I've been assigned to teach a mixed grad/underdrad course in the Spring entitled "Specialized Professional Writing," and my topic is writing for the net. My plan is to make the course as hands-on as possible, working with blogs, wikis, forums, databases, and possibly PowerPoint and Flash. I'd also like to cover social network sites and try to get at the meta-aspects of some of this stuff. I don't care about HTML or Javascript, and don't want to delve into design or video. Still wondering if podcasting or virtual environments will play a role.
So, I'm wondering, what are some good texts or online texts that could serve as a good introduction to this stuff? I don't want anything too heavy or theoretical; just something to cover the bases and help these students hit the ground running. I'd like the course to consist of discussion and collaborative work as much as possible, too.
I think my slant will be towards technical and professional writing; i.e., how you can earn a living doing this kind of writing. Any ideas?
Usability Testing
A huge part of writing for multimedia environments is understanding usability testing, beta testing. The pre-writing and revision process become much more important when tweaking a project is more complex than moving paragraphs around.
I teach a 200-level Writing for the Internet course
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/DennisJerz/EL236/2006/syllabus/
...and also a 400-level "New Media Projects" course that covers Flash and computer games.
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/DennisJerz/EL405/2006/syllabus/
I touch on interactive fiction in both games, as a way to teach procedural literacy. And both courses are project-based, so blogs are an important way to track progress. I used to teach a similar course that involved creating a website for a real client, but there's a communications course called "Corporate Communications," so I decided to emphasize personal and creative composition in my courses, rather than keeping a client happy.
The last time I taught the 200-level course, I was a little frustrated that some students took forever to get the basics of HTML coding. I had a book that I thought had wonderful step-by-step instructions, but some students were completely confused by the fact that they were working on an HTML file and a CSS file at the same time. In the 400-level course I used a free tool called Wink to record software demos that showed them exactly what buttons to click on in order to do the various tasks; that really helped. We did some 3D animation in Blender and some Half-Life 2 level designing, but those came late in the semester. The students really liked Flash, and wanted to spend more time with it.
I have a historical unit that covers Usenet and hacker culture, with the history of smileys and txt msg spk early in the semester. These days, few students use e-mail as extensively as their instructors do, so I've stepped up my instruction in that area.
Dennis G. Jerz
Jerz's Literacy Weblog
re: Usability Testing
I second the usability testing. A great book for this is Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think. My students always love it, and it's very "usable" in the sense that they can easily read it in two sittings. It also outlines and explains how to conduct a usability test.
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Charlie | cyberdash
peer editing exchange
This sounds like the kind of course where you should at least touch upon the Peer Editing Exchange.