Welcome to classes I have already taught!
From this website you'll find resources about the classes I teach, my research, and some information about me outside of being an English Professor.
I have taught a variety of courses ranging from introductions to college writing to technical writing to couses in digital technology and culture. Below you will find brief descriptions and links to the coures I have taught.
This course is intended to expand upon what you’ve learned from “regular” multimedia authoring (English/DTC 355) and improve your digital visual and digital textual savvy. In this course we will develop and design web sites that thoughtfully engage audiences through both their aesthetic and technological approach. This is NOT a course solely focused on software or programming, however we will spend a good deal of time familiarizing ourselves with the basic workings of HTML, XHTML, CSS, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Flash. We will also learn about web standards, usability, information architecture, how to manage large-scale client-based projects, and work with clients.
The Washington State Univeristy catalog describes this course as an exploration of the “cultural impact of electronic media, especially the World Wide Web; issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality online.”
In more and other words, we'll be examining how digital or cybercultures (i.e. the Internet, computer interfaces, cut & paste technologies, and gaming) reflect, deflect, and generate social constructions of gender, sexuality, race, the body, and class. For instance, we'll be trying to understand why and how the visual and personality choices one can make for a character in SIMS 3 promote a particular worldview. In some final words, we'll be analyzing the rhetorical impact of digital technologies on our worlds.
According to the university catalog, DTC 356 explores the social and cultural role of information; research with electronic sources; production, validation, storage, retrieval, evaluation, use, and the impact of electronic information.
To put it another way, we are gonna learn to pay attention to and critique how self and society are shaped by the ways information is presented, collected, vetted, and shared. Throughout the course you will be encouraged to examine how information is rhetorical—is composed of many decisions influencing its persuasive powers.
Pretend you’ve put on your high-heels and are on your way to a party. Or pretend you’ve put on your cowboy boots and are on your way to a Faith Hill concert. Then think about how you speak in these different situations. At the party, I reckon slang and acronyms are being used your momma wouldn’t want to hear. And I reckon at the concert, you might lose your voice from screaming “Dump McGraw.”
There is something in common about these situations that is the focus of our future study. The commonality we are looking at is Multimedia Authoring.
Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)is an introduction to the principal issues, practical and theoretical, in writing and composing across the curriculum as well as Writing In the Disciplines (WID). Topics for reading and discussion will include: models of the writing process; kinds of writing; writing for learning and writing for testing; and teaching visual rhetoric and information design.
In this course we will examine the research on writing WAC & WID in order to understand the history of this educational reform movement and the roles that writing plays as a tool for learning. That's the THEORY anyway.
This course will move beyond theory into practice. We are going to be active and experiment with theory. We'll accomplish this through class discussion of readings, class activities--peer feedback, experiments with lessons, and though your own teacher/research with your own students. That's the PRAXIS anyway.
english 402 & 403 (not available online)
english 302 (not available online)
Digital Technology and Culture (DTC) courses examine how digital or cybercultures (i.e. the Internet, computer interfaces, cut & paste technologies, and gaming) reflect, deflect, and generate social constructions of gender, sexuality, race, the body, and class. DTC courses analyze the rhetorical impact of digital technologies on our worlds.
But that’s not all! In addition to examining and understanding how the web constructs identity, you learn how to create identity. As a DTC major, you learn how to multimedia author--to create websites, movies, comics, flyers, and animation. You learn to generate rhetorical impact.
The purpose of English 151 is to teach you how to analyze, evaluate,and create academic arguments. This course is designed to instruct you to articulate the ways arguments are constructed--how they get you to feel or act in a certain way. And it is designed to instruct you in the ways to elicit such responses.
This course develops the writing skills you have already gained during your university career and aims to improve your ability to see and negotiate different writing situations you will encounter in future classes and work environments. The course does not aim to show you a universal standard for good writing. Instead, it will provide you with skills that will enable you to judge writing situations rhetorically—through, for instance, audience analysis, word choice, and arrrgument structure.
The main focus of English 111 is to introduce you to academic or college writing—to instruct you how to write analytically, evaluatively, and argumentatively for academic audiences. This course takes seriously the notion that you write to learn while you learn to write. Don’t worry we’ll figure that statement out later. Right now, just know that there is a lot of writing to be written in this class.
While this course won’t teach you how to write for every class—after all the rules for writing like a biologist are a lot different from the rules for writing like a blogger or facebooker, it will improve your ability to see and negotiate the different writing situations you will encounter in future classes and work environments. The course does not aim to show you a universal standard for good writing. Instead, it will provide you with skills that will enable you to judge writing situations rhetorically through audience analysis, word choice, and argument structure. This course will provide you with skills for understanding and constructing and analyzing a number of written genres. Moreover, you will learn a number of rhetorical techniques through which you can persuade an audience.