This is the syllabus as of the first day of class. Revisions to the syllabus will be made available in the Download area.
Week 1
September 27 (Class 1)
Introduction to Course
Week 2
October 2
No Class (International Professional Communication Conference)
Read (for Class 3) Farkas, “The Explicit Structure of Print and On-Screen Documents.”
October 4 (Class 2)
A (Very Brief) History of Literacy
The TC 510 Conceptual Framework
Write a short bio of yourself and post it on Epost.
Read Heller, Tom Suzuki’s obituary in the New York Times, (9/12/06).
Read Wikipedia, “Genre” and “Genre Studies.”
Begin reading (for Class 5) Tracey, Rugh, and Starkey, Sequential Thematic Organization of Publications (STOP).
Note: I recommend that you read the assignments for each class in the sequence in which the items are listed on the syllabus.
Week 3
October 9 (Class 3)
PowerPoint
Read Parker, “Absolute PowerPoint.”
Read Schwartz, “The Level of Discourse Continues to Slide.”
Read Thompson, “PowerPoint Makes You Dumb.”
Read Farkas, “Toward a Better Understanding of PowerPoint Deck Design.”
October 11 (Class 4)
The Standard Expository Model
The Codex
Document Structure
Read McCloud, “Follow that Trail” (I Can’t Stop Thinking #4).
Peruse (lightly) McCloud, “Zot Online: Hearts and Minds (Part #12).
Examine the Iliinsky book diagram.
Read Farkas, “The Linear-Hierarchical Model.”
Examine the “Choosing a Canoe” exercise.
Examine Digital Page Author documents.
Read Chandler, “Montaigne and the Word Processor.”
Week 4
October 16 (Class 5)
Genre
Read Cooke, “Information Acceleration and Visual Trends in Print, Television, and Web News Sources.”
Read Delin, Bateman, and Allen, “A Model of Genre in Document Layout.”
Read Allen, Bateman, and Delin, “Genre and Layout in Multimodal Documents: Towards an Empirical Account.”
Read Chandler, “An Introduction to Genre Theory.”
Peruse Thurber, “The Macbeth Murder Mystery.”
October 18 (Class 6)
Alternative Document Formats: Information Mapping and STOP
Read Horn, “What Kinds of Writing Have a Future?”
Read Horn, “Structured Writing as a Paradigm.”
Complete your reading of Tracey, Rugh, and Starkey, Sequential Thematic Organization of Publications (STOP).
Peruse selected STOP documents.
Week 5
October 23 (Class 7)
QuikScan and VSTF
Read Zhou and Farkas, “Improving Reading with QuikScan: Introduction and Experimental Validation.”
Read Zhou and Farkas. “Design Work on the QuikScan Document Format.”
Read Walker, Schloss, Vogel, Gordon, Fletcher, and Walker, “Visual-Syntactic Text Formatting: Theoretical Basis and Empirical Evidence for Impact on Human Reading.”
October 25 (Class 8)
Guest Class: Lindsay Bennion (IBM), Technologies and Processes for Large-Scale Document Management
Visual Hierarchies on the Page and Screen
Read Fisher, “Moving from Single Sourcing to Reuse with XML DITA.”
Read Horn, “Knowledge Mapping for Complex Social Messes.”
Revisit Delin, Bateman, and Allen, “A Model of Genre in Document Layout.”
Peruse selected knowledge maps and related graphics.
Examine Scriptographic graphics.
Peruse selected conference posters.
Week 6
October 30 (Class 9)
Hypertext
Read Wikipedia, “Hypertext.”
Read Farkas, “Hypertext and Hypermedia” and “The Linear-Hierarchical Model.”
Read selected articles from Keep, McLaughlin, and Parmar, The Electronic Labyrinth.
Explore Bernstein, Hypertext Gardens.
Read Nielson, “Reviving Advanced Hypertext.”
Read Farkas and Farkas, “Writing for the Web” (Chapter 10, Principles of Web Design).
Read John Henry exercise.
November 1 (Class 10)
Hypertext and Modularity
Hypertext Authoring
Read Lee, “Expanding Hypertext: Does It Address Disorientation?”
Read de Bra, “Adaptive Educational Hypermedia on the Web.”
Read Raban, excerpt from review of The Atomic Bazaar by William Langewiesche.
Prepare hypertext authoring exercises
Distribute an article or similar resource of your own choosing to class members and instructor.
Week 7
November 6 (Class 11)
Help Systems, Ebooks, Websites
Review assigned help systems.
Peruse Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB articles).
Peruse promotional material from Sony on the Sony Reader for ebooks.
http://www.learningcenter.sony.us/assets/itpd/reader/
Read one or more of the web design resources distributed by your classmates.
November 8 (Class 12)
Multimedia
Examine “Biology for Engineers”
(http://www.biologyforengineers.org).
Read Clark, “Six Principles of Effective e-Learning: What Works and Why.” (summary of research by Richard Mayer).
Read Mayer and Moreno, “Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning.”
Read Tversky, Morrison, and Betrancourt, “Animation: Can It Facilitate?”
Read Cotton and Oliver, "Hypermedia Applications: Education."
Week 8
November 13 (Class 13)
Exam
November 15 (
Class 14)
Adaptive Documents
Read Rockley, “Dynamic Content Management.”
Read Selections from the Adaptive Web section of Communications of the ACM 45: 5. (Brusilovsky, Bental, Billsus, Cheverst, de Bra, and Andre).
Read Kiernan, “Multimedia Data Base at Carnegie Mellon Lets You ‘Interview’ Albert Einstein.”
Peruse the TC 510 Elvis Presley Interview.
Week 9
November 20 (Class 15)
Virtual Reality
Two-minute Previews of Course Projects
Review of Exam
Read Jackson, Randolph L. and Eileen Fagan, “Collaboration and Learning within Immersive Virtual Reality.”
Read Harril, “Readers Become Part of the Action” (University of Washington press release).
Read Billinghurst, Kato, and Poupyrev, “The MagicBook - Moving Seamlessly between Reality and Virtuality.”
November 22
No Class (Thanksgiving)
Week 10
November 27 (Class 16)
Open Documents: Blogs, Bboards, and Wikis
Revisit Kiernan, “Multimedia Data Base at Carnegie Mellon Lets You 'Interview' Albert Einstein.”
Read Wei, Maust, Barrick, Cuddihy, and Spyridakis, “Wikis for Supporting Distributed Collaborative Writing.”
Read Raynes–Goldie, “Pulling Sense Out of Today’s Informational Chaos: LiveJournal as a Site of Knowledge Creation and Sharing.”
November 29 (Class 17)
Publishing and Distribution
Read Bush, “As We May Think,” sections 6-8.
Read Nelson, “Xanadu: Document Interconnection Enabling Re-use with Automatic Author Credit and Royalty Accounting.”
Peruse lightly, Nelson, excerprt from Computer Lib / Dream Machines.
Read Berghel, “A Cyberpublishing Manifesto.”
Read Farkas and Farkas, “An Introduction to Copyright Law” (Appendix B, Principles of Web Design).
Week 11
December 4 (Class 18)
Presentations on Course Projects
December 6 (Class 19)
Presentations on Course Projects
Course Wrap-up
Final paper/project due; distribute to entire class.
