ccr 760: hypertext rhetorics

course projects

According to the course policies, your final grade breaks down according to the following percentages:

• Contribution to course website (10%)
• Participation in class discussions and workshops (20%)
• A collaborative, class-wide hypertext (30%)
• An individually-written hypertext (30%)
• Final “exam” (10%)

Below you will find brief sketches of each of these elements, with links to assignment pages when appropriate.

course website development

Your first assignment for this course is to contribute to this syllabus, something which you will do in two ways. First, I would like each of you to build a page introducing yourselves to each other and to me. This page should be academic in nature, although the design specifics are up to you. Provide your background, professional interests, etc., information appropriate to an academic audience. The CCR faculty pages provide one model, although you need not constrain yourselves to those particular categories. While this page might serve as the kernel of a future homepage, I would appreciate it if each of you constructed a new page for this assignment. In other words, it is not acceptable to simply provide a link to a previously constructed homepage. This should be completed no later than February 11th and you are responsible for including a link to it on our participants page.

The second portion of this assignment is perhaps more straightforward. I have begun a resources page for our class, but I would like each of you to contribute to it as well. My expectations are fairly simple: I expect each of you to supply at least 5 resources, along with a 1-2 sentence annotation of each. I am intentionally defining resource broadly--it may be something that helps you produce web pages (design resource), a hypertext itself, an essay about hypertext or electronic communication in general. In short, if it has to do with the workings of this course, you can include it. You should place each of your annotated links directly onto the resources page (you may wish to sign your annotations with links to your personal page). It should go without saying that there can be no overlaps, and also that the earlier you complete this assignment, the easier it will be to ensure that no one else chooses the same resources as you do. This should also be complete by February 11.

seminar participation

While not a project per se, please bear in mind that your participation is an important part of this course. I am not speaking only of class discussions here, either. We will be spending a significant amount of time in the computer cluster, and in a course on technology, our time there will be as important as our seminar time. You should be working to make your time in this course as constructive as possible, both for yourself and others.

collaborative hypertext

There is another page of this syllabus devoted to this project, but I'll say a few words here. Rather than keeping a journal, taking reading notes, or participating on a listserv or webboard, we will be collaborating on a hypertext as a class, one based around the readings we do this semester. This project will begin with our second class meeting, and continue until April 1st, concluding with our final reading.

individual hypertext

Additional detail about this project is also provided on another page. Instead of composing a seminar paper, you will be producing a hypertext of your own (while I am calling this an individual project to distinguish it from our other major project, it is possible to do it in collaboration with others). For the first few weeks of the semester, as we talk about hypertext, give some thought to what you would like to do--I have included some possible ideas on the assignment page. I would like you to submit a project proposal on February 25th, detailing your plans. You will have opportunity during class to work on this project each week after that, with the final 3-4 weeks of the semester given over to lab time and workshops.

final exam

While there will not be a final examination, I will be asking you to write a short, reflective essay as the capstone experience for this course. I will provide you with additional detail about this essay as the semester draws to a close.