Entries Tagged 'Module 1' ↓

This cartoon appeared in the New Yorker in 1993, the year that the internet became a familiar technology to a greater number of users outside of universities and research institutes. It reflected the social advantage of the net at the time–relative anonymity–and became accepted wisdom. The connotation? Don’t trust what you read online, because you never know who’s on the other computer.

In the intervening sixteen years things have changed, though not completely. There are ways to tell if your interlocutor is a dog, and it turned out that some of our most trusted newspapers had dogs working for them. But the pendulum swings back again, as rumors on Twitter are treated as “truthy.” Which leaves us with a question: Who can we trust?

And the reciprocal question: How do I get people to trust me?

Persuasion 101

All writing is persuasive. You may not agree with that claim, and it is now necessary for me to try to convince you of it. (Even if I had said “I think all writing is persuasive,” a much weaker sentence, there would still be the implication that I thought you should think that too.) How is it that we are able to convince people of something?

The art of convincing someone of something, of rhetoric, is actually one of the oldest topics of organized education. “Communication” is sometimes seen as a johnny-come-lately among the academic disciplines, but as a formal discipline of study, we are far older than most. While there were certainly those who talked about rhetoric before him, many of the essential ideas of rhetoric came from Aristotle. He suggested that for people to be persuaded, you needed to hit them at three levels: you had to convince them you were worthy of being listened to, you had to provide them with a rational argument, and you had to convince their hearts as well as their heads. If you look over the schedule of the class, you’ll see that the first three module topics are related to these three areas, if only loosely.

We begin with how to be credible, or how not to be a dog. And to help us with this, I’m going to converse with a recent article by Howard Rheingold, “Crap Detection 101.” After all, we should avoid being caught in people’s crap detectors, shouldn’t we?

Who is the author?

Rheingold begins with this simple question, which we have seen is not so simple on the internet. Again, no one knows you are a dog. In this course, as in others, I’ve encouraged you to write pseudonymously. There are a lot of very good reasons for this: it lets you practice your writing and have it be marginally less likely to come up in future confirmation hearings, for one. And for some of you, it may let you write publicly things that would otherwise get you in trouble with your employer, spouse, or children. With even this thin layer of anonymity comes certain freedom, but, as Fezzig had it, “People in masks cannot be trusted.”

Everyone on the internet is, in some sense, masked. Nothing you can see on the internet makes a person real. Everything can be faked. I have personae that I have created on the web with job histories, friends, and yes, even photographs. In some sense, we are all constructing ourselves online, presenting an image of ourselves as we would like to be seen by others. We don’t pick the least flattering photo of ourselves, we pick the ones that put us in the best light, shot and cropped to make us look nothing like our real-world selves. This can easily be seen as egotistical and self-absorbed. But it also makes us more credible.

That is, it is worthwhile thinking about whether people will believe you when you write, and what image they have of you when they are reading your words. Including a photograph on your page makes you more credible–it declares: “I’m laying my body on the line, here.” It probably makes it more credible even if you look like you are drunk, or are wearing something that you wouldn’t want your mother to see you in. Because, at the very least, it suggests that you are a real person. If you look wise, of a “certain age,” and are attractive, you become even more credible. Don’t blame me for the last bit: humans trust pretty people.

Rheingold suggests using easywhois.com to determine who owns a particular domain name. This assumes some things: namely that the site is on its own domain. Spending money on a site again suggests a degree of investment by the authors. Even though domains may cost less than a copy of Vogue, the thought is that you must really mean business if you’re willing to spring for something other than dogstar89.blogger.com. So, for example, if you visited www.martinlutherking.com, you might check to see who the person who registered the domain is,as Rheingold suggests. Easywhois reports that the registered owner is Don Black, with an email address at stormfront.org, a “white pride” site. Given this, you might interpret the content differently.

As an aside, what if you run my site through Easywhois? You get nothing. I’ve made my registration data private (running it through Dreamhost as a proxy), to avoid being spammed. So, it doesn’t get you too far. A fairly significant number of domain registrants now keep their registration data private. But this step of checking your sources against a broad set of other sources is key.

Turtles all the way down

Since people can be invented on the web, it’s important to find out who thinks this person is real, and worthy of listening to. “Wait,” I can hear you say, “don’t we then need to check those people’s bona fides in turn, ad infinitum.” I would then tell you to lay off the Latin.

Yes, it’s turtles all the way down, but eventually, you will likely run into someone that seems trustworthy. Or you don’t, and that is troubling. Let’s try me! Now, I’ve given you something to go on. I have a short bio on my blog that tells you who I am, and a photograph of me in trademark aloha shirt. (Note: My blog would be more compelling if that photo and some form of bio showed up on the front page.) From that Bio, you can find out that I am a professor at Quinnipiac University. That’s actually something easily checked: since universities rarely keep that information secret. There are other clues to my identity there.

You could just go to Google. I’m way more than a 1000, and Rheingold is approaching a million. Now, hit counts alone don’t tell you that much, but a glance through who is talking about him suggests that he must be a pretty credible guy.

Remember, the point here is if this is the best way to find out about someone, you should be thinking about what happens when someone does this sort of cursory investigation of you. You want them to find that a lot of people trust you, and that the people who trust you are in turn credible. We already do this in various ways. If Oprah says she likes me or my book, I would become instantly rich–the reputational boost could be translated almost immediately into credibility. People would pay ridiculous sums just to hear what I had to say, because Oprah said it was worth it.

The moral of this section is: Get on Oprah.

Barring that, think seriously about how your site and your person is portrayed on the web. It is unlikely that many people will pick up a phone and make sure you are who you say you are. In my experience, with one or two exceptions, most news outlets won’t even do that. They will look for you on the web, and decide whether you are worthy of listening to.

You’re so pretty

Your photo matters, but that’s not the only way you make a first impression (and continued impression) online. The way your site looks–it’s layout and design–says a lot about whether it’s credible. When you encounter a site that looks home-made, you are less likely to trust it. If it is a site that is from a well-worn template, or makes use of elements or layouts that are so common that they feel like a cliché, the reader may not object the site outright, but may question the source a bit more.

When we get a wedding invitation in the mail, it might be hand engraved on heavy cotton rag paper, with a wax seal, or it may be a photocopied flier stapled together. When it’s coming from a friend, you probably aren’t too influenced by the way it looks, but when you don’t know the person, the fact that they have spent some amount of money on the invitation suggests that they are taking it more seriously, or are wealthy enough that they can afford not to take it seriously.

The web is democratizing in that everyone displays their message on the same screen. It doesn’t matter if you are a dog, as long as you are a dog with a good design sense. Generally, good design costs good money, but if you happen to be able to create something that–like your prose–is simple, easy to understand, and easy to navigate, you have also created an environment in which readers feel like they can trust the content.

If you start to read and find that the author is unable to construct a good sentence then your chance of believing the content is reduced. While there remain segments of the population in the US and elsewhere that are distrustful of formal education, the majority of readers will be more likely to trust you if they feel as though you are well-educated. As noted, they might be able to track down you credentials and find out where you went to school. But often the ability to write clearly is a proxy for that. Anyone who has spent enough time in school has developed a good grasp of standard English, and competence in writing is often–rightly or wrongly–seen as an indication of capability in other spheres.

First impressions matter online. You only have a few seconds to capture someone and get them to read your first paragraph. Getting them to actually scroll down enough to keep reading requires Herculean effort. You need to find every opportunity to capture the attention of these users and get them to read you.

BJ Fogg and his colleagues at Stanford have termed the process of persuasion using digital media as captology. In an article introducing the area, they provide eight guidelines for designing for credibility:

1. Reflect the “real world” aspects of the organization (or person).
2. Invest resources in digital design. Dogs with great designers still draw an audience.
3. Make sure it’s easy to use, and the organization makes sense to the user.
4. Include markers of expertise. This includes your position, if it helps, as well as citations to your own work elsewhere.
5. Include markers of trustworthiness. This means linking to outside materials and sources, and providing ways of verifying content across the board.
6. Tailor the user experience. They say that providing an interface that recognizes repeat visitors, for example, seems to lead to a small increase in perceived credibility for the site.
7. Avoid overly commercial elements. Too many adds makes you wonder whether you are a reader or just a sucker.
8. Avoid the pitfalls of amateurism. They note that “’small’ glitches seem to have a large impact” on the perception of credibility.

What is particularly interesting about that list of guidelines, I think, is the way in which content and presentation bleed together. Particularly in the early days of newspapers going online there was an attitude that said that moving their newspaper content online was enough. As I’ve said earlier, I think good writing is good writing, in any context, but that does not mean that you can remain unaware of how your work is presented and interpreted. Newspapers assumed that there would be a “halo effect,” that the fact that they were published on real paper would make them credible online. Of course, they’ve come to understand that–even with our best efforts–content is sometimes inseparable from context or presentation, and that it is the combination of the two that instills a degree of confidence in the veracity and depth of the coverage.

On the web, one of the ways you can demonstrate credibility is to be linked to from great sources. This is actually at the core of Google’s ranking algorithm: who links to you, and who links to them in turn, determines how close to the top of the results page you appear. But just as important to the reader is who you link to. This is important in news writing (who are your sources) and academic work (who do you cite). The web is made up of hyperlinks, so who you link to and how says something about how your readers will interpret your credibility.

Who are you citing?

Above, I’ve namechecked and linked a prominent researcher in the field. I haven’t cited them in a formal way, since the whole reason for a citation is to make it easy to find the source material. A hyperlink does that better than any other way I could think of. Why have I cited that original material?

I cited it because I was honor-bound to do so. To have drawn even inspiration from that original work and not have cited it would, I think, have been dishonorable. The concept of honor doesn’t come up often these days, but perhaps it should. One of the reasons you trust what I have to say is that you trust that I am behaving honorably. Honor goes beyond ethics: I’m more than just following the rules. I’m doing it because it is the right and just thing to do.

But it also reflects well on me. If I can show that the ideas I’m presenting are not just my own invention, but resting on solid footings, you are more likely to accept what I have to say as being the truth. Ironically, what I don’t cite also adds to this credibility. If you see that I am citing from sources that lack credibility, you will likely decide that I lack credibility as well.

As Daphne du Maurier once told me, “I don’t like books which are full of name dropping.” It is easy to take it too far. At worst, it is a logical fallacy, an appeal to authority, that suggests that someone must be right merely because they are a celebrity. Authorities, of various stripes, are often wrong. But that doesn’t mean such an appeal cannot be convincing.

You may become something of an authority yourself, but you should avoid relying to heavily on your own opinion alone. I’ve done that too much already in this posting! The best writing pushes the question of credibility down the line: “Don’t just take my word for it…”

In the coming week we will talk a bit more about the use of evidence. For now, I will only say: Know more than you tell us. Many feel that if they have checked out six books and twelve articles they need to find a way to cite them all. Doing so is counter-productive. The value you add to a writing is to be able to select what is important to your argument. In all cases, you should know considerably more than you are telling us. The value of your presentation is as much in what you decide is not important to repeat as it is what you think we need to know.

What are you selling?

One of the other reasons citation is good is that it is a gift to your readers. If they, in turn, want to find the original work, you’ve provided them with the means. Often commercial sites do not link outside their own site, because they want to remain “sticky.” But good citation, and good hyperlink, tells the reader something about why you are writing. The perceived reason for your writing is important.

We live in a media environment saturated by advertising. Most people are unaware of just how much advertising affects the way they live their lives, but many approach a site online with some skepticism as to motive. And this is a good stance for them to take. Those producing materials are put in a bind: the most trustworthy presenter is one without an axe to grind, but everyone tries to be persuasive when they write.

The trick is that the audience must perceive that the author is writing with good will toward it. One of the ways to convince them of this is to tell them: I want you to be more successful by doing what I recommend. That is essentially the role of the teacher. Unfortunately, it is also the role of the car salesman: I want to put you in this Veyron because I know that it will make you happy. Nonetheless, thinking of your work as something you are giving to the audience can help you to frame it in a way that it will be best received.

Here, I am disagreeing somewhat with Zinsser, who suggests that you write for you, not for the audience. I understand his perspective, and it is a mistake to assume too much about your audience and their desires and interests, but I think ultimately that you have to treat everything you write–including and perhaps especially–ad copy as a gift to make your audience smarter, happier, and better people.

So, what Aristotle said about speaking applies to writing, and to writing on the web. One of the things you need to do is to convince the audience that you are someone worth listening to: that you are knowledgeable, virtuous, and have goodwill toward the reader.

If you cannot clearly communicate your ideas to another person, you do not really have ideas.

We are social creatures. Our minds extend beyond our own heads and that is what makes us special. There are some who believe that thoughts exist in our heads and then must be translated into language so that others might understand them. Too many times I have heard from students “I know what I mean, I just don’t know how to say it.” I was one of those students who believed this, but I no longer do. We only truly understand what we can adequately explain to others.

Now, there are at least two exceptions to this rule. The first is that we may have subconscious “thoughts,” but these are really instincts, remnants of our animal brains. I know that I have an unusual attraction to a particular shade of aquamarine, but cannot explain why I have that attraction. But that sort of instinctual thought is different from the rational ideas we are able to communicate to others.

The other exception is for those writing in a language other than their first. There is a point in learning a foreign language when you begin to think in that language. At first, just a little bit, and then more and more. It’s entirely possible that you can articulate an idea in one language, but have difficulty translating that idea into another.

As a general rule, though, clear thought is reflected in clear language.

An American English

There are many Englishes. Not just the Queen’s English and what we speak here, but variations from region to region across the globe. But there is a particular tendency in American English toward short, declarative sentences, and concise phrasing generally. It’s the kind of style the prefers short, sweet, and to the point. When we think of writers from Mark Twain to Abraham Lincoln to William James, we are confronted by writing that is largely devoid of fancy constructions and obscure words. Ours is a language that is marked by pragmatism: putting things in such a way that they “work,” that they clearly indicate what is meant and persuade the listener to its truth.

What “works” is language that says precisely what the writer means to say. Sentences should be like nails. They should drive in true and clean and then be followed by the next, in a series that holds an argument together. Yes, this means excising “waffle words”–it’s very rare that you really need a “very” or an “often.” But you must push beyond this. Colloquialisms should go. Clichés should be replaced with something clearer. You should look at each sentence and decide whether there is some way to make it more direct, which often means “shorter.”

The rule is the same for designing a web page and for creating a good piece of writing. Look at every element and decide whether the whole thing is better off without it. As Coco Chanel instructed: “Before leaving the house, a lady should stop, look in the mirror, and remove one piece of jewelry.”

Making your writing more direct and removing extraneous verbiage extra words and flourishes is not hard work, but it does take time. As Blaise Pascal once wrote, “I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.” The best time to do this is probably after you have completed a draft, and not while you are writing. In my experience, too much revising while you are writing can slow down the writing process overall. That backspace key is ever so inviting sometimes, and while it is good to use it judiciously, closely editing work while you are writing it is counterproductive. Perfecting a sentence that may never make it through the process of trimming back an overwrought argument is time wasted. As long as you are able to write, use that forward momentum to your advantage.

The Grammar Game

There are three reasons to adhere to standards and usage. The first is because your boss makes you. This, for me, is the least compelling reason, but sells a lot of AP Stylebooks. We won’t be too concerned with that here. I believe good writing works in any context, from IM to scholarly discourse.

The second is that when you adhere to the standards you become more credible to particular audiences. In the next post, I write a bit more about credibility. Here I will note that especially as the world becomes more networked and more of our interactions occur using text, adherence to grammatical standards is often the first impression you make. Obviously misspellings will hurt you, but mainly because they show you are too lazy to spell check. If you misuse an “it’s” or write “affect” when you mean “effect,” or–perhaps worst of all–make use of a word in a way that demonstrates a lack of understanding of its explicit or implicit meaning, many will take that as a signal that your opinion is ill-informed. I am one of those people.

I want to make an important distinction. I don’t mean you have to write in a particular academic style. (Again, unless your boss tells you to.) I have no problem with the first person, as the first word in the last four sentences should make abundantly clear. My preference is for “must” rather than “have to” and “very” more than “a lot”–and generally, I tend to prefer more formal diction to less formal. But that is also how I speak. These are less an issue of “appropriate” diction and style, and more an expression of what works for me.

And that third reason for adhering to rules of grammar is the most important for me. I like to write clearly, and I think a well constructed piece of writing is a beautiful thing. It’s not a question of following the rules, it’s a recognition that the rules provide a feeling for what is expected and what is acceptable. If I decide, unilaterally, to start spelling “verry” with two Rs, just as Abraham Lincoln did, it will be as jarring and confusing to the reader as if Lincoln had spelled the word “very.” Adhering to convention means that your ideas are free to come shining through without your writing getting in the way.

As a practical matter, you should take some time to read through a grammar book. Many of these are deathly boring, though there are a few that are survivable. Following the rules for the sake of following the rules is just as bad as breaking them because you don’t know any better. My aim is not to become a perfect grammarian, and I don’t want that of you. I want you to be able to write clearly.

And I hope you can grow an appreciation for how cool writing can be, and what role grammar plays in that. The best reason to adhere to the prevailing rules of grammar is that that constraint actually provides you with the freedom to communicate more clearly. Being able to say something clearly–and to be able to reason clearly, as a result–is something worth going after.

Kaizen

By using a foreign word where an English one will do, I am violating one of the rules of simplicity. However, the word is common enough to have some honorable English status, even if it doesn’t appear in the Oxford English Dictionary. Kaizen is a Japanese term that refers to the idea of “continual improvement,” in every process. It’s usually meant in the context of industrial processes, but it applies equally to personal processes. If you are trying to remember to floss more often, you are involved in a process of kaizen.

Your writing sucks. Not just yours, but everybody else’s. There is no one who can correctly say “I’m done. I know how to write.” Since you cannot improve everything at once, you need to do a few things. First, you need to dedicate time for a continual, systematic assessment of your writing to discover what you need to improve, and you need to work time into your schedule to improve those things that are the most important first.

I’m currently working on two things. The first is that I have a tendency to have problems with verb agreement between singular expressions of plural items. For example, I might write “the audience must perceive that the author is writing with good will toward them.” The second is one that is a pet peeve for many people: “it’s” for “its.” Now, I should make clear that this isn’t a matter of not knowing which “its” goes where, or what verb agrees with which subject. I know the rules, and if I take the time, I’ll correct a mistake. I’ve never sent something to an editor with “it’s” when I meant “its.” However, I do occasionally find the error in a hasty blog posting some time after I’ve published it. It’s a little like finding out that you’ve spent the day with something unseemly on your face. I could have avoided it, if I’d just spent more time revising.

These lectures could be much better if I spent more time revising them. There will be typos, there will be grammatical errors, as Sam has already shown, there will be completely nonsensical replacements of words. All of these could have been avoided if I had spent more time reading and rewriting. I understand that there is an absolute limit beyond which you cannot spend more time revising, and I understand that most of you will not hit that upper limit in this class or in your life. My only hope is that I can convince you to take at least as much time revising as you take to write. That time will not only improve whatever document you happen to be working on, but will likely improve future documents as you hammer into your consciousness the rules that you have choose to focus on.

This is a course about writing. It may seem strange that it exists at all. After all, isn’t writing so last-two-millennia, depending on where you live? Are we going to be learning all about hw 2 mak yr sents short? In other words, can I just make use of this syllabus.

In some sense, we won’t be that far off. There are courses a bit like this in universities across the US. Many of them are a thinly veiled attempt to teach English majors and journalists HTML. You will, I suspect, be happy to learn this isn’t that sort of a class. Some are really about layout, and not writing at all. Some teach scriptwriting for the small screen, or interactive fiction. While we may touch on these topics it isn’t our primary concern.

My main focus for this course is on writing. Now, writing happens–or should happen–in most courses, just as it happens in most careers. I worked with someone many years ago named Bill. He was VP of marketing for a subsidiary of a Fortune 500 company. He complained on a weekly basis about writing. He said he got into market analysis to avoid writing, and eventually worked in marketing design for the same reason. He actually learned to write acceptably, though not well. His climb to VP would have been stymied early on without such facility, because regardless of the industry, management requires clear communication. And most of that communication happens in text.

I Already Write Good

I know from previous courses with you, and from students in general, that you come into the class with vastly different levels of experience and comfort in writing. My normal expectation in assessing work is to assume a certain range of expertise and grade accordingly. I don’t usually go in for the “A for effort” or “I know you worked really hard,” sort of grading practices. In some ways this course is different.

People become very anxious about writing, and that tends to make them worse writers. Why? Because there are really only two proven ways to improve your writing: reading and writing. I hope I can make those improvements happen more quickly during our short time together, but generally, the more you write, and the more consciously you try to improve your writing, the better you will become.

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a great writer. I am lucky enough to be in a position to get paid for my writing, and that means that I am also able to get great editors to look at my work. Every year, I become a better writer, and every year I realize how much I overestimated my ability in the past. In fact, I think the two are probably inversely proportionate. I remember thinking in my first year of college that I was an outstanding writer. I tended to title my papers things like “Prof. Petracca is Wrong.” As I’ve had the opportunity to co-author work, and to work with great editors, I’ve realized just how bad a writer I am.

Perhaps that fails to instill confidence. Writing is a craft, one that I am trying to improve myself. What I can promise is to be a fair critic of your work, and to suggest ways in which you might improve. I know that I would be open and thankful for the same sort of criticism from you. If you are open to a bit of coaching, I hope we can make good use of our short time together.

Oh, and the subtitle of this section is a joke. If you didn’t get it, we have some work to do.

Five Weeks!

We are doing a sixteen week course in five weeks. This is, without exaggeration, impossible. There are some things that can be effectively intensified. Intensive, immersive second language courses can work well. Even certain math courses can be accelerated to an extreme degree. But I’m not so sure about writing.

As a practical matter, this means that we are compressing the 144 hour course into five weeks, meaning that we need to devote just shy of 30 hours each week to it. That’s a lot of time, but I know that you are committed to it. The problem is not blocking out time; or rather, that is very much a problem, but not one I can help with much. Rather, the problem is that there is only so much thinking you can do without your brain turning to mush. Caffeine can assist in brain plasticity, but only so much. We want to avoid giving you that “brain-in-a-blender” feeling.

So, there is less writing than there would be in a similar 16-week course, and the writing tends to be shorter. As you will see, some of that writing is very short; I am asking you to Tweet. Even the longer pieces are not the kinds of in-depth analysis I would expect in a longer graduate seminar.

Nonetheless, I want you to make full use of those 30 hours. A significant part of that time will be spent reading and researching. An even more substantial part will be spent thinking. A big chunk should be devoted to revising. In fact, the smallest part of your time in this writing class should be spent actually writing.

Staying in Touch

I’ll keep my Skype and Google Chat clients up as much as I can. So, if you have a question, text or call me. If you are at a sticking point, get in touch with me as soon as possible–the week goes by to quickly otherwise. Likewise, don’t leave everything until Sunday night. It is a plan for certain disaster. Get a start on things as early as you can.

I’m going to try phone-in meetings this semester, for the first time. For those of you who have worked with virtual teams outside of the program, you know that these are pretty common. They are not ideal, but they are a proven technology, and still widely used. Hopefully this will work out for us. I’ll invite you each week, using a free phone conferencing system. There will likely be a long-distance charge, but my hope is that most of us have some sort of free long distance service. These are not at all mandatory, but will provide a chance for us to talk as a group, I hope. If you can, please at least attend the first of these. I will keep them as short as possible, while still addressing any concerns you might have.

Readings

I’ve asked you to buy Zinsser’s “On Writing Well,” and I’m asking you to read several of the chapters. I will refer to it here and there in these posts, but mostly, the two are complementary without being connected. I’ll also recommend that you purchase–if you don’t already own one–a good guide to grammar.

There are some brief readings linked on the schedule that you should look over. In the course of the five weeks, I’ll also link to items, as I have in this introduction, that are of interest, and you should at least check them out, but they are not required readings.

Posting Assignments

You’ll be posting your papers to the web. At this point in the program, you should be able to get something up on the web without too much trouble. With the exception of one assignment, these will be text documents. This can be a fairly simple HTML page, if you like, but the smart move is putting it up on a blog. If you still have access to your 501 blog, you are welcome to use it, or you can make use of Blogger or Wordpress.com. Or you can put it up on a wiki. As long as there is a public URL that I and your classmates can get to, we are in good shape.

Once it is up there, you need to tag the URL. Just bookmark the page in Diigo. I’ll take a look at what you’ve written, and highlight and comment on what you’ve written. You are encouraged to do the same for your classmates.

Generally, there are two “longer” written pieces due each week. What is meant by “longer”? I know it is a bit idiosyncratic, but I really don’t like to assign word counts. I’m strange that way, I know. If you write a magazine piece, they’ll want to know how many words it will be. If you write a book proposal they will want to know the same. I encourage you to set your own word limit, if that helps you. My advice is to begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.

There are, most weeks, ten “shorter” written pieces required. This can be brief descriptions or mini-reviews of web content, written as descriptions on Diigo. They can include recommendations and comments on your classmates work. They can also include tweets on Twitter that make an observation or link to something interesting.

In all your work, content matters–as always. For my courses, I usually favor content to presentation in my evaluation, but here I will look at them equally. I don’t think you can separate the two, in practice, but I will be paying much more attention to how you shape your argument, to the structure of your sentences, to the choice of your words.

If you make a grammatical mistake once, you get off scot-free. If I indicate the mistake, or class of mistake, and you continue to make it, then that will make up part of your evaluation. Basically, I’m trying to encourage you to practice, and to pay attention. Note that everything must be turned in on time, without exception. I realize the pace of the course makes falling behind easy, and I want to make sure that you don’t. For that reason, plan on doing the work early, if at all possible.

Where are my grades!

Half your grade is determined by timely and involved participation in each module. Have you done everything? Are your contributions outstanding or merely perfunctory. IF you send me an email with a self assessment by Sunday of each module, I’ll respond with my assessment of your assessment.

Half your grade is based on two extended and revised versions of things you have written during the semester. These should be posted separately from your original assignment. If you are unsure which of your assignments are best developed, I’d be happy to chat with you about it.

Plagiarism and Policies

The topic of this section is bound to insult some of you in the class who think that in a graduate course we shouldn’t have to talk about plagiarism. I happen to agree, but experience suggests to me that it is probably still necessary.

There are those who think that plagiarism is a dirty little thing that everyone does; akin to speeding or lying about what you were doing last night. Then there are those who think that plagiarism is a considerably worse than burglary, and only marginally better than genocide. I belong to the latter group.

I am incredulous of claims from students that they don’t know what plagiarism is. Plagiarism is when you take someone’s ideas without crediting them. It’s as easy as that. Are you supposed to take other people’s ideas (and words)? Of course! We live in a society, and knowledge doesn’t just come fully formed from your brain. You are expected to borrow ideas from others and re-mix them into something new, interesting, and useful.

So, when you do that, cite the source. For web texts, the easiest way to do this is frequently to link directly to the source. For things that are harder to get at, you need to use textual citations.

There are two schools of thought quotations. Journalists tend to prefer exact quotes to paraphrasing. However, in other forms of writing, you should try to rephrase the idea that you are borrowing in your own words. If the turn of phrase is idiosyncratic, or otherwise important to preserve in its original form, put it in quotation marks. If you’ve just heard a stirring speech and report that Churchill urged us not to be afraid of things, except for our own stifling anxiety–well, maybe you should have quoted in that case.

Paraphrasing does not mean replacing a few words with ones you picked up in a thesaurus. It means understanding the original idea, and restating it in your own words.

The syllabus notes that late work will result in a 10% reduction in grade per 24 hours. No exceptions. Since most of these grades are for participation, if you are contributing well after others are, it reduces the value to everyone. After being soft on such deadlines in past ICM-online courses, I am further convinced it doesn’t help anyone, and particularly because of the short length of the this course, I’m going hold fast to this policy.

The exception to this is the final two revisions. These must be in on time or you will not receive a passing grade in the class.

Don’t hire anyone to write or edit your work, but if you can convince someone to look over your work, or trade papers, I strongly encourage you to do so. If you can’t schedule enough time that you can set your work aside for at least half a day, and come back to it with fresh eyes before you submit it.

You may find that work you do in this class is helpful for later classes. You are welcome to submit some portion of the text you produce here as long as you clearly indicate to that instructor (even if it is me!) that you have submitted this work for credit in another class. For example, you may have a design exercise in which you need some text to use, but that is not directly relevant to the assignment. In that case, you may re-use this work only if you indicate that it has already been submitted for icm 506. Likewise, you should not submit work from another course to this one without my express permission ahead of time. Given the nature of this course, it is unlikely that I will provide such permission.

When in Doubt, Write

Writer’s block does not exist. Or, rather, the only solution for writers block is to write. Sure, there are other ways of concentrating, or of losing inhibitions, but all of these lead to the simply act of putting words to paper or screen. If you are ever stuck, sit down and type. It doesn’t matter what you type, just type. You can always go back and delete afterward, but you need some raw material to work on. Write about your cat, about your favorite colors, about politics, about your girlfriend. Just write.

There’s a chance that you only have one great phrase in your head, but if you don’t start writing now, you’ll never get to it.