internet without acknowledging the source.

 

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

 

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.

Research Ethics

Whenever you perform research with human participants (i.e. surveys, interviews, observation) as part of your university studies, you are responsible for following university research ethics guidelines.  Your instructor must review and approve of your research plans and supervise your research.  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

Ethics forms and information specific to COMS 363 will be posted on the course Blackboard site.

Advice on course work

• § 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, post it to Discussion Board 1, which will be set up as a Q&A forum for the section.