COURSE GUIDE INTRODUCTION

This section of ENG 115 is offered by NVCC through the Extended Learning Institute (ELI). For information about ELI and how to register, go to the ELI Policies and Procedures Screen.

This Course Guide explains what you can expect to do and learn in Technical Writing. Please start by reading through this entire Course Guide. The table of contents on the left will help you to go back to specific areas later. Please print out the Course Guide, so you will have a paper reference handy. 

English 115 will develop your technical writing ability through extensive practice writing a variety of technical documents, including a research report. You will learn to write useful descriptions, proposals and reports that your intended readers can understand and respond to. You will work on audience, voice, tone, style, and content in your writing. The topics will depend on your own interests and field of study.

Since appearance and visual support are essential to modern technical writing, you will work with layout and the use of simple graphics, such as tables and charts, to enhance your technical writing. You will need to learn a bit about formatting documents for the WWW, so that you can post them to the course forum.

The methods of analysis, writing and presentation that you learn in this course will be useful to you immediately, in your work, in school, and in your personal business.

The textbook will give you the basic concepts and exercises to help you put each concept into practice. 

The Exercises will allow you to practice these concepts and share your writing with other students. Having a real audience for your writing will encourage you to be aware of what your readers need to know, and this in turn will help you to clarify the way you express your ideas.

Select topics to write about that are relevant to your own work or career field; some assignments may coincide with actual work projects that you are involved in, such as a technical report about an issue at your workplace. Your Research Report should draw on your primary field of interest and help you to solidify your research and writing skills in that field.

ASSUMPTIONS

• Good technical writing is good writing; it has a purpose, an audience, appropriate tone and format, and uses relevant visuals to aid communication.
• Writing is a complex process which involves brainstorming, planning, drafting, receiving feedback, revising, and editing.
• The more you write, the more effective your writing becomes.
• Reading and writing enhance one another, so developing your skills as a reader and as a writer are equally important in a composition course.
• Work is normally done with and for other people, especially in business and industry; stimulation from sharing writing with peers enriches and empowers the work of each individual.

GOALS

If you complete the course as directed and do well, you will develop your existing writing skills, so that you will be able to:

• write the kind of specialized reports required in your present and future occupations;
• identify the audience for your writing and prepare text suitable for that audience;
• select and use the appropriate formats and layouts for organizing your material, including plenty of white space;
• select and/or develop simple, yet appropriate visuals to give impact and clarity to your reports;
• pursue appropriate research methodology to develop your reports;
• document your reports correctly and completely;
• write a well-organized and effective research report

Textbook

John M. Lannon. TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION. Ninth Edition. Longman, 2002, ISBN: 0-321-089790

OR

John M. Lannon. TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION. Tenth Edition. Longman, 2006, ISBN: 0-321-270762

All general course materials, such as study guides and supplemental information will be available on the Internet. You may read them there or download and print them if you wish.

You may purchase your books and materials:

• in the ELI section of campus bookstores,
  (Note: ELI books are not available at the Medical Education Campus.)
• by mail order, or
• by telephone at 1-888-SHIP-TEXT or 703-671-0043
• online from MBSDirect (some textbooks are not available online)

Call before going to a campus bookstore to make sure the materials are in stock. If you don't see what you need, ask for assistance. Each bookstore has a separate section for ELI courses. Print this page and take it with you to avoid confusion.

DISTANCE LEARNING AND THE INTERNET

This section of English 115 is a distance course. We will not see one another, but we will be in contact:

• you will post your writing to public Forums
• your instructor will respond to your writing
• your fellow students may respond to your writing
• you are encouraged to read and respond to other students' writing
• you will exchange email with the instructor
• you may call the instructor when you have questions about the coursework.

You will not be isolated, although you will be doing your work apart from other students.

Since this course is on the Internet, you need to have access to the Internet, including an email address, and be reasonably familiar with how the Internet works in order to do the course work. 

Course Forums are temporary; when the list gets too long, I have to delete the earlier entries. You can count on at least a month for your work to remain online; after that, it depends on the traffic, so keep copies of everything you write in your own files.

ELI POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

For specific information about how an ELI course operates, such as how and where to take exams, how to contact ELI, how to purchase course materials, how to schedule yourself, etc., go to the ELI Policies and Procedures Screen ( http://eli.nvcc.edu/elipps.htm)

COURSE UNITS  

These Units contain all the course assignments and detailed directions for how to complete them. Do the work in the order assigned, allowing a month for each Unit, in order to complete the course in your four month ELI enrollment period. I will only accept one piece of work at a time. You must wait until I respond before posting the next.

Unit 1	Overview and Reading	Exercises 1 - 4
Unit 2	Overview and Reading	Exercises 5 - 7	Midterm Exam
Unit 3	Overview and Reading	Exercises 8  - 9
Unit 4	Overview of Research Report	Research Report Draft and Final	Final Exam

C OURSE GRADING

Task	Possible Points	Total Possible	Percent of Total Grade
9 Exercises	50 each	450	45%
Research Report Draft	50	50	5%
Final Research Report	200	200	20%
Midterm Exam	100	100	10%
Final Exam	200	200	20%

You can earn up to 1000 points for the entire course. Final grades will be assigned according to the points you have earned. You also need to pass both exams (60% or better) in order to pass the course. Print out a copy of the Personal Grade Record Form, and use it to keep a record of your due dates, work completed and grades received.

A =	900 - 1000 points
B =	800 - 899 points
C =	700 - 799 points
D =	600 - 699 points
F =	Below 600 points

PLAGIARISM

Plagiarism is a serious breach of ethics and will not be tolerated in this course.  If I identify plagiarized work, I will not grade it, nor will I allow it to be redone. The rule is: if you didn't know it before you read (or heard or saw) it, you need to cite the source of the information (in parentheses), either directly after using the information, or no later than the end of the paragraph in which you refer to it.

Plagiarism and the www It is very easy to find and copy material on the www. However, it is also very easy for me to go to Google.com and type in a phrase from student work. In two recent cases I found a clear source for the student work within a couple of minutes of searching. Research is fine, but you MUST cite the sources of all information you find no later than the end of the paragraph in which you use it. If you use direct quotes of material, you MUST use “quotation” marks plus citation of source to indicate that you did not write the material. If you put the material into your own words, you still MUST cite the source. If you submit work that uses sources without citing them and if I find the sources, I will not grade your work and you may not redo it. Teachers become very familiar with the styles of student writers, and when a student submits work that does not fit his/her general style, a bell goes off in the teacher’s head, prompting her to suspect plagiarism and look for sources.

All students in this course post their work on public forums. You are encouraged to read other students' work to get ideas about how to do the writing tasks. If you read an idea in another student paper that is so good you feel the need to discuss it, you may "quote it" and cite the student author as your source. Any other use of student work is plagiarism

SPECIAL NEEDS

If you have a documented disability that may affect your performance in this class, please email me, or call me to discuss your situation.

WITHDRAWAL POLICY

Your Withdrawal date and schedule of course work are based on your date of enrollment. You should receive this information in the mail from ELI shortly after enrolling. 

You must satisfactorily complete all of Unit 1 by your Withdrawal date in order to remain in the course. If you do not submit at least the first four pieces of graded work by your Withdrawal date (Home Page and Exercises 2, 3 and 4), you will be automatically dropped from the course. 

If you have submitted at least the first four pieces of graded work and cannot complete the course, it is your responsibility to contact me to discuss your options in order to avoid a grade penalty

NOTE: If you submit work that is not, in my opinion, "college level," I will not grade it, so it will not count towards the required three pieces of work you need to stay in the course after your W date. I may allow you to redo such work, but you will need time to do that, so do not wait until your W date to post careless work in a hurry; it will be too late to do the necessary revisions to get the work accepted as college level.

COLLEGE LEVEL WORK

Since this is a college English course, all graded work must be of college level. This means that it:

• responds appropriately to the assignment
• has college-level content
• is well-developed
• has a clear, readable style
• is reasonably well-focused
• is well-organized
• uses appropriate language and tone
• uses correct English mechanics.

If you submit work that does not meet these requirements, I will not correct or grade it. You will be allowed one chance to redo and resubmit it. The best strategy is to do your best work before submitting it for a grade.

EXERCISES

Each Exercise will help you to master a method or concept of technical writing. Each entry should be on an appropriately limited topic, brief and focused. You will receive the most benefit from this course if you read several other students' entries on a task before writing your own. You will be able to see how each student solved the problem of the task and also see my comments on each student's exercise (but not their grades, which I send privately by email). 

You will receive rapid turnaround for any work you post to the forum. I will send you your grades privately via email. You must wait for my response to a piece of work before posting the next. This allows you to profit from my feedback. Send me any course matters via e-mail.

Each Exercise is worth up to 50 points.

RESEARCH REPORT

The short Research Report (six to eight pages) will help you develop skill as a researcher and writer. You may select the topic of your research from your work or school specialization, or from a personal interest such as gardening, baseball, breeding dogs or decorating houses. Whatever your topic, you will search the Internet for appropriate, current information, prepare an annotated bibliography of articles on your topic, prepare plan sheets for organizing and drafting your material, write a draft and finally, write the polished Research Report. You will receive feedback from me at several steps along the way.

The draft report is worth up to 50 points; the final polished Research Report is worth up to 200 points.

EXAMS

Since this is a distance course, you will be asked to take two proctored exams. These are necessary so that ELI can assure the accrediting boards that the course work is actually done by the student enrolled. You may take these exams at any NVCC Testing Center.

If it is not possible for you to get to an NVCC Testing Center, you may arrange for a proctor at another location. If you need a proctor, go to the ELI Policies and Procedures Screen. Select the link for Examination Proctors, from the Table of Contents, for information on how to arrange for a proctor. 

You need to pass both exams with at least a D (at least 60%) in order to pass the course. 

Click on Exam Passes to go to the passes for your two exams. Print them out and take the appropriate one to the Testing Center for each exam (e.g. pass 1 for the Midterm Exam and pass 2 for the Final Exam). You will also need a photo ID when you go to the Testing Center to take an exam.

Although you may not bring books to the exams, you may bring preparation materials (web site printouts, notes, or an outline, but not actual drafts). Any materials you bring with you will be collected by the Testing Center, fastened to your exam, and returned to me along with your exam. You will not receive either the exam or the materials back, so please do not bring materials you want to keep, unless you have other copies of them.

After I read your exam, I will send you an email note with your grade and my comments. The exams are un-timed, so you can write without feeling pressured. You should not find these exams difficult, because you will have prepared for each one by doing the course work for the unit.

The Midterm Exam is worth up to 100 points and the Final Exam is worth up to 200 points.

NOTE: This entire COURSE GUIDE is subject to revision according to the instructor's judgment of the needs of the class.

E-MAIL

I will send you your grades by email each time I read and respond to a piece of your work. You MUST use your College email address, because I cannot send your grades to any other email address.

Here is the instruction for getting your College email address:

You have been assigned a VCCS email address for use in this and other courses that you take through NVCC or other colleges in the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). The VCCS requires that you use this email account for any course-related email communication so that we can insure your privacy as required by law. 

If you don't know your VCCS email address, go to the Start Page and search for your address. Then, follow the instructions on the Start Page to log on to your email and Blackboard. If you need help using the email account, read the Webmail Manual.

Please check your email regularly. That is how I will inform you of grades, approaching due dates, or other private, course-related information. I will also reply to your emails at your VCCS account. I will not accept or respond to email sent by you from any account other than the one provided by the VCCS

 

(c) Diane Thompson:12/3/1998; updated: 07/25/2005