Welcome to Digital Authoring Practices, a new course in the rhetoric and professional writing sequence in the English Department at Texas A&M University.

In this class, we will be exploring the theory and practice of digital writing. You will be reading texts that ask you to think about how computers (and other digital technologies) change the nature of writing and, in turn, how these changes challenge you to write differently in terms of audience, style, and even content. In addition to the reading, you will be completing a series of experiments designed to orient you within the digital writing scene. Finally, you will work in a team to complete a digital text to experiment with the digital technologies and theories of digitality we have been discussing in class!

Prerequisites: Undergraduate level ENGL 210 Minimum Grade of D

This course requires no textbooks.

Analysis and practice of authoring in digital environments, including individual and collaborative approaches, audience concerns, theoretical, ethical and stylistic issues; environments and topics may include web design, content management system (CMS), text encoding, project management, usability, version tracking, content authoring and accessibility.

Meeting Days: Monday, Wednesday, & Friday
Meeting Times: 12:40pm-1:30pm
Meeting Location: LAAH 551

Name: Dr. Andrew Pilsch
Office Location: LAAH 417
Office Hours: Monday & Wednesday, 1:30-3:00
Email: [email protected]

Class content, readings, and discussions will be handled via Slack.

Our Slack is online at https://engl460.slack.com.

To sign up for our course Slack, register at:

Register at https://join.slack.com/t/engl460/signup using your @tamu.edu email.

You must sign up with a @tamu.edu email to be added to our course Slack.

This course is designed to help you learn how to:

• Explain with concrete examples how digital media are changing authoring practices.
• Demonstrate an understanding of this change through the production of reflective and applied writing in a weekly format.
• Respond and intervene in this change by using digital authoring practices to produce a compelling and persuasive digital artifact.
• Work in teams to produce a digital artifact.
• Use project management software such as Git and Slack to coordinate a distributed team project.
• Build a basic but functional website.

The syllabus you are reading is what is known as a Git repository. Git is a "distributed version control system" that is used in the software industry to track changes to a project as it develops. Hosting the class repo on GitHub also adds a social networking dimensioning to version control software. As we proceed in this class, the files you will be working with will be hosted here, so that you can download them and edit your own copy (more on this later).

You will find course policies, procedures, and assignment descriptions in the overview/ folder.

The units/ folder contains the schedule for course activities, and a document for each day in the given unit. These daily documents will contain the readings (if any) to be completed before class as well as the activities we will be completing in class on each day.

• Week 1: Getting Started
• Week 2: Computerized Knowledge
• Week 3: Forms of Digital Texts I
• Week 4: Forms of Digital Texts II

• Week 5: Google Drive, Dropbox, GitHub
• Week 6: Markdown
• Week 7: Jekyll
• Week 8: Twine
• Week 9: Tracery

• Week 10: Finding a Project
• Week 11: Sharing Digital Work
  • Proposal Due on Monday
• Week 12: Working With Groups
  • Mockup Due on Friday
• Week 13: Thanksgiving
• Week 14: Finishing Up / Project Demo Days
• Week 15: Project Demo Days
  • Revised Final Project Due 12/13
  • Group Work Report Due 12/13