Welcome to English 384
Course Description & Prerequisite
Study of writing in such electronic media as weblogs, websites and content management systems. (Prerequisite: English 125)
Learning Objectives
- Students will develop interface literacy. Through exposure to a variety Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) common in electronic media software, students will come to identify core interface elements and be able to engage new GUIs. In developing their own websites, students will make appropriate interface and navigation decisions.
- Students will develop an understanding of both the blog genre and the collaborative writing space of the wiki. By reading select texts on blog writing style and on blog types, creating and managing their own blog, and by participating in a collaborative course blog, students will acquire familiarity with the important twenty-first century writing genre known as the weblog or blog. Through concrete engagement with a wiki, students will explore the intriguing collaborative challenges and opportunities of this important Web 2.0 writing tool.
- Students will understand the importance of web standards in electronic media composition. Course texts will expose students to key issues in web standards. Beginning with W3C compliant XHTML templates and Cascading Stylesheets (CSS), students will test their own websites in W3C standards tools, in federal accessibility compliance engines, in multiple browsers, and across multiple platforms.
- Students will develop a basic working knowledge of visual and web design principles. Through blog design choices, an individual website project, and a collaborative course website project, students will demonstrate their ability to apply basic visual and web design principles in their electronic media compositions. Course texts and classroom activities provide both the concepts and a guide to their application in electronic writing environments.
This is a Writing Intensive Course
Students are required to complete at least 3 Writing Intensive courses for graduation, two at the lower-level (100 or 200) and one at the upper-level (300 or 400) in the major study design. Students in this course will use the writing process, including informal writing, drafts and revisions of formal writing, in-class writing and written homework to explore course concepts and develop their facility with writing in electronic media.
What to Buy
- In the Beginning was the Command Line, by Neal Stephenson (Required)
- Head First HTML, by Elizabeth Freeman & Eric Freeman (Required)
- Blogs, Wikis, MySpace, and More, by Terry Burrows (Recommended)
- CSS: The Missing Manual, by David Sawyer McFarland (Recommended)
- Additional readings are online or on reserve
- USB/Flash Drive or Portable Hard Drive (to keep your files)
Don't like the look? Restyle!
Dr. Reid | Produce | Wikiwiki | Escher
| Cloisonne | The
Blues | Negative | Skinless