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University of Arizona
Composition Program.

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Contact us at Profcomm

English 307, section 797 Fall 2001
Course Syllabus

Instructor: Danika Brown
Office: CCIT #236
Offices Hours: by appt.
Engl Dept: ML 445, 621-1836 (leave msg)

 

Course Overview

Welcome to English 307 Online. What does "Professional Communication" mean? In a course focused on Business Writing, professional communication is concerned with the language practices used in professional settings. All settings where humans conduct themselves with other humans tend to function through language and practices based on common understandings. These practices are specialized at various levels—for example, certain industries share common communication practices, but even individual companies within an industry might have even more specialized practices for internal communication.

Because there is no one way to communicate, but only communication practices that are appropriate for doing certain things at certain times, it would be impossible for a "business writing" course to teach you all of the possible ways you might need to communicate once you enter a profession. Regardless of the specifics of professional communication strategies, there are several important things you can learn that will enable you to understand professional communication, the technologies that shape and facilitate such communication, the effect of certain communication practices in actions, and, ideally, make appropriate choices for your own professional communication. Therefore, this course will focus on the analysis and practice of professional communication to achieve the following:

To those ends, you will be doing many out of class written assignments (including the research and activities necessary to complete them), class activities, and group determined activities.

The focus of this particular course will be the "Technologies of Work." We will be analyzing how "doing work" has been impacted by office space, communication technologies, and how people are employed. In other words, we will be looking at the where, how, and who of work and writing about those issues.

Online Meetings

This course meets almost exclusively online as part of the University of Arizona's growing distributed learning program. The fact that we are doing coursework in a fairly non-traditional way gives us the interesting opportunity to look at issues of professional communication that this course is concerned with: where and how work gets done. You will have hands on experience with the ways in which technology is reshaping the way we communicate.

We will meet once a week (at a time to be determined collectively by the members of this class) in our online course environment, Workplace by Teamwave. You will need to read about how to use Workplace™ on the Profcomm website. Also read the "user guidelines." I will provide you with your sign in information in the orientation session. Please have Workplace downloaded (free from www.teamwave.com) as soon as possible after the orientation schedule.

Online class meetings will be approximately two hours long. In those class meetings, we will be discussing your individual work, discussing the required readings, workshopping the assignments you will be writing, and sharing important information necessary for your success in this course. In addition to these meetings, I encourage you to schedule conferences with me throughout the semester.

Texts

All of the texts for this course are available online from the Profcomm website, or in the classroom on Workplace. You are expected to have completed all the readings by their due dates on the course calendar. We will be utilizing these readings throughout the course and I will hold you responsible to having them read.

Assignment Overview

You can access all the general assignment sheets through the Profcomm website. The assignments, however, are contextualized specifically in this course according to a "professional communication scenario" based on The Profcomm Center.

You will be considered interns of The Profcomm Center for this course. As part of The Profcomm Center, our "division" has been given the assignment of examining the impact of technologies on the way work is done. We are to investigate how technologies have changed office spaces, communication, and the structure of the workforce in general.

With three focus areas (office space, communication, who is working), you will divide into three groups for the semester based on your specific interests, experience, and skills to conduct a semester long project process resulting in a critical analyses of one of these issues (though the issues are not necessarily separate).
You will have some flexibility in your final projects, however, the project will result in an informative, analytical report and "online exhibit" about your focus area. You may focus on a specific field or organization, or you may focus an a more general history of the issue. For the project process, you will research the issue, write a formal proposal to do the project, complete the research, and produce both a project report and an exhibit. We will, of course, go over each of these steps in the process as the content of the class itself. However, to give you an idea of what kind of "exhibit" I have in mind for this Profcomm Center project, you might look at "On the Job: Design and the American Office" (http://www.nbm.org/Exhibits/New_On_The_Job_Text.html).

As interns for The Profcomm Center, your work for this course will contribute to the professional communication resources on the Profcomm website. If you do not want your materials published to this site, you will need to let me know.

Instructor Contact

I am available throughout the semester to conference with you about the readings, assignments, your individual projects, problems or concerns related to the course, and the Workplace technology. The best way to contact me is via email. If you wish to have an in-person conference, we will need to schedule a time when we can meet in my physical office space.

Policies

This course will be held almost entirely "online." However, because it is a "distance education" course of sorts, it is NOT a "correspondence" course. You will be expected to attend class meetings online when scheduled, and you will be expected to participate in those online classes.

The technology we have chosen to conduct the class enables a high level of interaction. Because we will not be meeting physically, it is especially important that you interact with me and your colleagues electronically. More about your participation and expected attendance at scheduled times will be explained in the calendar and with specific assignments. We will also set "protocols" for interacting in the online environment.

Basically, I ask that you come to class, do the readings, participate in the discussions, invest yourself in the activities, work well with your group, and have a generally pleasant time in the course. Nonetheless, in as much as we are in an institution of higher learning and I am held responsible for asking you to adhere to some more specific guidelines, you'll want to take the link and read through the "Policies" of the composition program (or my version of
them).

Course Calendar

Please see the calendar for due dates and specific activities. The calendar is always subject to change, so please check it regularly.