ENGL& 235 – Technical Writing |
Instructor:
Sydney C. Dietrich |
Winter Quarter 2013 |
Office:
R230 O |
Section OAS | Item # 1154 |
Phone/Voicemail:
425-564-2109 |
Office
Hours: T/Th 10:00-11:00 & W 12:00-2:00 |
Textbook: Technical Communication by
Mike Markel (10th Edition, 2012)
Course
Requirements:
1. Assigned
textbook reading (often 2 or more chapters a week)
2. Meeting
weekly with other students on the Discussion Board
3. Peer Review of classmates' rough drafts
4. Meeting with your instructor in online or in-person conferences
5. A
Comparative Feasibility Research Study [requiring technical data collection, analysis, and conclusions]
6. Five
(5) written technical reports from your research project:
Weekly Discussions: These will give
you the chance to discuss and share the technical communication (TC)
principles you are learning with your classmates; you cannot be a fully
involved student in the discussions unless you have finished the assigned
reading in the textbook and understand the concepts and strategies covered and
their practical applications.
Peer Review of
Classmates' Rough Drafts: Since the online environment keeps
you from meeting face-to-face with the other students in your class, you will
be able to share your writing-in-progress with each other by posting and
responding to drafts posted online. Each assignment will include a rubric for
both writing and revising that you will use to evaluate each other's drafts.
Conferences
with Your Instructor: These are essential in an online
class to keep you "connected" to the class and the course work in
real time. I will be meeting with you to help with your selection of a research
topic for your project and to answer any questions you might have about the
work you will be doing in class. You may always request a conference with me
through Canvas if issues arise.
Research
Projects:
Your five reports are generated from a feasibility study that each of
you will design, research, develop, and report on during the course. You will
be given complete instructions and topic choices for your project early in the
quarter. You will be asked to define a specific topic, purpose, and reader for
your project, usually by the fourth week of class.
Grading:
All assignments must be completed
in order to pass the course. Your course grade
will be calculated in the following
way:
Weekly
Discussions (10) 15%
Peer
Review of rough drafts 5%
Report 1: Topic Choice Form 10%
Report 2: Memo & Review of
Sources 10%
Report 3: Project Proposal 15%
Report 4: Project Data Report 20%
Report 5: Final Project
Report 25%
100%
Grades
on assignments are calculated using a 100-point scale:
A+ |
A |
A- |
B+ |
B |
B- |
C+ |
C |
C- |
D+ |
D |
D- |
F |
100- 99 |
98-93 |
92-90 |
89-87 |
86-83 |
82-80 |
79-77 |
76-73 |
72-70 |
69-67 |
66-63 |
62-60 |
0-59 |
Due Dates:
All
assignments are due on the dates listed in the course schedule:
Assignments should reach me by midnight on the due date.
All
assignments will be posted to the Canvas course site for grading.
Please
attach the four technical reports as Word documents so that I may
use the Comment function in
Word
to insert my comments or questions in your report. If you experience problems
attaching your
assignments to the Canvas site, you may send them as attachments to the course
email or to my campus email address, sydney.dietrich@bellevuecollege.edu
.
Exceptions:
You may take an "extra day" to submit Reports 2-5 by arranging it
with me on or before the due dates.
Late
reports should be turned in no more than one day after the
original due date, and must arrive in electronic form by midnight.
Any report turned in more than one day late will be marked down for
lateness.
Assignments turned in late
because of illness should be cleared with me before submission.
Revisions:
You
may revise Report 3, the Project Proposal, for a better
grade. The revised grade will be the original grade averaged with
the revision grade. Revisions should show substantial work and improvement
to earn a higher grade.
Saving
and Sending Your Work:
Be sure to duplicate your 235 work from your hard
drive to some other medium as backup. Keep your rough drafts until your report
is returned to you after grading. All graded reports should be saved until the
end of the quarter as proof of work completed. This will save you from having
to rewrite a report that did not attach to the course site or to an email you
send me.
Your assignment submissions are recorded on the
course site when post them to Canvas, but you are responsible for verifying
that I have received any assignments that you send through email.
If you do not receive a confirmation
from me, please check with me to verify that I have received it.
Plagiarism
Please Note: Re-using reports from former
students in my classes is considered plagiarism of the worst kind. Plagiarized
assignments will receive a failing grade and the plagiarism will be reported to
the Associate Dean of Student Services. I submit your assignments to
Turnitin.com, an originality checking service. I routinely submit reports to
Turnitin.com for authenticity review.
Submission of plagiarized research
reports as your own work can result in failure of the class.
The ethical considerations of cheating in technical writing
are much greater than in other kinds of writing. Since you will use technical
writing in the workplace, it is mandatory that you communicate all technical
information accurately, completely, and honestly. Most
professional organizations, including the Society for Technical Communication,
have clearly defined codes of ethical behavior (see Chap. 2 and the IEEE Code
of Ethics on p. 34, Technical Communication).
The
BC Student Code is also very clear about the seriousness of cheating and the
actions that faculty members are required to take in cases of plagiarizing:
The BC Student Code prohibits cheating, stealing,
plagiarizing, knowingly furnishing false information to the college, or
submitting to a faculty member any work product that the student fraudulently
represents as his or her own work for the purpose of fulfilling or partially
fulfilling any assignment or task required as part of a program of instruction.
All forms of cheating, stealing, and plagiarizing will be
reported to the Dean of Instruction.
Please
read the entire section on “Academic Honesty” in Student Procedures
and Expectations on the Arts & Humanities Division website.
Support
Resources for English 235
Canvas Instructure Student Support
The Student Guide to using the BC Canvas online course
environment is found at the following link:
http://depts.bellevuecollege.edu/ir/students/studentguide/class-sites/
The Writing Lab
The Bellevue College Writing Lab gives students a free place
to go for revision of any writing project, including class assignments,
college applications, resumes, and personal projects. During 25-minute
sessions, tutors in the Writing Lab help students individually by identifying
weaknesses in a student’s writing and explaining how to overcome them. However,
students meet with a tutor on duty; we will not make appointments for
students to work with specific tutors. Also, students may only have one
tutoring session per day. Students who want to work on their own may take
any of the Writing Lab’s free reference handouts or may use English handbooks
in the Writing Lab.
http://bellevuecollege.edu/writinglab/LAB.htm l
Disability Resource Center (DRC)
The Disability Resource Center serves students with a wide
array of learning challenges and disabilities. If you are a student who has a disability
or learning challenge for which you have documentation or have seen someone for
treatment and if you feel you may need accommodations in order to be successful
in college, please contact us as soon as possible.
If you are a person who requires assistance in case of an
emergency situation, such as a fire, earthquake, etc,
please meet with your individual instructors to develop a safety plan within
the first week of the quarter.
The DRC office is located in B 132 or you can call our
reception desk at 425.564.2498. Deaf students can reach us by video phone at
425-440-2025 or by TTY at 425-564-4110. Please visit our website for
application information into our program and other helpful links at www.bellevuecollege.edu/drc
Public Safety
The Bellevue College (BC) Public Safety Department’s well
trained and courteous non-commissioned staff provides personal safety,
security, crime prevention, preliminary investigations, and other services to
the campus community, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Their phone number is 425.564.2400. The Public Safety website
is your one-stop resource for campus emergency preparedness information, campus
closure announcements and critical information in the event of an
emergency. Public Safety is located
in K100 and on the web at: http://bellevuecollege.edu/publicsafety/