Syllabus: ENG 260 Business And Professional Writing: Fall 2011

The links on this syllabus will take you on divergent paths. I don't expect any of you to read -- or to need -- all of it. However, if you're going to progress towards the course objectives, I do expect all of you to read -- and to need -- much of it. It's up to you to balance your learning style against these resources.

Schedule at a Glance

September	in-class	assignments
6, 8	course web, reports, models, and project materials cases
13, 15, 20, 22	more cases; document design, model reports course web server - FTP HTML welcome page screenshots	choose case by 15 Sept - email; context by 20 Sept - form
27, 29	oral presentations on Web 2.0 / social media	oral presentation - in class TOC by 27 Sept - email
October
4, 6	information design; document design visual design: colors, fonts and boxes, spreadsheets, tables, graphs, charts; images, screenshots, image formats, image editing	test on social media 4 Oct - in class graphics assignments by 6 Oct - server
11, 13	Tuesday, October 11 images, screenshots, image formats, image editing report cover - remake of some of the models Thursday, Oct 13 first gateway first portfolio review welcome page: index.html report: .txt email graphics: table chart image report cover server Test on information about social media companies on the table on the gateway page	.txt report by 13 Oct - email
18, 20	structuring information for content management systems: discussion forums, blogs, and wikis; frameworks structuring documents document design workshop
25, 27	image editing; integrating images and text; cover pages
November
1, 3	presentation slides, master slides, transitions, animations	.doc/.pdf version by 1 Nov - server
8, 10	videos how to rip a video off YouTube, add your own music, and embed it into a slide presentation; video editing
15, 17	video editing What the Internet is, and how it works	.ppt by 15 Nov - server
22	second gateway second portfolio review .doc or .pub report .pdf report .ppt report server
December
29, 1	how the Internet works	test on Internet 1 Dec - in class
6, 8	oral presentations with visual aids	oral presentation - in class

September 8 - 10

introduction

to do

September 13, 15

background, text, headings, headers/footers, lists, bullets, tables, graphs/charts, boxes, images

placeholders - symbols to indicate where a box, image, or other feature-to-come will display. Ex: [ image of athlete ]

September 20, 22

sign up for a presentation for Sep 27, 29; send me an email if you have a preference for presenting on Thursday, September 29, first-come, first served. Otherwise, be prepared to present on Tuesday, September 27.

- review gateway links
- show Alexa toolbar on my laptop
- review content for reports
- show how to make screenshots
- review info for presentations next week

Find images relevant to your report. Put them into the images folder in your lastname folder. Crop and resize them as needed. Sources: Google Images, your own camera, various databases and archives you may find online.

Download FileZilla Portable to your personal folder on the M: drive (recommended) or desktop or portable USB drive. You will use it to FTP files to your public folder at toLearn.net/eng260/f11/lastname/.

data collection for your report

You should spend the next week collecting the data you need for your report and organizing it into a table of contents.

In real life, you would have alternate versions of the company website served to users varying only in the variable that you are measuring. Then you would compare the web stats for the various versions.

Instead of that, we're going to pretend that your competitors' web traffic stats are the results of your alternate-versions experiment.

September 27, 29

oral presentation on the social media site, product, service company that you work for

Note that the information in these presentations is what will be on the test on October 4.

This first presentation is an opportunity to increase your knowledge of a fast-growing industry in which you might think of looking for gainful employment upon graduation from Medaille. Most of these companies are new, exposing you to another source of jobs for recent college graduates: start-ups.

Instead of a form, I will send you an email to respond to, asking for the following information about your company:

A snapshot is popularly defined as a photograph that is "shot" spontaneously and quickly, most often without artistic or journalistic intent. Snapshots are commonly considered to be technically "imperfect" or amateurish—out of focus or poorly framed or composed.

Look on the bottom of the company's web site's welcome page for links to information about the company. If they are a publicly held company, their web site probably has a downloadable annual report, which can be very revealing. Those companies will also have available U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings that tell you all sorts of interesting things about how the company perceives itself. The one you will find most helpful is the 10K form, the company's annual report. Google's 2008 10K.

Do a Google search for articles in the media about your company. Note the dates of the articles.

Hoovers - $$ information about publicly held companies - enter via Medaille's library site to get much more info via Hoover's Online: Company profiles, histories, strategies, market positions; news articles, stock quotes, industry overviews, and company capsules for US and foreign public and private companies. Features listed under "Pro Tools" are available to Medaille students, faculty and staff.

oral presentations

This time, I would like you to study the two pages on our course web about oral presentations and presentations as theater. Address your whole audience, and try to engage them. When you finish, the question to the rest of the class would be this: "If we were the managers of this company, and this presenter worked for us, would we want him/her to make presentations like this for our customers and clients?" In other words, if you don't make effective presentations on the job, you are missing a major job skill.

Why bother? This is just school and your classmates won't like it if you set the bar too high. It's like the minor-league ballplayer who says, "Oh, I'll wait until I'm in the majors to really perform." Right. If you don't make effective presentations in school, why would you expect to all of a sudden do so when you get a job?

brand values

Brand values are the core values represented by a brand. These build an emotional connection with customers, as well as the community, and influence how stakeholders perceive and interact with the company.

For example, if ENG 260 were a brand, if I were trying to promote it, its values might be expressed as:

Britney Spears is a brand. You don't know much at all about the actual human being. What you know is what has been marketed to you, the brand. Countries have brands, and those brands have values. Mashable recently had an article on how to Build Your Personal Brand on Twitter. What is your company's brand? Your questionnaire should ask about your brand values.

October 4, 6

the test on social media, the content of the table we created last week, will be on October 13

Don't leave class today without sending me an email filling in all the gaps in your rows of the tables on the gateway page.

design

graphic elements

media

For images, Google Images is your best source. For video, it's YouTube. For music, you can use Audacity to separate the sound from any YouTube video or you can use .mp3 files you may already have. If you want to snag a video from one of these sites -- blip.tv, break.com, dailymotion.com, facebook.com, livevideo.com, metacafe.com, myvideo.ch, myvideo.de, veoh.com, youtube.com -- try MediaConverter.

to do

October 11, 13

image editing on Pixlr: crop, resize, combine, and filter images: screenshots of charts and images/graphics for report

.txt report
images for use in report: cropped and resized screenshots and downloaded images and graphics

to do

to keep up, by the end of this week, you should have the parts of your report: the text and the images and graphics that you will use for the rest of the semester.

October 18, 20

IT and the Geek line: being able to move across the line, communicate across the line, and translate across the line is a valuable job skill.

adoption curve: to thrive in organizations, it will be your responsibility to stay as far to the left on the adoption curve as you can. You don't have to let anyone know that you understand, if that's politically preferable. But you gain a lot by being able to understand.

* what is the average life expectancy of a multinational Fortune 500 corporation, including most of the brand names that get marketed to you? answer

manaement's solution to professionals spending so much time doing non-productive work on their computers: content management systems

separation of layers: content, structure, presentation (aka style), meaning (the semantic web)

as a professional, you provide the content and the CMS provides the structure and style

structuring information for content management systems: discussion forums, blogs, and wikis; frameworks

text report

It's not a course requirement because you use Facebook so much and so well. However, for the 2nd test at the end of the semester, you should know the differences between these three types of content management systems: discussion forums, blogs, and wikis. A good way to learn is by doing, so I have given you the opportunity to post your social media report:

on a wiki that I use for another course, HUM 300 The Arts in Society. Your username and password will be those of previous students of that course, available on our reports page.

printed reports

October 25, 27

November 1, 3

“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina.

audio capture for podcast and as narration for video - micophone with human voice or computer-generated voice at a site like XtraNormal.com.

how to embed a YouTube video in your presentation -- works only when you are presenting while online, which is a risky proposition

November 3 is going to be a day to work on your projects in class. I am not going to present anything new. I will spend my time circulating and answering questions.

November 8, 10

how to rip a video off YouTube, add your own music, and embed it into a slide presentation; video editing

November 15, 17

November 22

November 29, December 1

December 6, 8

changed on Dec 2 -- no oral presentation. Instead, review of Internet pages on Dec 6 and re-test on Dec 8.

company information	source of data
domain name
company name
logo (scaled to a width of 250 pixels)	Pixlr.com
slogan	company web site
industry (type of company)	Wikipedia, Hoovers
size of company, preferably its marketcap (stock price times number of shares; for publicly held companies), annual income, annual profit	Hoovers
number of employees (and date)	Hoovers
snapshot of customers' demographics (web site visitors)	Alexa, etc
value proposition - (what does the company give the customers; what does it get?)	web site and all above sources
names of competitors	Wikipedia, Hoovers, Alexa, WebdevTwopointzero

The Syllabus

ENG 260 Business And Professional Writing

Medaille College - Fall 2011

Schedule at a Glance

September 8 - 10

introduction

to do

September 13, 15

September 20, 22

data collection for your report

September 27, 29

oral presentations

brand values

October 4, 6

design

graphic elements

media

to do

October 11, 13

to do

October 18, 20

text report

printed reports

October 25, 27

November 1, 3

November 8, 10

November 15, 17

November 22

November 29, December 1

December 6, 8