Course Disclosure: ENG 260 Business And Professional Writing: Fall 2009

Sections    02 CRN 10261 Tuesday / Thursday 12:45 - 2:10 PM room ADOWN 222
                03 CRN 10263 Tuesday / Thursday 2:20 - 3:35 PM room ADOWN 222
                04 CRN 10424 Monday / Wednesday / Friday 2:50 - 3:50 room ADOWN 222

Office 85 Humboldt, second floor at the end of the hall
Hours before, between and after classes - Monday, Wednesday 11:30 - 12:30, 2 - 3, 5:30 - 6 Tuesday Thursday 3:45 - 4:30
email anytime at DouglasAnderson13 at gmail.com

Catalog Description of Course

This course explores the different types of business and professional writing, helping students to recognize the variety of career options for and responsibilities of professional and business writers and the most important resources in the field. Students review and learn how most effectively to implement the basic grammar and usage rules they have studied in other courses, as well as how to incorporate graphs, pictures, and other visual information effectively into their written texts. Students also investigate the necessary relationship between audience and style, and the ethical implications of business and professional forms of communication, while learning how to apply persuasive writing strategies to different professional contexts. Students produce a portfolio in both print and web-based media that will include a resume, letters, memoranda, brochures, instructions, and short reports.

Student Objectives

After completing this course, you will be better able to control the content, structure, language, and mechanics of the research, writing, and presenting that professionals do on computer networks. You will be able to:

Identify career opportunities for professional writers

Identify and employ the basic genres of professional and business writing with an understanding of the major similarities and differences among them

Access and use the research tools in various fields of professional and business writing

Solve problems in specific writing situations using rhetorical, critical thinking, and problem solving strategies

Analyze audience, purpose, and style to produce professional-quality documents

Define and apply general theories of rhetoric and communication in specific organizational settings

Use power point and web-based media to produce and print web-based publications and confident oral presentations

Work effectively and professionally to delegate responsibility and meet deadlines for production of professional-quality documents

Apply multiple and diverse perspectives, and the concerns of different kinds of audiences, to produce professional writing assignments

Method of Evaluating Students

I try to engage each of you in an ongoing discussion of your learning. If you aren't getting enough feedback from me, ask for more. As you'll see, I'm big on formative feedback and Socratic questioning.

I expect you to participate in our physical classrooms and our digital classroom. At a minimum, you should:

come to class

complete all the deliverables on time

follow all the links on the syllabus

You will have a dozen or so assignments. Some won't be graded, but on the table below, you'll see the ones that will count toward your final course grade.

Note: I'm assuming that you will do all of the project's deliverables as specified on the case page. If you don't do them all, you can't pass the course. If you don't do them on time (gateways), your grade will be lower than it would otherwise.

Course Grade

Your course grade will be based on the following tasks. At the end of the course, you will make an oral presentation of your portfolio.

Written reports. You will write and re-package a professional report's contents in multiple formats: text, word processed, pdf, web, audio, slides, and video.

Style sheets. You will prepare a style sheet for the text and word processed reports and, based on them, a style sheet for the web report, which is the one that will count.

Graphics. While the reports will contain many images, tables, and charts, you will complete various graphics tasks as separate assignments: image, table, chart, animation, screenshot.

Oral reports. You will make four presentations, one about a web widget, another about a Web 2.0 / social media site, and a third about a company that makes / markets widgets and social media. The final presentation will be about your portfolio. In addition, you will go through two gateways to help assure the timely completion of your portfolio.

Attendance. While attending class is always a good idea, the final classes after Thanksgiving when you will be making your final oral reports are especially important. You will get at best a B+ in this course if you miss any of those final classes.


graded assignments
12 versions of your resume and your report in common business reporting formats	35
1 style sheet	5
5 graphics assignments	10
2 gateways	0
4 oral reports	20
timely portfolio	10
attendance	10
attendance final two weeks of classes	10
self-assessment	0

Report grades

It comes down to this:

Does your work exhibit a command of business communications and its conventions, especially digital?

If I were your boss, I would want to see documents that are attractive and accessible. Having your work available when the boss needs it affects the quality component of the boss's assessment. The quality of your writing can be important at raise and promotion time.

Course Attendance Policy

You should come to class. I'll do my part to make it worth your while. I expect you to do your part to get something out of it.

In my experience, students who miss class also have other problems. I encourage you to keep me notified, especially via email, about your absences. I reserve the right to lower your final course grade for absences in excess of four, whether excused or not.

Attendance at the final classes when you and your classmates are making oral reports is especially important.

If you know ahead of time that you are going to miss more than four classes, especially because of sports team commitments, let me know ASAP.

These reports are all going to be publicly examined in class and some will be available online, so I expect the exposure and your personal pride will motivate you as much as any threat of low grades. I also recognize that there are multiple "correct" ways to complete these assignments.

These are ambiguous and subjective words: attractive and accessible. Such holistic characterizations come from observations colored by assumptions and prejudices. However, there are some generally agreed upon professional standards. We will discuss them in class in great detail.

If the assignment is complete and on time, it will get an A-. I will reserve the very occasional A for an assignment completed with extraordinary flair and enthusiasm. If you haven't done part of the assignment or it is late, you will get proportionally less than an A-.

Textbooks

This course is built around your projects. All the materials we need are available online, much of it on this course web. You will access it by following the links and doing your own searches.

The gateways will also move you along. If you have not completed the assignments due at the three gateways, you and I will have a discussion about your progress, and I will probably in any case submit an official academic warning.

Course grades

The numerical values above give you a sense of what I consider the rough proportioning of your energy during this course. Your personal experience will differ.

If you are sufficiently engaged, you come to all the classes, and you do all the assignments on time, you will get an A- for the course. If you do all that with flair and enthusiasm, you may get an A, although that's rare. If you are sufficiently engaged but you miss several classes and don't do one or more assignments on time or at all, you will get a B or lower. If you aren't sufficiently engaged, even if you do everything else, you can't get an A or probably even a B.

The Course | The Syllabus | The Case | The Reports

Special Requirements

In order to prosper in business, you must be able to do many things other than write. These five also apply to meeting the course objectives listed above.

manage digital information

It's called a PC or Personal Computer partly because you can personalize it. How you manage your files on the computer is probably as personal and inscrutable to others as how you manage them in your physical office. During this course you will generate hundreds of files that you need to manage on two USB drives.

explore and discover

There's so much information and computer programs are so bloated with features. You have to be able to learn on your own and just keep clicking.

tolerate ambiguity

You'll never have only and exactly the information you need. You'll never have enough time. You'll rarely find that one path to the future is clearly correct and all the others are wrong. You will have wicked problems and compromises that are guaranteed not to please everyone.

think big

Transcend your and your organization's concrete situation into an intelligent awareness of broader, often abstract, contexts. A good test would be the ease with which you can draw valid inferences from articles in the news. For example, do you understand why the Department of Justice is so upset with Microsoft for bundling the Internet Explorer browser? Do you understand how the DOJ's pursuit of Microsoft affects your ability to send email to your boss? Your big thinking helps me distinguish an A project from an A- or B project. In organizations, it helps the boss distinguish who gets promoted.

assess yourself

Your ongoing evaluation of your progress as a business communicator is the most useful tool for your improvement.

Did I emphasize that enough? Let me try again. Careful and effective writers are, at times, very self-conscious. I highly recommend that starting now you write about your work in some form of journal or file. After you have done everything else for the course, answer three questions:

You must email this self-assessment to me. It's your way of telling me that you have finished the course. When I have the self-assessment, I will turn in your course grade based on everything you did before that date.

Any student with a disability who believes he/she needs accommodation(s) in order to complete this course should contact the Office of Disability Services as soon as possible. The staff in the Office of Disability Services will determine what accommodations are appropriate and reasonable under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Office of Disability Services is located in the Main Building, Room M031, and can be reached by phone at (716) 880-2391.

Medaille's faculty and administration expect all students to complete their academic assignments with honesty and integrity. Students who engage in any form of academic dishonesty (e.g., plagiarism, cheating on a test, forging a signature or an entire college document) will be dealt with severely, with penalties ranging from an F on a given assignment to failing a course or even academic suspension. Students should consult the Medaille College Policy Manual, Volume VI, Paragraph 6.2.2.5, for full details on the college's policy and procedures for handling formal charges of academic dishonesty.

The Course

ENG 260 Business And Professional Writing

Medaille College - Fall 2009

Course Disclosure Statement