About the professor
My name is John Jones, and I will be your professor for ENGL 303: Multimedia Writing. We will get to know each other more over the next few weeks, but for now you can find out more about me here.
Getting started with ENGL 303
Please read this page carefully for instructions on getting started with the course. If at any time you have questions about the course, send me an email (contact info). I will do my best to respond to your emails within 24 hours during the work week (M-F).
In this course we will not use ecampus for any purpose. All of the course information, including the syllabus and course communication, will be conducted on this site and on the sites that you will create as part of your assignments.
Prerequisites
This course is designed to teach you the basics in multimodal composition. If you have mastered basic computer skills related to creating and submitting word processing files, using email with attachments, consulting software tutorials and other online sources for understanding software features, and navigating the Web, you should be able to complete all of the course assignments.
How to use this course site
Under the course banner at the top of each page on the site you can find the main navigational menu. This menu contains links to the primary documents for the course—the syllabus (see below) and the course forum. These sections of the site will remain largely static for the semester; that is, they will not change much. If for some reason it becomes necessary for me to change information in the syllabus, I will notify everyone about these changes.
On the right sidebar, you can find quick information about how to contact me, links to the dynamic content on the site, and links to register for and then log in to the site. You will use this sidebar to keep track of new information on the site, such as when I update the course blog or you or one of your classmates adds a post to one of the course forums.
When new content appears on the site, a link to it will appear in the appropriate box in the right sidebar. If you wish to access older content on the blog or forums, you can do so by using the main menu on the top of the site.
The syllabus
I have split the course syllabus into separate pages for easier reading.
- The Description and Requirements page contains official information about the course, such as the course objectives, required texts, etc.
- The Policies page contains detailed information about the rules for the course: what I will expect of you as students and what you can expect from me.
- The Assignments page lists and describes the major assignments for the course. If you have questions about individual assignments, such as about the assignment requirements or how an assignment will be graded, this is where you should look first.
- The Schedule is a week-by-week breakdown of the work you will do in the course—what you will need to read and what tasks and assignments you will need to complete—and the goals for that work. If you want to know what is due for a particular week, this is the page you should consult. To help streamline the page, I have included a summary of assignments that are due each week in the row for that week. This will give you an overview of what is expected of you in a given week. For details about your assignments, you should click the details link in the assignment heading for each week. The schedule will likely be the page you will visit most often in the course, so be sure to bookmark this site or the schedule page directly.
The course blog
When I need to contact you as a group, I will generally do so via the course blog and your MIX email addresses. You should carefully read all new blog posts.
The course forum
We will use the course forums for general course communication, such as questions about assignments or the course in general, and for sharing some course work, such as your responses to the course readings.
Forum terminology
There are a number of separate forums we will use for communication. You will not be able to create new forums, but you will occasionally create new topics under the forums and posts under the topics. The structure is Forum > Topic > Post.
When I assign work on the forums, be sure to pay attention to which forum you should post in, and to whether you should create a new topic, or respond to an existing one. Being careful in this way will ensure that your classmates can find your posts and that you will receive full credit for them.
Start reading the syllabus
Again, if you have any questions for me, my contact information can be found on the Description and Requirements page. Otherwise, you click the link to the schedule below to begin navigating the site and planning your work for this week.
image via: Wikimedia Commons