21 April. UX Test Rationale & Website Drafts
Class Meeting Agenda
- UX Test Rationale Overview
- Website Draft Overview
UX Test Rationale Overview
UX Test Rationale Overview Video
Category: Class Plans
14 April. Feature Stories
Class Meeting Agenda
- Feature Story Basics
- Discussion
- Embedding Files
Writing Feature Stories
Embedding HTML
31 March. Podcast Basics
Announcements
- 1. Podcast Scripts are due April 2, but I am happy to take them earlier
- 2. The Infographic and Feature Story Drafts have due dates have both been pushed forward to Fridays as well
Class Meeting Agenda
- Podcast Basics
- Discussion
Podcast Basics
17 March. Design Basics & Ethics of Visual Design
Featured Image: Original Northern Hemisphere Hockey Stick Graph, of Mann, Bradley, and Hughes, 1999.
Announcements
- 1. Proposals due on Friday
- 2. There’s no meeting next week, but I will post some How-To videos on Wednesday
- 3. I’ll have everything graded by the time we meet again on March 31
Class Meeting Agenda
The Following are the topics/goals we will cover into today’s class session:
- 1. Website Assignment Overview
- 2. Design Basics
- 3. Ethics of visual Communication
- 4. Accessible Design
Website Assignment Overview
Design Basics
Ethics of Visual Design
E
3 March. Project Description & Charts
Featured Image: Yucca Mountain, NV Nuclear Test Site Project
Class Meeting Agenda
The Following are the topics/goals we will cover into today’s class session:
- 1. Discussion of Proposal/Project topics
- 2. Project Description, Part I
- 3. Project Description, Part II
- 4. Gantt charts in Excel & Google Sheets
- 5. Proposal Draft Workshops
Project Description, Part I
Project Description, Part II
Composing Gantt Charts in Excel
Composing Gantt Charts in Google Sheets
24 February. Proposals & Persuasion.
Class Meeting Agenda
The Following are the topics/goals we will cover into today’s class session:
- 1. Proposal Project Overview
- 2. Group Chat: meet your group, exchange contact info., & plan
- 3. Overview of Coppola, N.W. (1997). Rhetorical analysis of stakeholders in environmental communication. (pp.9-24).
- 4. Discussion
- 5. Composing Abstracts–Abstract now due March 3
Proposal Project Overview
Coppola, “Rhetorical Analysis of Stakeholders”
Composing Abstracts
10 Feb. Environmental Justice & Renewable Energy
Announcement
Calendar Update:
- 1. No remote class meeting for Wed, Feb 17
- 2.Coppola, N.W. (1997). Rhetorical analysis of stakeholders in environmental communication. (pp.9-24). pushed forward to Week Six: Feb 22 & Feb 24
- 3. Submit your paper draft to your Canvas Peer Review Groups. Any questions about the paper before we get started?
Class Meeting Agenda
The Following are the topics/goals we will cover into today’s class session:
- 1. Overview of Nixon, R. (2011). Scenes from the seabed. (pp. 264-280).
- 2. Group Discussion 1: Breakout rooms
- 3. Guide to writing academic paragraphs
- 4. Overview of Levanda, A.M., Behrsin, I., and Disano, F. (2021). Renewable energy for whom? Energy Research & Social Science 71 (1-13).
- 5. Discussion 2
- 6. Group Preference Forms for Proposal and Website
Slow Violence & Creative Climate Communication Strategies
DQ: Breakout Session 1
Please respond to the following in your breakout sessions. Just write down as much information as you need to respond during discussion:
- 1. What is your assessment of Nixon’s argument? Do you agree/disagree that experts, reproters, activists, and individuals need to find more engaging or symbolic ways to communicate slow violence?
- 2. Can/does the sort of environmental storytelling that he advocates call those most responsible for environmental devastation to account/create lasting change?
Guide to Writing Academic Paragraphs
Use the following as a template for body paragraphs in your Paper:
- 1. Topic sentence(s):1-2 services that remind readers of major claim/through line of specific section & introduce new info.
- 2. Transition: 2-3 couple sentences that develop your topic sentence and also set up (announce, contextualize) the citation you will include from the essay you are analyzing.
- 3. Citation: 2-4 sentences (approx.) of source material. Typically the best material to cite from a text is a passage that requires your analysis, i.e. cited passages should, of course extend and support you claim, but also can/should be complex, technical, or offer several reasonable avenues of interpretation.
- 4. Close Analysis: 2-4 sentences of “close reading”/analysis of the citation you include. What’s the main idea of the passage you cited & how do you know? That is, what phrases, rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos, logos), metaphors, or structure in the passage suggests to you what you say the passage means? Are you reading the passage you cited against its intended goal?
- 5. Conclusion:2-3 sentences that tie your analysis back into the larger goal of the paragraph. Now that you have responded to the question with your claim and developed you claim through an analysis of a evidence, you need to write 2-3 more sentences that put the pieces together for your reader.
Environmental Justice
DQ 2
Please take a minute and consider the following before we discuss:
- 1.What is your assessment of the methodology employed here? That is, how persuasive do you find the “global systematic review of environmental justice cases” the authors conducted (p. 3)? How does their methodology or rhetorical approach compare with Nixon’s recommendations?
- 2. What’s your assessment of environmental justice frameworks? Do you agree/disagree that the intersection between environmental degradation and historic discrimination always need to be considered together?
Group Preference Form
2 Feb. Green IT & Big Data
Featured Image: Data Visualizations – Aerosols and Clouds, GDFL/NOAA
Class Meeting Agenda
The Following are the topics/goals we will cover into today’s class session:
- 1. Overview of Houser, H. (2016). Human/Planetary. (pp. 144-160).
- 2. Group Discussion 1: Breakout rooms
- 3. Overview of Moller, M., et. al. (2019). Participation through place-based e-tools. (pp.245-255)
- 4. Group Discussion 2: Breakout rooms
- 5. Annotated Bibliography & How-To Find Sources
Data Collection & Climate Modeling
DQ: Breakout Session 1
Please respond to the following in your breakout sessions. Just write down as much information as you need to respond during discussion:
- 1. Check out this Carbon Footprint Calculator and then consider: according to Houser and your own experience what are the Calculator’s advantages and disadvantages?
- 2. Check out this Climate Modeling Data Visualization page, and then consider: according to Houser and your own experience what are the Calculator’s advantages and disadvantages?
Participatory Tools
DQ: Breakout Session 2
Please respond to the following in your breakout sessions. Just write down as much information as you need to respond during discussion:
- 1. Which of the tools the authors examine (Or that I covered in the slideshow) do you find most effective and why? What are the advantages/disadvantages to these participatory tools?
- 2. Given the opportunity, what sorts of participatory e-tools would you design to engage audiences in topics related to sustainability and climate change?
Annotated Bibliography & Valid Sources
27 Jan. Sustainability & Risk Communication.
Featured Image: United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
Class Meeting Agenda
The Following are the topics/goals we will cover into today’s class session:
- 1. Overview of Caradonna, J. (2014). Introduction. Sustainability: a history (pp. 1-20).
- 2. Group Discussion 1: Breakout rooms
- 3. Overview of Grabill, J. T. & W. & Simmons, M. (1998). Toward a critical rhetoric of risk communications. (pp.415-441).
- 4. Group Discussion 2: Breakout rooms
- 5. Defining Key Terms in professional academic writing
Sustainability: A History
DQ: Breakout Session 1
Please respond to the following in your breakout sessions. Just write down as much information as you need to respond during discussion:
- 1. What’s your final assessment of “sustainability”? As a descriptive term, how does “sustainability” differ from some of the terms/movements that it subsumes? For instance, what does “Sustainability” communicate that say, “Climate Change” or “Global Warming” cannot?
- 2. What are some drawbacks, OR how well does sustainability withstand the criticism leveled at it by guys like Bill McKibben way back when it first entered popular usage (2)
- 3. If sustainability is such a useful term why have environmental conditions deteriorated so much since the 1970’s?
Risk Communication, 4 Models
DQ: Breakout Session 2
Please respond to the following in your breakout sessions. Just write down as much information as you need to respond during discussion:
- 1. Do Grabill & Simmons have suggestions for how to communicate sustainability more effectively?
- 2. For example, how can sustainability discourse be fit into a participatory democracy model?
Skills: Defining Key Terms in Professional Academic Writing
20 Jan. Introductions!
Featured Image: Oil from Deep Water Horizon Spill, 2010. Getty Images.
Class Meeting Agenda
The Following are the topics/goals we will cover into today’s class session:
- 1. Overview of class topic; policies; readings; deliverables; schedule; and remote synchronous & asynchronous course structure
- 2. Multimodal Basics Review
- 3. IAC Class Blogs How-to
- 4. Professional Bios: How-to & First Blog Post
- 5. Closing Question: Does Business Writing Require Information Literacy?”
Remote Class Video
Class Overview
Follow along as I cover the following topics & don’t hesitate to stop me if you have any questions:
Multimodal Basics Review
This course builds on the competencies you developed in English 1101 and 1102, with a special emphasis on communicating in scientific, business, and technological fields. You will learn to create workplace genres, ranging from traditional print documents such as reports, proposals, and definitions to electronic forms such as podcasts and websites. Each project affords you the opportunity to skillfully assess the rhetorical situation underlying workplace genres, so you can communicate your expert, technical knowledge and skills to stakeholders.
IAC Class Blogs
Please follow along as I walk you through how to set-up your IAC blog post feed, and don’t hesitate to stop me with any questions:
- 1. Get an IAC Class Blog
- 2. WP Configuration Basics: Please refer to this IAC Class Blogs How-To slide show for further guidance.
- 3. Submitting Posts to Canvas
Professional Biographies
Model 2: GATech LMC Faculty Bios
Your first Blog Post (Due next Monday, Jan 25) is a professional bio, which you will revise and reuse for both the Proposal and Website Projects later in the semester. To draft your Bios and get to know one another, please take 5-8 minutes and freewrite in response to the following:
- 1. Position: What is your name, current position and/or what it is/what you do, what is your company or school name and what they are/do
- 2. Accomplishments:what is one or two professional accomplishments of which you are most proud?
- 3. Philosophy: in 1-2 sentences explain your work philosophy OR research interests/trajectory.
- 4. Conclusion: how does your philosophy and/or research perspective inform your position?
Summary/Overview of Katz Article
Katz, I.R., Haras, C., & Blaszczynski, C (2010). Does Business Writing Require Information Literacy? Business Communication Quarterly, 73(2), 135-49.
On the very first page of the article, the authors of “Does Business Writing Require Information Literacy?” argue, earning a top job at a major company requires a combination of technical skill and information literacy. Irvin Katz, et. al explain, “Information literate workers know when to seek new information, how to seek that information efficiently via technology, how to judge relevance and reliability of information to reach new conclusions, and how to use technology to communicate information effectively, clearly, and ethically” (Candy, 2005). So what?
- Keep in mind that while many of you may not become technical writers, you may be required to communicate with tech writers in your careers.
- Furthermore, employees can have all the technical know-how in the world, but if that technical know-how is not coupled with what they call the ability seek, evaluate, synthesize, create, and transmit information, then some institutional positions will remain out of reach.
- Beyond institutional and economic success, the careful technical communication you will practice in this class helps keep people safe and facilitates collaborative responses to complex problems.
Why organize a tech writing course around sustainability?
Because of the unique technical communication challenges that climate changes poses, in this class you will learn how to communicate effectively in workplace genres using sustainability as a vehicle for that communication practice. As a discourse, sustainability recognizes that the cumulative effects of anthropocentric climate change are both material and rhetorical. Not only do experts in all fields struggle to redress the environmental degradation caused by, for example, warming, emissions, deforestation, acidification, desertification, and pollution, they also endeavor to communicate the consequence, scale, and complexity of these processes to expert and nonexpert audiences to initiate change. Given that it spans chemical, biological, economical, and cultural spheres, consider coordinating a response to ocean acidification, as just one example of the complexities of technical communication endemic to environmental issues. What sorts of choices do you have to make to represent and transmit complex, discipline, specific data to experts in other fields? What sorts of choices do you have to make to represent and transmit complex, discipline, specific data to nonexpert stakeholders? These are just some of the dynamic challenges we will practice communicating this semester.
