English 101 - Salem State University



Syllabus: English 412 - 01 – Seminar in Modern Publishing

FALL 2014 T- TH: 1:40- 2:55 Room: MH 320

Professor Perry Glasser

Office: MH 107-A

pglasser@salemstate.edu

salemstate.edu/~pglasser

X 7032

ENL 412 Seminar on Modern Publishing - 3 credits

An intensive examination of the field of publishing for professional writers, the class will examine business models for nonfiction book and magazine publishers, professional workflow dynamics in organizations, freelance nonfiction writing, ghost writing, and other forms of work-for-hire for print and electronic media. This course will include collaborative classroom practicum experiences and lectures from professionals in the field, with some practical writing assignments such as pitch and query letters throughout the course. Three lecture hours per week. Not open to students who have received credit for ENG470. Prerequisites: First year Composition and at least one course at the 200-level or permission of the chairperson

Goals and Objectives

Goals

• To learn about publishing business models and their implications for the modern writer.

• To learn how Professional Writing is audience-focused.

• To learn intellectual property rights and their modern implications for the writer

• To learn about how professional writers work with new media.

• To learn how professional writers function in organizations.

• To develop collaborative writing skills and habits.

Objectives

• prepare and deliver several reports and white papers on such topics as privacy, social networking, and viral distribution.

• Use an online interface as a collaborative workspace.

• Write and publish using professional processes and best collaborative practices.

• Write, edit, and publish class-wide collaborative projects.

• adhere to best practices for a university seminar

• in-class “flash” writing

Policies & Disclaimers

Emergencies: "In the event of a college declared critical emergency, Salem State College reserves the right to alter this course plan. Students should refer to salemstate.edu for further information and updates. The course attendance policy stays in effect until there is a college declared critical emergency. In the event of an emergency, please refer to the alternative educational plans for this course located at/in [faculty member determines this]. Students should review the plans and gather all required materials before an emergency is declared." 

Special Provisions: Salem State College is committed to providing equal access to the educational experience for all students in compliance with Section 504 of The Rehabilitation Act and The Americans with Disabilities Act. Any student who has a documented disability requiring an accommodation, aid or adjustment should speak with me privately. Students with Disabilities who have not previously done so should provide documentation to and schedule an appointment with the Office for Students with Disabilities and obtain appropriate services.

English Dept Mission: Profound literacy is the hallmark of a liberal education.  To that end, English department courses involve instruction and study in literature and writing, the emphasis varying according to course content.  Through intensive reading and analysis, students develop a critical appreciation of literature written in disparate times and places.  Through expository writing, students learn techniques for conducting research and for drafting and revising analytic and persuasive essays based on critical reading.  In creative writing, students develop an aesthetic through practicing the craft of various genres.  The English department prepares students for professional and academic leadership including careers in teaching and writing.

Plagiarism and Dishonest Scholarship: Students who present work not their own will be dismissed from class with a grade of F and may be dismissed from the College.

Syllabus: Our syllabus a flexible, working plan, not an iron-clad contract of performance standards. A “seminar” is a joint investigation; the class and professor will go where our investigations take us. As such, assignments and the assessment scheme may vary from what is now presented .When significant variations from that are planned, all students will be officially notified either verbally, electronically, or in print, often all three.

Assignments: If you are unable to complete any reading or project, avoid embarrassment by informing me well in advance. If this becomes ordinary behavior, expect academic consequences.

• Written assignments will not be accepted late.

• Extensions of due dates will never be granted retroactively.

• Weak performance in a collaborative project will be grounds for failure in the course.

Attendance: Texts and readings will be discussed, but not explicated, in class. Absent students miss work that cannot be made up nor adjusted by an email or conference. This is a seminar: do not come to me with a question like, “Did I miss anything important?” Make every effort to inform me of an unavoidable absence in advance.

• Three or more cuts will trigger a letter grade reduction of your final grade.

• Lateness by more than 15 minutes constitutes a full absence. Chronic lateness will result in a grade of F.

• Five absences mandate failure. (no kidding—that’s 2.5 weeks!)

• Missing a scheduled conference or collaborative meeting counts as two (2) absences.

• If your cell phone rings while class is in session, you will be asked to leave and will be charged with a full absence.

NO DISTINCTION IS MADE BETWEEN AN EXCUSED OR UNEXCUSED ABSENCE.

• If you have the misfortune to suffer from ill health or from family crisis, while I am sympathetic, should you be absent 5+ times, consider dropping the class with a W or taking a leave from Salem State. I cannot invent unique assessment schemes for students who have had bad luck. No “extra” papers; no special projects.

• Students repeatedly unable to find a place to park should plan to come to SSU earlier. Students with employers who schedule them into work-hours when class is in session need to quit their job.

• Have a "buddy" to contact in the event of absence.

• Students who complain that their professors think they are teaching the only class that matters, are right. So what?

Collaboration

Students will be frequently be divided into teams. Since your teammates rely on you, be prompt, perceptive, and forthright. Shyness and introversion are conditions for which you need to develop accommodation, or consider a career or major that will leave alone and safely entombed in a library for life.

Submissions

If you arrive at class late on the date an assignment is due, your grade on the assignment will be reduced by a full letter grade. Assignments are due at the beginning of class. Plan accordingly.

This is a class in professional writing. Part of the curriculum is to teach you to behave like a professional. Professionals deliver. A goal of the course is professional behavior.

Therefore, the following excuses will be treated with the contempt they deserve.

• “Sorry I am late to class. A lot of people were printing papers.”

• “I ran out of ink.”

• “I ran out of paper.”

Exactly why did you plan to complete your paper within 20 minutes of its deadline? When were you planning on proofreading? Should the class lose 20 minutes of instruction while we adjust to your poor planning?

Try these on for size:

• “Sorry, colleagues, a lot of people in our organization were at the printer.”

• “Boss, when we get to the client, we will owe them the presentation because I ran out of ink.”

Stuff happens: but not to professionals.

Readiness

This is a 400-level English class devoted to publishing in the 21st century. We have, roughly, two concerns:

1. The nature of digital media, modern publishing, and the writer’s position in that;

2. Professional publishing processes in electronic and other organizations.

Notice, please, this is not a class in the rudiments of writing. We will not be discussing or teaching how or why words are strung together in sequences that make meaning.

An advanced class in professional writing presumes a level of language mastery; a student before enrolling must be adept at writing for clarity, relevance, accuracy, and precision.

If your writing suffers frequent “bonehead” mechanical deficiencies, if you do not know how to structure an argument to persuade, if you are unable to express complicated concepts, you will not do well.

I am always eager to discuss ideas with students during my office hours: I do not run a tutoring service in rudimentary composition.

I will not read any of your work in advance of its being due to me. I assess your work: I do not edit it. This is a seminar.

Be further cautioned: the Writing Center is neither a proofreading service nor are the tutors knowledgeable about the content of this class.

Bonehead Errors

Bonehead errors are a class of mechanical deficiencies generally taught in middle school and earlier. If you are wobbly on:

tense agreement,

common homophones,

subject-verb agreement,

pronoun-antecedent agreement,

sentence structure,

paragraph structure,

punctuation,

or how to spell common words,

you will have considerable work to do to bring your writing to a level commensurate with what is expected of any student enrolled in this 400-level class much less a competent kid in the 9th grade. If you have been delaying learning such matters, take the plug out of your ear, drop the beer, get some sleep, and take charge of your life.

Revisions

None. You get one bite at the apple. This is an advanced class in professional writing, not a class in taking baby steps toward something that is acceptable..

Course Communication

You are responsible to check your Salem State email at least 4 days each week, especially the day before class. (not the morning before, the DAY).

You should check the class website for readings and announcements twice each week.

Texts and Materials

Computer access

Bring your laptop to class. Most times, a tablet—not a smart phone—will do.

Students accessing Facebook, email, or other online entertainments outside the context of instruction will be asked to leave class. If your cellphone goes off in class, leave. Take the cut.

Microsoft Office Suite, including Word, or MacWord.

NB: Office Suite is NOT the same at Microsoft Works. Students employing Open Office should see me.

Print Resources:

Required

1. WIKINOMICS – by Don Tapscott (Portfolio Trade)

2. VIRTUAL UNREALITY – Charles Seife (Viking Adult)

Recommended

1. CROWDSOURCING – Jeff Howe (Crown)

Online resources

A number of exercises and news articles in either converted to pdfs or as links will be posted at

Assessment

The Grade Auction will occur on the 1st or second day of class. The results will soon after be generally distributed. The class will establish Assessment standards.

There is no Final Examination. This scheme, once established, may with notice change.

ASSESSMENT SCHEME – added Sep 5

The exercise we did called the Grade Auction was, as you have no doubt by now guessed, a demonstration of how a writer’s labor can be commoditized by an open market. You all looked suitably terrified.

Let’s try this more traditional approach for school instead, but keep in mind that in the world of the professional writer, the world of commerce where publishing is not an exercise, effort, process, and good tries count for very little. What people demand and expect is high level product.

That’s why you go to school. Fail to perform here, and we pick you up, dust you off, and say you’ve learned a good lesson.

Fail to perform in the real world, you are fired.

|POINTS |PROJECT |

|200 |Quiz— Know what Glasser Knows: business terms (week #3 or so) |

|400 |Unit #1 — I. The Internet and the Modern Writer |

| |The text books and online pdfs at salemstate.edu/~pglasser |

| |An informed opinion paper ±8 pages. Topics to be determined. |

| |Week 7 |

|350 |Unit #2 Writing in Organizations |

| |Collaboration performance and approaches |

|100 |Unit #2 Writing Short quiz – definition of editorial roles |

| |Week #10 |

|200 |Unit #3 FINAL Project—your blog, network project, etc. Possibly a collaboration |

| |Week #13 |

|150 |Red Skies attendance: at least 3 meetings (Mondays at 12:00) |

|100 |General participation, timeliness, attendance, etc. |

|1500 |TOTAL |

Important Dates

ADD-Drop Sep 9

Glasser out Sep 25

WRITERS SERIES FALL 2014

Kevin Carey, Jennifer Jean, and the Salem Writers Group

Tuesday, Sept. 30

Salem Athenaeum -- 7:30 pm

Todd Davis (poet)

Steve Yarbrough (fiction writer)

Thursday, Oct. 9

The Metro Room - 7:30pm

Alexandra Peary, (poet)

Thursday, Oct. 23

The Metro Room - 7:30pm

Jennifer DeLeon (memoirist/fiction)

Thursday, Nov. 6

4:00 pm: “Latinas in Higher Education: What We All Need to Know”

The Metro Room

7:30 pm: Reading and Q&A

The Metro Room - 7:30pm

Undergraduate Reading

Thursday, November 20th

1:45 -3:00 pm - Metro Room –required attendance

CALENDAR –

This is a seminar. Readings, research, discussion, and assessment vehicles will not reun like a railroad schedule.

We will divide the semester into 3 Parts that will be addressed in uneven segments. There will be a formal assessment vehicle, either a paper or a report, due at the end of each. Examinations may refer to readings never discussed in class.

The three parts are:

I. The Internet and the Modern Writer (6-7 weeks app.)

Theoretical issues – Read Wikinomics and Virtual Unreality

Terms

Intellectual property rights

Opportunities and responsibilities

II. Writing in Organizations (3 weeks)

Collaboration Models

Publishing roles

Editing Cycle

Trust and Delivery

One Touch and Pass

III. Tools and their User (3 weeks)

Word

Cloud Collaborations

Social Networks

Kindle Single, Google, Scribd, WordPress, Fiction Arcade, etc.

Consult the online Calendar a DAY OR TWO BEFORE coming to class and then manage your time appropriately.

Do not omit a reading because the professor forgot to mention it. We are not in high school; this will be no forced march through a textbook with questions for you to answer to make sure you’ve done the reading. We are engaging cutting edge ideas, many of which are in flux even as the course goes forward. Students must accept the adult responsibility of doing their work when it is due. Which of you will say to your future boss, “You forgot to tell me to flip the burger, but you have to pay me, anyway.” Good luck with that attitude. Give yourself a chance to succeed.

All plans are subject to change. Life is uncertain. Live with it.

You are urged to print this syllabus but also to consult it online at where you will find all links are hot. That will save you a bucket of typing.

Work smart, not hard. Steal from the best. You lie, and I will swear, provided to do the work in good faith.

Welcome to the 21st century.

Do you want to be a consumer of knowledge, a manager, or a creator? Can you be all three?

|Seminar in Modern Publishing |

|ENL 412-01 Fall 2014 |

|(TENTATIVE PLAN) P. Glasser |

|Sessions |GOALS & ACTIVITIES (graded in BOLD) |

|1 -3 |Orientation |

| |Grade Auction |

| |The Privacy/Data Experiment |

| |Reports for session #2 |

| |All students need to comment on any of the 15 Significance Reports. |

| | |

| |Know What Glasser Knows (HW) Getting a Common Vocabulary “Business Basics” at |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| |Intellectual Property Rights & Modern Publishing: Who Owns Your Data? Who Owns Your Content? — Facebook, YouTube,|

|3–14 |WordPress, Google, Twitter, and other “free” services. |

| |TANSTAAFL |

| | |

| |Disruptive Technologies |

| |Who was William Caxton and why was he important? – 2 student presentation – 20 minutes – volunteers needed |

| | |

| |Virtual Unreality pp 203-207 due Session #3 |

| | |

| |Due session #3 |

| |Copyright Term Extension Act- aka The Mickey Mouse Protection Act (really) |

| |Digital Millennium Copyright Act |

| |Digital Media Consumer Rights Act (proposed) |

| |When John Perry Barlow (look him up) said, “Information wants to be free,” he left us with a conundrum: How |

| |shall we reward innovation and artists? |

| |A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace: |

| | |

| |Session #4-5 |

| |Is Cyberspace an independent realm? If so, what rules should we have? If not, how can it be governed? |

| |Observe this 3 minute video: |

| |Develop arguments: who owns it? MGM, Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth, Elvis Presley, or costascenes? Is this |

| |mashup a misuse of art, or is it a new form of art? Should YouTube publish it? What if MGM or the Presley estate|

| |ask that it be taken down? Would they be discouraging innovation or guarding their property? Is “Fan Fiction” the|

| |equivalent for text? Compare to |

| | |

| |DUE SESSION BY SESSION 6 |

| | |

| |33 NEWSPAPER READING—POSTED ONLINE AT |

| | |

| |Textbook Reading Sessions 8-10 |

| |VIRTUAL UNREALITY pp 1-114 |

| | |

| |Textbook Reading Sessions 10-14 |

| |VIRTUAL UNREALITY pp 115-ff. |

| | |

| |WHITE PAPERS. |

| |You and up to one other student may collaborate on all of the required white paper case studies. Number 4 may |

| |engage teams of 4. The papers are due on the day they are to be discussed in class. Please, try not to discuss |

| |your answers with anyone but your partner(s) before the class discussions. |

| | |

| |#1 is due Tuesday Sep 16 |

| |#2 is due Tuesday Sep 30 |

| |#3 is due Tuesday Oct 14 |

| |#4 is due Tuesday Oct 28 AND Oct 30. |

| | |

|Sessions 16 - 24 |WRITING IN ORGANIZATIONS |

| |PWI – We Go Into Business: Professional Writing Incorporated, LLP, |

|[pic] |What were the historical effects of Gutenberg’s printing press? (2 student volunteers needed) |

| |Business Models: advertizing, subscriptions, unit sales, service, work for hire, open circ, closed circ |

| |Mash-ups, User-Created Content, Social Networking |

| |a. The Huffington Post – history and business model (2 students report: 15 minutes) |

| |b. PODs – options and services (2 students report: 15 minutes) |

| |c. SELF PUBLISHING (4 students reports: 15 minutes) |

| | |

| |Read WIKINOMICS pp.1-150 |

| |comment: 46-48, and p 145 |

| |Is this book out of date already?? Where you see MySpace, see Facebook. |

| |WIKINOMICS pp 150 – ff |

| | |

| |The Publishing Cycle – Pitch, Assign, Compose, Edit, Publish, Publicize (see illustration document) |

| |Professional Collaboration models: iterative or team |

| |Editing in depth – who owns an article? |

| |Know Your Audience – print magazines – commercializing a niche |

| |5 An in-class pitch session |

| |Glasser will explain Query letters and niche publishing |

| |HW: Write and revise a 1-page query letter (graded) |

| |HW: 2-page paper assigned: due post Spring break. |

| |Look at all of the following. Analyze the quality and usefulness of THREE |

| |compare design, ease of use, content, and links. |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| | - a portal |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| | print and online |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| | a portal |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| |OPTIONAL CLASS PROJECT: |

| | |

| |Shall we review and revise and publish The English Handbook? |

| |Shall we publish Best Practices in Modern Publishing? |

| |Shall we publish The ENL 412 Facebook? |

| |Who has an idea to pitch? or sall we do 4 group projects, with 4 editors....hmmm? |

| | |

|24- finish |You are required to attend the undergraduate student reading on November 20 from 1:45 to 3:00 pm in the Metro |

| |Room |

|[pic] | |

| |TOOLS ANDS THEIR USES |

| | |

| |Using Online Collaborative Spaces – Google Docs and Cloud computing |

| |HW: Before class view: “Google Docs in Plain English” |

| |Repositories and collaborative spaces |

| |Collaborative models |

| | |

| |Final project: required |

| | |

| |Creat a Blog that is an ad for you! What value can you bring an organization? |

| | |

| |Blog Dog & Pony Show – read and analyze classmates’ online work. |

[pic][pic]

-----------------------

Office Hours

M: 4:00 – 4:30

T &: TH 3:00 – 4:15

other hours by appointment

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download