Instructor: Lori Ostergaard |
CRN: 46942 |
Any student needing to arrange a reasonable accommodation for a documented disability should contact Disability Support Services in North Foundation Hall, by calling (248) 370-3266 or TTY: (248) 370-3268; faxing (248) 370-4989; or emailing dss@oakland.edu.
An examination of the rhetoric and ethics of internet technology and culture. Introduces theories of digital culture and its effects on both online and actual identities and communities, especially in relation to ethnicity, gender, class, physical ability, and sexual orientation. Includes individual and collaborative analysis and construction of web projects. Identical with COM 330. Satisfies the university's general education requirement for a writing-intensive course in general education or the major, not both. Satisfies the university general education requirement in U.S. diversity. Prerequisite: completion of the university writing foundation requirement (WRT 150 & WRT 160).
This course has been designated "partially online," which means that a percentage of your course work will be completed in online learning activities. From time-to-time, you will be required to complete activities in Moodle, in Second Life, in wikis, and elsewhere online. Many of these activities will take the place of classtime: most weeks we'll meet online on Tuesdays and in the Wilson 400 lab on Thursdays.
While we won't use the Wilson 400 lab most Tuesdays (because we'll be meeting online), I will arrange to do my own work in the lab on some Tuesdays this semester. During those open lab hours when I am there, you may come in to work on your Rhetoric 330 projects, meet with the peers you are collaborating with in the class, complete your online assignments, play around with the software we're using in class, complete other work not related to our class, or talk with me about your work/grades/etc. I will also arrange for a few open lab hours on the last two Sundays of the semeter.
Readings will be provided.
Online Work (20%): Online assignments include activities and assignments completed in Moodle or the class ning and any other online work other than your individual reading blogs (see below).
Individual Reading Blog (20%): Early in the semester I will invite you to join our class ning. We will use this site as a supplement to the work we complete in Moodle. So you may complete discussions in the ning or post videos, pictures, or podcasts there. You will also keep your own blog in the ning. In this blog you will record your informed and engaged response to at least 5 of the readings we do this semester. I may ask you to respond to a classmate's reading blog in class to get us warmed up for our discussion.
In-Class Work (20%): This includes your active participation in class activities and your informed engagement with course material as well as any work you complete in the classroom (short writing, design activities, quizzes, etc).
Researched Analysis "Project 1" (10%): You will research and critically analyze your own engagement with digital culture. While this analysis will include your personal experiences with various forms of digital culture (software, hardware, networking site, interactive mediums, etc), you will conduct primary and secondary research to support the personal claims you make about those forms of digital culture. Think of this as a kind of digital autobiography.
Researched Analytical Performance "Project 2" (15%): You will work with a small group of peers to develop a critical analysis of some emerging form of digital culture (software, hardware, networking site, interactive medium, etc). Your group will gather ONLY primary research (interviews, surveys, user-testing, observations, etc) to inform your analysis, and you will present your analysis in some form of new medium (video, digital story, podcast, website, wiki, interactive game, hyper text...Note: NO POWERPOINT ALLOWED!). I will set aside one or two classes for you to gather primary research from your classmates and/or meet with your group to discuss and develop the project.
Digital Ethnography "Project 3" (15%): For this project you will explore some aspect of the digital cultures available online. You may examine a particular digital place, a digital activity, a digital community, or a digital ritual. You may model your own ethnography off of those available here, or you may chose your own medium for exploring some aspect of our (or others') digital cultures. The aspect you choose must be readily identifyable and researchable. You will gather both primary data (observations, interviews, surveys, etc) and secondary data (articles, reports, academic works). This project is due the last week of class. You will present this work to your peers and me & then you will have no other work to submit for this class, and no exams to take.
Online Work = 20%
Individual Reading Blog= 20%
In-Class Work= 20%
Individual Researched Analysis "Project 1"= 10%
Researched Analytical Performance "Project 2"= 15%
Digital Ethnography "Project 3"= 15%
This is a partially-online class, so we will meet online on Tuesdays and in the classroom on Thursdays. Much of our time together will involve interacting with the online sites we're examining, class discussion about the issues we're researching, and developing projects.
Class Participation: is both crucial and considered a given. If you are in class, I expect you to be actively engaged in class discussions, activities, peer reviews, and group and individual work. While this class is focusing on digital cultures, unless it is a part of a class activity or project, I don't want to see facebook, myspace, ebay, sportspages, youtube, or any other intenet sites open on your computer.
Attendance: My standard policy is "be here, end of story." But I realize that perfect attendance is not always possible, so we will follow the Rhetoric program’s attendance policy: after two absences (the equivalent of one week for this class), for each additional absence, 4% will be deducted from your final grade. Six absences (the equivalent of three weeks for this class) will result in your failure of the course. You will be counted absent for this course if you arrive more than 30 minutes late for class. If you arrive 15-20 minutes late for 3 classes, I will count you absent for one full class period.
You will also be counted absent if you do not complete any online assignment that "stands in" for a class before the deadline for that assignment expires. There are neither excused nor unexcused absences in this class: the first three are just there for the taking, and any over three will count against your final grade. Please make every effort to notify me in advance of any absence. You will be responsible for finding out what assignments, projects, and work you missed and getting yourself caught up on what is going on in class. Please note that you may not make up any in-class assignments (those begun and completed in a single class period) that you missed.
Social Practices: In addition to class participation and attendance, I expect you to behave in a professional manner at all times. I expect you to be respectful, gracious, generous, and kind to your classmates and to me. I expect you to come to class prepared for whatever work we are doing. I expect you to pay attention to your classmates and me when we are talking, and I hope that you will all be be enthusiastic (or at least willing to fake it) about the work we are doing together.
Response Policy: I will provide both formal responses (written response to drafts you are required to submit to me) and informal responses (oral, email, or written responses to drafts you'd just like another opinion on) to your work throughout the semester. I will respond to the majority of your Moodle responses at the beginning of the semester, and then you will be responsible for responding to one another's responses at the end of the semester.
Revision Policy: We live in a digital age & this is a digital class...as a result, most of the work you complete this semester may be substantially revised for a better grade. If you wish to revise your analysis project or performance, you will have two weeks to complete this revision. If you wish to revise your reading response, you will have one week to make this revision to the wiki. Talk to me if there is any other work you wish to revise throughout the semester.
Late Work: I reserve the right not to respond to or return late work until after I have caught up on my other work. I also reserve the right not to respond to late work at all. And I reserve the right to grade you a letter grade lower for each class period an assignment is late. Work submitted late may not be revised for a better grade.
The Evil Computer Ate My Homework Excuses: are rarely acceptable these days (their only real chance of working is in the event of a whole system--like the entire OU network--failure & even then you're skating on very thin ice). We're all expected to deal with technology & deal with it responsibly everyday of our adult lives, so err on the side of obsessive when it comes to saving the documents you're working on: save them to your OU homespace (I'll show you how a few weeks into the semester), email them to yourself, save them to disc and jump drives, save them to your MP-3 player, save them to your desktop at home, send copies to family members' email account just for kicks; in sum, save each and every new draft you write in some form or another. And just to be safe, you shouldn't ever assume that a document you saved to a computer in the 400 lab (or anywhere on campus) will be there when you return to it days later. I'm going to show you a couple of different ways to save your work, but don't be afraid to use every available means to make absolute certain that all of the work you write in college is available to you when you need it. And in a class examining Digital Cultures...
Academic Honesty/Cheating: Please consult the university's policies for these.
These course materials
are licensed by Lori Ostergaard under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.