Grades & Assignments

You must complete all major assignments to pass this course. Regardless of other graded work, failure to turn in all assignments on time will result in a failing grade. If you do not submit all materials for each project, you will not pass the class. I am particularly twitchy about work you do that involves your fellow students.

All late work will will receive 69% unless arrangements are made well (a week or more) in advance.

Late “submission” or “feedback” assignments will not be accepted.

Our class will be run on an intensive write, review, revision, resubmit cycle. Drafts you submit are just as important to your reviewers learning as they are to you. As such, it really is quite impossible to submit a late “writing” or “review” assignments because it disrupts your peer reviewers workflows. As such, I can not accept “writing” or “review” assignments submitted late.

You should submit your work on time. Late work will only be accepted if you consult with me prior to the class period in which the work is due. Work is considered to be late after 9:00 pm on the due date.

Contract Grading

In this class we will be using “contract grading.” That kind of grading means that means you choose your grade according to the level of effort you want to put into it and determined ahead of time. For each assignment you’ll be given a list of quantitative requirements that you must meet to reach a specific letter grade. If you do particularly well in the letter category you choose, I’ll add on a plus (or, conversely, a minus, if the work meets requirements but only barely).In this particular class, that means that you choose your letter grade for the class (A, B, C) while ranges within each grade range depend on how successfully you met criteria of the assignment. For example, a work “A” is ambitious and risky work that has been successful while “A-” work is ambitious and risky work that wasn’t successful or was produced with evidence of minimal effort.

GPA Percentage

98-100  A+ 88-89  B+ 78-79  C+ 68-69  D+
93-97   A 83-87   B 73-77   C 63-67   D
90-92   A- 80-82   B- 70-72   C- 60-62   D-

Assignments

Note that these are just brief overviews—full‐length assignments and examples will be provided in class. All written assignments, with the exception of peer feedback, can be revised and resubmitted with revision cover letter that clearly outlines changes between drafts as well as strategic choices in drafting process within two weeks for a new grade.

Assignments:

Personal Digital Ecology Research (200 points)

Digital writing acts on you. In this assignment, you will research your own current digital writing practices and identities, and reflect on when and where you typically interact with digital media. We will refer to this as your personal digital media ecology. After conducting research, you’ll create an infographic to represent your findings & draw on what you learned to create a personal/professional blog site of your choice. Your blog site will become your public digital writing outlet for the remainder of the semester, and you will share your infographic there as your first required posting.

Writing Markup Labs (100 points total)

You’ll get exposed to basic HTML and CSS mark up languages here along with the basic tenets of design and usability. For some this will be completely new and for others a review. Our focus will be in understanding these technical machine mark up languages through the lens of rhetorical thinking so we can design front and back end elements the way we want.

Designing Web Communications Portfolio (200 points)

All of the projects for the term will need to be collected and presented in an electronic portfolio that will actually be either a design document for a site, a wordpress.com site used as a continent management site, or a website. This is something we’ll talk about in great detail throughout the term.

You will design your own rhetorically informed style guide for your content and your webpage. This will help guide you in making decisions on how to frame and design your content according to your rhetorical goals.

Provide Helpful Feedback (200 points)

As part of your participation, you will share your writing and offer feedback to others that helps them improve their own thinking and their drafts. We’ll spend a good deal of time talking about how to improve in this area, as it is a key leadership skill needed to advance in any knowledge worker career paths.

Please check out more about the importance of feedback and improvement and rethinking and revising writing.