Autumn Quarter 2015 WRD Courses Eligible for Credit in The WRD Major and the Professional Writing Minor*

Transcription

1 Autumn Quarter 2015 WRD Courses Eligible for Credit in The WRD Major and the Professional Writing Minor* WRD 201, Digital Writing (new course!) Major Elective; New Minor Requirement* Professor Lisa Dush LPC, TTH 2:40-4:10 Writing today requires more than just skill with written words: successful digital-age writers understand how to strategically compose with a variety of modes and media, including still images, moving images, social content, sound, and written text. This course aims to increase your flexibility and confidence with this expanded range of modes and media. You will learn relevant design and rhetorical theories, get instruction and hands-on practice with new digital production and distribution tools, and tackle projects that develop your capacity to create persuasive digital texts for professional and civic purposes. *This course is a requirement for all Professional Writing minors who declared the program after the end of Summer Quarter, Ongoing minors who have not yet taken WRD 301 may substitute WRD 201 for 301 without requesting to do so; alert Professor Vandenberg and he will adjust your DPR accordingly. WRD 204, Technical Writing LPC, MW 9:40-11:10, Staff Online, Dr. Christine Skolnik Online, Staff When we think of writing in school or academic settings, we often imagine a standard paper an argument about a historical event, or an analysis of a novel. But what do we imagine when we think of writing in workplaces? Maybe we think that people don t write that much in workplace settings. However, in a recent annual survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the ability to write and edit reports was considered important to very important by employers. Such survey data only confirms an ongoing trend: your ability as a competent workplace writer is deeply valued by all types of companies, and could be a crucial element of your career. In WRD204, students practice the kinds of writing that will be expected in technical professions. The course will focus on understanding audience needs and crafting written documents that meet the needs of clients, coworkers, managers, and other stakeholders in technical workplaces. Students will learn by practicing how to write effective instructions, tutorials, specifications, proposals, and technical reports. The course will also focus on the design of professional documents, and how that differs from writing most students do in academic settings. By taking the course, students will develop the kinds of facility in workplace writing that employers in technical professions consistently say they are seeking when they recruit college graduates. WRD Undergraduate Course List, Autumn Quarter

2 WRD 206, Professional Writing Major Elective; PW Minor Requirement Professor Alan Ackmann LPC, TTH 11:20-12:50 In this course, students learn fundamentals of professional writing, with a special focus on distinguishing academic writing from workplace writing. The course provides a solid foundation that students can build on as they develop specializations in their professional fields. Through a series of short assignments, students explore the structure and format of typical professional writing documents, examine a variety of workplace writing situations, and begin developing a clear and concise style appropriate for professional settings. Students analyze and write a number of workplace genres, such as memos, s, letters, resumes, short reports, web documents, and professional presentations. WRD 284, Sports Writing in America: Myths, Memories, Heroes, Villains WRD Major Elective; PW Minor Requirement; Liberal Studies AL Domain credit (non-majors only) Justin Staley, MFA LPC, TTH 9:40-11:10 The influence of sports as an American institution is far-reaching and powerful, with the writing on these sports helping establish and cement this influence. In this course, we will reflect on the ways that writers have both reported on and impacted sports through the lenses of cultural, social, and economic events and issues throughout America s history. You will read, analyze, and discuss multiple genres of writing including reporting, memoir/nonfiction, and argument, in the form of classic sports columns, essays, audio and videos clips, and profiles of the heroes and villains of the sporting world. From boxing to baseball, football to soccer, and beyond, you will develop greater insight into how writers craft compelling narratives and posit effective arguments. By composing your own writing in these genres on the sports of your choice, you will enter into the discourse of sports writing, exploring the role of sports as part of your own life, as well as part of the wider cultural institution in the US. WRD 290, Writer s Tools Workshop: The Language of How: Creating Digital Guides for Learning Sarah Brown LPC, T 4:20-5:50 (two credit hours; course meets once per week) This section of WRD 290 will help you craft skills in elucidation (exposition / description / explanation). In this course, we ll examine some popular and effective ways that people learn, such as Khan Academy and TEDTalks. Then, we ll analyze several of the venues available for learning something new from online resources: how-to videos, video game walkthroughs, interactive technical documentation, and screencapture/screenshare. Students will choose an area of interest and will create a how-to package that uses some or all of these formats to provide guidance to users or audience members. Students can expect to leave the class with a portfolio of samples of within this genre. NOTE: At least one section of WRD 290 will be offered almost every quarter on a different topic. WRD 290 can be repeated multiple times for credit as long as the topic differs. We anticipate that most students will take two sections of 290, equaling four credit hours, all of which will count for elective credit in the WRD major and Pro Writing minor. This course will make a fine complement to many other WRD courses. WRD Undergraduate Course List, Autumn Quarter

3 WRD 300, Composition and Style Jan Hickey LPC, MW 1:00-2:30 WRD 300 provides advanced instruction in invention, arrangement, and style. You will leave this class with a better sense of yourself as a writer and with your own goals and plans for maintaining and improving your prose style. WRD 301, Writing in Workplace Contexts Major Core Requirement; PW Minor Requirement Professor Sarah Read LPC, MW 2:40-4:10 Students study writing in professional contexts in order to form a broader understanding of the many purposes and forms of writing across a wide variety of workplaces. Students will investigate writing at a workplace of their choice and write a formal document reporting on their findings. Class topics include writing and the knowledge economy, contemporary workplace writing practices, the ethics of workplace writing, research methods for doing site research and discussion of how the methods of writing researchers are applicable to the daily practices of workplace writers. WRD 306, Rhetorical Traditions Major Core Requirement; PW Minor Elective Professor Jason Kalin LPC, MW 1:00-2:30 We will study the history and principles of rhetoric to understand how rhetorical relations shape our lives. In short, this course discusses the history of rhetoric and its contemporary applications. Aristotle describes rhetoric as the faculty of observing in any particular case the available means of persuasion. This course will investigate emerging modes of expression to think and imagine the available means of persuasion. Students will both analyze and produce rhetorical artifacts and objects. We will be asking: How do we cultivate a rhetorical sensibility to everyday life? What are the available means of persuasion in our current media environment? What new rhetorical theories and practices do we need for digital technologies? This course will encourage us to critique and to apply rhetorical principles so that we may better understand our actions and responsibilities as rhetorical agents that influence the world around us. WRD 321, Topics in Professional Writing: Writing in the Legal Profession Ms. Andrea Yelin, JD LPC, MW This course explores the role of writing in legal contexts. You will learn about various genres of professional legal writing: case summaries, objective memoranda, briefs, judicial opinions, oral arguments, and contracts. We will focus on developing clear, direct, succinct, and precise writing for the WRD Undergraduate Course List, Autumn Quarter

4 legal context, in objective and persuasive formats. The course is not designed to teach substantive law, but to explore narrative and persuasive writing styles within a legal framework. Andrea B. Yelin is an attorney, author and writing specialist. She is the co-author of The Legal Research and Writing Handbook, 6th edition (Wolters Kluwer 2012), Basic Legal Writing, 4 th edition (Wolters Kluwer 2013), and the author of Contract Law for Legal Professionals (Pearson 2011). She is also an Adjunct Professor at the School of Law, Loyola University Chicago, where she teaches legal writing to first year law students and directs the Legal Writing Workshop. Ms. Yelin conducts writing workshops at law firms and writes materials for a financial services and litigation consulting firm. WRD 345, Ghostwriting (new course!) Professor Peter Vandenberg LPC, TTH 1:00-2:30 In this course, we will explore the phenomenon of writing for, on behalf of, or behind others ghost writing. From paper-mill student essays to best-seller as told to autobiographies, we ll try to cover the function of ghosting across all genres, and in the process usefully complicate our conception of authors and authorship. We ll be particularly interested in the role of ghosting in the digital age, understanding the machine in the course title to stand for contexts or environments in which ghosts develop multimodal content (alphabetic text, images, sound, and so on) for absent authors. We will spend some time reading about and studying the rhetoric of ghosting, but you ll spend much of the course engaged in ghosting texts (media-rich and/or conventional written ones) on behalf of others. Whose story do you want to write? This course has been offered once in the past as a Topics in Writing course. This will be the first time it will be taught under its permanent number. WRD 398, Internship Dana Dunham Arranged Any internship opportunity that coincides with your role as a WRD major or Professional Writing minor is eligible to be coordinated for course credit with WRD 398, Internship. For a complete explanation of Internship guidelines, see For additional information on WRD internships, see For questions or to register, contact WRD Internship Coordinator Dana Dunham ddunham2@depaul.edu. WRD Undergraduate Course List, Autumn Quarter

5 Summer 2015 WRD Courses Eligible for Credit in the WRD Major and Professional Writing Minor* First Summer Session (June 15-July 19) WRD 204, Technical Writing Professor Antonio Ceraso Loop, MW 5:45-9:00pm When we think of writing in school or academic settings, we often imagine a standard paper - an argument about a historical event, or an analysis of a novel. But what do we imagine when we think of writing in workplaces? Maybe we think that people don t write that much in workplace settings. However, in a recent annual survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the ability to write and edit reports was considered important to very important by employers. Such survey data only confirms an ongoing trend: your ability as a competent workplace writer is deeply valued by all types of companies, and could be a crucial element of your career. In WRD204, students practice the kinds of writing that will be expected in technical professions. The course will focus on understanding audience needs and crafting written documents that meet the needs of clients, coworkers, managers, and other stakeholders in technical workplaces. Students will learn by practicing how to write effective instructions, tutorials, specifications, proposals, and technical reports. The course will also focus on the design of professional documents, and how that differs from writing most students do in academic settings. By taking the course, students will develop the kinds of facility in workplace writing that employers in technical professions consistently say they are seeking when they recruit college graduates. WRD 309, Topics in Writing: Digital Storytelling (new course!) ; EL Credit in the Major Professor Lisa Dush LPC, TTH 6:00-9:15 Digital storytelling is a community-based media arts practice used to create first-person video narratives. In recent years, organizations and communities worldwide have launched digital storytelling initiatives to start important discussions and create powerful media for outreach and advocacy. This course introduces digital storytelling and its allied values of personal storytelling, participatory process, and affordable, DIY production methods. Students will read foundational digital storytelling texts, create their own digital stories (learning, in the process of doing so, the basics of capturing and editing images, audio, and video), and learn about a wide range of real-world digital storytelling projects. The course will prepare students including those with no prior digital production experience to conceive of and carry out compelling digital storytelling projects in organizations and communities. This course will cover the Experiential Learning requirement in the major (but it does not count for JYEL credit). If your DPR does not reflect coverage of the EL credit, Professor Vandenberg. WRD Undergraduate Course List, Autumn Quarter

6 WRD 398, Internship Dana Dunham Arranged Any internship opportunity that coincides with your role as a WRD major or Professional Writing minor is eligible to be coordinated for course credit with WRD 398, Internship. For a complete explanation of Internship guidelines, see For additional information on WRD internships, see For questions or to register, contact WRD Internship Coordinator Dana Dunham ddunham2@depaul.edu. depaulwrd.wordpress.com wrd.depaul.edu WRD Undergraduate Course List, Autumn Quarter