ccr 760: hypertext rhetorics

course policies (technology)

Because technology provides one of our areas of inquiry in this course, we will be actively using the media and exploring the concepts that are advanced in the reading we do. Some of this work will be theoretical, and some of it will be practical and technical. You will not be graded on your mastery of the technology, provided a good-faith effort on your part to develop your abilities. One of my goals for this course is that each of you leave it with technical skills that are more polished than they were when you began. For some of you, that may mean learning basic HTML; for others, it may mean learning Photoshop, Fireworks, or style sheets; for others still, it may mean consulting for your classmates--I end up polishing my own skills every time I teach a course where we cover even the most basic elements of HTML. I use the word polish here because this isn't an element of the course I want to quantify (or assess), but I hope that we can take it seriously as a group all the same.

What follows are my understandings of what it will mean to take technology seriously:

self-motivation

You should not take the work for this course any less seriously than you do for other courses. It can be easy to put off writing an essay, but procrastination can be disastrous when you write hypertext. Equally dangerous is the temptation to spend five hours designing for every hour you spend writing. Design is important, and inseparable from content, but the best front page in the world can't make up for a thin site. Make every effort to commit yourself to the pace of the course, and you should be fine.

respect

I have in mind two specific applications of respect. First, we will be working on a collaborative hypertext for much of the semester, and you will be linking to each others' work frequently, perhaps even commenting on it and/or responding to it. Treat your colleagues' work with the respect that you yourself expect. Second, your colleagues for this course are not restricted to members of this seminar. In posting our materials to the WWW, we are engaging in writing that is public. All it takes is an egosurf (typing one's own name into the search engine), and your comments may reach the very person you've attacked, dismissed, or mocked. In both cases here, adopt the following policy: if you wouldn't say it to them, don't say it about them.

ambidextrOS

The computers in the cluster are Macintoshes, as you well know. As someone who is fluent in both major (commercial) operating systems, I know that there is little difference between them. We will be devoting some of our class time this semester to mini-lessons, workshops, and lab time for you to work on your projects. The fact that you prefer a PC is not considered a valid reason for failing to participate in these activities. The Web is platform-independent, which means that you can do work in either environment, and port it to the other without any problem. In other words, when we set aside time to work in the lab, use that time effectively.

how wired are you?

It should go without saying, in this day and age, that you should be checking your email at least a couple of times a day. Our website will also be changing, growing, and developing every week, and I expect you to keep up with those changes. This is a requirement every bit as important as seminar attendance and participation.

HTML editors

I am both a purist and a tinkerer when it comes to webpage design, which is why you'll find no HTML editor tag line amidst my code--I prefer to code by hand. I am also a firm believer that everyone who publishes a webpage should be able to go in and make changes without needing an editor to do so. Combine that with the fact that most editors can't take full advantage of HTML, and that they frequently dump unnecessary code into documents, and editors end up being a little less wonderful than people often assume. I have no objection to your use of an editor for your individual project as long as you don't object to using hand-coded HTML to manage other parts of the course. I will be maintaining a page of frequently (un)asked questions related to manual HTML coding, and perhaps some tutorial pages as well.